Defending the Truth

How about adding Adsense revenue sharing to VBulletin?

This hack will allow you to offer Google Adsense revenue sharing to your vbulletin board users. Revenue sharing is a great way to reward your board members for their loyalty and adds a feeling of ownership in the board and it's success.

Revenue is split (potentially) between three people; board administrator, thread starter and last thread poster. The percentage of probability is completely customizable by the administrator.

Here's the link to one such hack: Adsense Revenue Sharing Hack for Vbulletin

I was thinking about this..I know the digitalpoint forums runs an adsense revenue sharing mod. I will discuss this with the moderators of the site.

It has it's pros and cons.. one thing it will do is possibly increase the quantity of new threads. The site I frequent (NamePros.com) most has revenue sharing set at 50-50 (I believe).. some users apparently do quite well, or so they say, with revenue sharing. I have well in excess of 10,000 posts and haven't seen much revenue from it, but then, that's not why I post.

That site (NamePros) also has forum points you earn for posting called NP$. There is quite a thriving economy based on those points and the site even sells thousands of domain registrations using this system. At present the NP$ seem to trade at around 2 to 2.1 cents per point. Some users have thousands of these NP$ and use them in trade with other users for products or services.

By the way, a Reputation system is always a nice feature as is the ability to add a button such as your "donor" button.. I have seen that button used on several forums and rather than give Rep for a good post, people will send a dollar or two.. it can also be used to purchase goods directly from a member.

Thanks for the info! I was looking into setting up a reputation system, but never got around to it. I'll look more into these features tomorrow.

I'm not sure how they work exactly.. on NamePros there are 11 levels of Rep. I attained the 11th level long, long ago and wish there were more levels to attain. I have well over 4000 Rep points from posts (never had a negative) and over 200 transactions. Most transactions give 10 points for a positive, posts give anywhere from 3 to 10 points depending on the donor's Rep.

Take care!

This all sounds like a pyramid scheme to me... I think it could seriously cheapen the site.

??!!

If you're talking about Rep, it simply rewards the poster for a good post or thread in the form of an arbitrary (set by the forum owner) point system.

If you're talking about Revenue Sharing, I'm not following your train of thought at all. Again, allowing a poster to share in the advertising revenue at a ratio set by the forum owner only encorages growth.

Maybe you're misunderstanding the purpose of all this.. believe me, it's a positive influence as evidenced by those forums who employ it.

I was reffering to the Revenue sahring. Sure it may spur growth but at what cost? A site full of crap content? The best Forums don't pay their users to post. The Revision3 Forums are wildly popular, and full of quality content with no financial incentives. I prefer quality over quantitiy.

Revision3 Forums - Powered by vBulletin

Well, you're not exactly getting paid to post.. in fact, I have over 10,700 posts at a revenue sharing forum and I'll bet I've made less that $10 in the two years I've posted there as a result of it, if that. It's just a "thank you" from the forum owner really..

On the other hand, the same forum does award forum points for each post to established posters (new members are ineligible until their posting pattern is reviewed). This forum points called NP$ do have an intrinsic monetary value but they have made that forum a thriving economy in it's own right.. members use the points to buy and sell thousands of different forum-related items. Everyone benefits..

It is an interesting idea, and it is worth consideration. I am sure that the rest of the staff and I will give it due consideration, I just want to move cautiously. You understand that we have put a lot of time and effort into the site, and we are working hard to make it a quality site for all. I just don't want to leap into anything without careful review. Thanks for the suggestion!