Amazon’s Vine program connects prolific Amazon customer reviewers with products in need of reviews. I recently wrote about community monetization alternatives to display ads. The Vine program could serve as inspiration to certain communities, especially those who are dominant in a specific niche.

Vine is largely a win for everyone involved. While you won’t have to look hard to find criticism of it – especially from writers who feel their book was unfairly reviewed or that the average person is not qualified to critique their work – for the most part, it works really well.

Win #1: More Product Reviews for Amazon

Product reviews drive sales. Good and bad ones. The more products that Amazon has reviews for – and the earlier they have them – the more likely that Amazon will convert a viewer to a buyer. In some cases, Vine products are sent pre-release, because the manufacturer wants to have some reviews before it is available for purchase. Amazon then grants the Vine reviewers the ability to publish a review early.

Credit: Salim Virji (CC BY-SA 2.0)

When Monetizing Online Forums was published, back in July of 2012, we wanted to show community professionals and owners that there were more ways to monetize a community than traditional display ads. We talked about display advertising, and how to do it right, but we discussed several other methods that could allow you to shift away from display ads while potentially generating even more revenue.

I was reminded of that goal this week when the discussion around ad blocking reached new heights, thanks to Apple. I don’t want to talk about ad blocking today. Instead, I want to help you diversify and discover new methods of generating revenue, that won’t be affected by ad blocking. If you want to know more about these methods, Monetizing Online Forums is a free download.

Credit: Mathias Klang (CC BY 2.0)

The communities that I manage are monetized via display advertising. I only work with reputable companies and have restrictions in place to ensure that the ads served meet my standards.

All networks worth your time will be actively protecting their publishers from ads that serve up malware. That’s obvious. But they’ll also provide you with filters that you can set to restrict the types of creatives they serve and the content of those creatives.

For me, this means no popup ads. No ads that expand automatically. No ads that play sound automatically. No ads related to sexuality. No ads related to gambling and betting. And there are other standards, as well. AdSense is very good about this, as are most networks you’d want to work with.

I see Patreon as a really interesting community platform. The service allows creators to receive financial support directly from those who appreciate their work. It’s become really popular and is used by all types of creators: YouTubers, musicians, cartoonists, writers, podcasters, artists, photographers, filmmakers and more.

The longer I thought about it, the more I decided it would be fun to experiment with it for my work here.

If you look around at this site, you’ll see it really isn’t built for consulting. Even when I receive those emails, once in a while, I usually decline or recommend a person for them to talk to. Consulting isn’t the point of my work. I view myself, first and foremost, as a resource for fellow practitioners. I love to offer whatever support I can to professionals in this space, and those aspiring to be one.

Credit: DuPont Surfaces (CC BY 2.0)

My friend Jay Baer received a new leather backpack for Christmas. He discovered the bag because of a recommendation made by a mutual friend of ours, Rohit Bhargava. This recommendation was posted in a private Facebook group for frequent travelers. Both Jay and Rohit are members of this group.

He had never even heard of the brand (Piquadro) before Rohit mentioned it. But Jay knew he wanted it and sent the link to his wife, who bought it as a gift. Piquadro has no idea that the sale was primarily generated by a post in a private community of frequent travelers. That community receives no credit, nor does Facebook. To Piquadro, it will simply look like a direct referral.

Listen to Jay tell the story himself in the video below (or read his article, “Why Social Media Will Never Get the Credit it Deserves”).

If you are launching paid (or premium) memberships on your community – or if you have them already – I’d encourage you to take a good, hard look at how Amazon has treated Amazon Prime. Especially when it comes to pricing and how they add new features to the program.

As a point of disclosure, I am both a Prime member and an Amazon shareholder.

The History of Amazon Prime in the U.S.

On February 2, 2005, Amazon Prime launched. It was priced at $79 a year, and the benefits were completely tied to shipping. Free two-day shipping on items sold directly by Amazon, as well as discounted one-day shipping, for up to 4 members of your household. Give or take, the shipping benefits have pretty much stayed the same over the years. But not much else has.

photo credit: Tracy O

I was browsing Admin Talk when I saw a thread titled “$600 for a forum without revenue?” A member named Soliloquy mentioned that a forum they liked was up for sale for $600. It has over 70,000 posts, 4,000 threads and 1,500 members. But it does not make any money as there has been no attempt to monetize it.

Online communities can offer a lot of value to people. Providing them with answers, helping them with a challenge they are facing and building strong friendships. But if you should ever want to buy or sell a community, the discussion will come down to monetary value.

When you talk about buying or selling a website, which is what an online community usually is, there are often revenue based formulas that are thrown around, such as 12-24 times monthly revenue. While it is OK to consider these formulas and even use them as a vague guideline, you should not use them as a rigid standard. Often, they do not equate to a proper valuation of what a community is worth.

I recently completed a full review of my own monetization efforts and I made the decision to turn over the vast majority of my ad inventory to BuySellAds, which I originally wrote about here in September of 2010.

What this means is that I have listed most of my inventory for sale in their Marketplace and that if anyone wants to buy an ad directly through me, I simply send them to the BuySellAds profile for my website (for example, here is the one for KarateForums.com). From that page, they can select the inventory they want, make the payment and upload their creative. All I have to do is approve it.

Previously, if someone came directly to me, I tried to handle the transaction myself with the aim of keeping a little extra money. But, when I thought about it, I decided that letting BuySellAds take care of it made a lot of sense.

Recently, I was reviewing the vendors that I work with to monetize KarateForums.com. I was looking for something that would better target martial artists and I decided to increase my usage of eBay Partner Network.

This is eBay’s affiliate program, which pays on a cost-per-click basis. How much you earn per click is based on their Quality Click Pricing, which attempts to evaluate the quality of the traffic that you send them. They say that, on average, publishers earn between $0.06 and $0.21 per click, but those sending “high quality, targeted traffic” can earn more than $0.40 per click. So it isn’t like typical affiliate programs where you just earn a percentage of revenue generated. This can be confusing and, perhaps, frustrating. Nonetheless, for niche communities, the eBay Partner Network can be a good program.

You can certainly use it if you have a more generic, general chat type community, but where it really shines is when you are focused on a particular subject matter. That is when one of eBay’s greatest strengths comes to bear: the depth of items that they have available, covering seemingly any possible interest.

If you’ve spent much time on the monetization of your community, you’ve run across Google AdSense, Google’s advertising program for web publishers. More to my point, you’ve probably run across people asking for what else they can do besides AdSense or as an alternative to AdSense.

In fact, a Google search for “AdSense alternatives” (with quotes) spits out 162,000 results. “Other than AdSense” provides 123,000. This is natural, due to the popularity of the program.

In June, AdSense will turn 10 years old. As a web publisher, I have used AdSense almost from day 1 of the service (July 1, 2003 is the earliest day in my stats), which means I’ve been using it for 10 years. In recognition of this mark, I wanted to take a moment to remind people why AdSense is so great for people who own online communities.