If you are building a community site and think that it might benefit from having a forum, this could be a great thing, and the main reason is that you don’t need to create any content, other users will do it for you!

The only thing you need is to keep them engaged, posting regularly and you got yourself a winner!

Now the only negative side is that CTR in forums is usually low, but this can be some extra income.

Here are the steps you need to do:

 

Install WordPress

Skip this if you already have a WP site.

Install and configure the bbPress Plugin

This is the best Forum software for WP

Use a theme with bbPress support

I recommend you go to Themeforest, and search for a theme which works fine with bbPress

Create the forum list

You can also create subforums and categories if needed.

Install this free plugin to add Adsense units

It’s called bbPress Advert Units, and it lets you choose where you want to add your ads inside the forum.

Add your Adsense ad units and decide where to show them

These are the options you have:

• Between posts
• In the body of the first post
• At the top and bottom of topic pages
• On individual forum pages
• On the top level forum page

That’s it! As long as you have a reasonable amount of users who post in the forum, you should get more and more content (meaning more and more visits), and your revenue should go up