Best forums for paid advertisements?

[Ikaruga]

Have you any of you guys tried paid advertisements on other forums to promote your own? Any success with it? I know we all host forums based on different niches, but I'd like to hear what's worked for people overall.

I'm seriously considering doing a "Sticky" advertisement on Offtopic.com's forum and do the 1 month offer for $400. Their forum is pretty general, but with the sheer amount of traffic coming from their site I think the ad would convert well into users/clicks/signups. I'll have to beef up my site's content before downing that $400, though.

[snakeair]

I have never did this for my forum though. First i did a little promotion in other forums, stuck a link in siggie. Wrote a few articles and submitted to some article directories. A few online friends who i talk to a lot also promoted my forum. I ran a contest for 3 month's giving free advertising on my forum's footer for a month to the winner.

Basically, i used a lot of free methods to promote my site and never used paid advertising. If i did choose to use paid advertising, i'd just use google adwords to target a certain audience. I could get a lot of members for under $400 using adwords if i used them.

Sometimes, people don't even read the sticky threads on forum's. Heck, there are a few i haven't read on this forum yet and i been here for awhile. lol

[Ikaruga]

I've got a 1 day spot on Offtopic tomorrow, which is going to cost me a mere $25. I'll provide before/after results once everything goes to work.

[Lee G]

Be interesting to see how you get on. I thought they were showing links on the top header for $200 a month.

Looked at the amount of members logged in at several times and I have never seen a forum so busy. Moderating it must be an absolute nightmare

[mdvaldosta]

I wouldn't want those kinds of forum members, honestly. Seriously, look at the posts on Offtopic.com ... would you want that kind of stuff on your forum? Unless it's a sales page I wouldn't touch that place for advertising.

[Ikaruga]

I'm actually directing the members on there to a sales/landing page that's featured on my forum.

So, the 1 day sticky that I purchased last Monday is still up -- and it's already Wednesday! Great results so far in terms of making profit. I've made about $60 profit total over the past 3 days directly from the sticky, and forum traffic is significantly higher than before. Even if the sticky had only been up for 24 hours like it was supposed to, I would have made a $10 profit.

All in all...if you have a service to sell or something that would interest a broad demographic of forum users, Offtopic's a great place to advertise. Try it out, and purchase a 1 day sticky....who knows, it might end up being a 3+ day sticky like mine

[yeknom]

i think $400 is really expensive.. there arent another solution.. ??

[Ikaruga]

Well, it's been a whole week and my paid ad is still up. I don't know if my sticky was overlooked, but $25 for a week-long sticky on a massive forum like Offtopic is a GREAT deal. I already made profit from the 1st day it was posted, and I'm still getting traffic directly from there.

Don't go with the $400 month-long deal...just do a 1 day deal and pray you're as lucky as I am.