Whether we like them or not, advertisements are an essential part of the internet landscape. And in some ways rightly so, because they guarantee to a certain degree that the person running the show is serious about his effort, after all chances of some one leaving a money making website is less than that of a person doing it for free.

The same thought applies to forums; however in case of a forum, your relationship with your customer i.e. members and guests, is more intimate then it would have been, had you been running a website or a blog. This means you have to not only pay attention to content and design, you also have to be sensitive towards the needs of your members and make them feel valued.

While there are several ways to show your appreciation and gratitude, one way you can do this, is by making the forums ads free for registered users.

Showing your gratitude

Making forums ads free for registered members sends out a strong message, that you are not trying to exploit your members to earn a few bucks, some thing which is sure to boost your stature amongst your members and make them feel they are part of the community.

The monetary aspect

After reading the above point, you must be thinking that this would mean you will loose out on revenue. While this is true to a certain degree and you will notice a slump in your ad impressions and clicks, in the long run this can work in your favor.

This is due to the fact, that members become accustomed to advertisements at certain point and simply ignore them, this is called ad blindness. While this might not matter if you are running a CPM based campaign, it certainly isn’t good news, if you are running CPC campaign.

Which means majority of your revenue from a CPC campaign comes from your guests and even if you make the forum ads free for your members, your primary source of revenue i.e. clicks wouldn’t fall badly.

The marketing aspect

From marketing point of view, this move is sure to be a plus point for enticing people to join your forum. After all, all they need to do to make those “nasty little ads” disappear, is to fill out a simple registration form and log in.

Getting rid of the guilty feeling

While most don’t feel guilty about showing advertisements on their forums and rightfully so, there are few individual who feel this way. And if you are one of those individuals, this is sure to make your guilty feeling disappear.

After all you are not showing ads to people who care about your community and are a part of it, you are just showing them to people who can’t even bother to take a couple of minutes out of their lives to register at your forum!

According to me this is a win – win situation for most and at the max you will loose out on some revenue on short term basis. However if you are still skeptical, you can always run a small experiment to see how much of your revenue is actually being generated by registered users.

You can do this by displaying different ads to guests and members, this way you will know in a few days if it’s a viable option for you or not.