Adsense equivalent for Firearms?

Hello all,
I found this website by Googling "Adsense alternative for firearms", and I saw that some of you had the same question.

The thread I found via Google is 2 years old, so I'm just wondering if any of you have found any alternatives?

Things like Adbrite, Clicksor, etc, are no good in my opinion. They either don't show relative ads, my website is not big enough (only 10,000 posts), or they only offer the kind of advertising that makes certain words in threads links, which I hate.


Can anyone offer advice? Thanks!

Hi Rob,

In related discussions in the past, I've seen several admins state that they do very well by going out and getting paid sponsorships directly from manufacturers, etc. I'm not sure if you are doing that right now, but I see a lot of gun related forums that seem to go in that direction.

Hi Joe,
That's a good tip. I suppose it would be best (prior to searching for sponsors) to get more members.

Take care.

Yes, if you're just getting started then building up your forum more is definitely a good idea. They have to see some activity before they're going to spend their money with you (in most cases).

Also, the more professional you can make the forum look, the better chance you'll have of getting them committed to an advertising agreement. So far, the gun forums I've seen always seem to have lots of sponsoring banners, so that's a good sign.

Thanks Joe. So it would seem the existence of advertisements makes other advertisers more prone to advertise.

I don't mean to take up your time but I have one other question. Do you think it would be beneficial to have a main page or some kind of portal, prior to entering the forums?

Main page or portal decision usually comes down to whether or not you have some really cool stuff to place there. I see too many forums that install a portal like vBAdvanced, but they don't have anything other than a list of their announcements or recent threads, etc. In those cases, I'd say skip it and use the forum home as the homepage.

But if you plan to do more interesting stuff with the homepage, then it can look great. I think our front page came out looking good, and containing info of interest to our customers, but for a long time even we just kept forum home as our homepage too.

Sitepoint.com does a good job of managing a lot of info on the homepage. Ours is a little more focused on our software and related pages. You might want to create something that focuses on your top articles or content to help pull people in.

Regarding existing ads to get others to join. I don't have a lot of experience selling ads like many of our customers, but I would venture to say "yes". Sometimes people like to see others going first. It validates their decision and even inspires a sense of healthy competition. You might even offer some free placements to get started in order to make it look like a great place to be for future advertisers.