Regardless of your hosting provider it is a very good idea in general to monetize your Discourse.
It’s probably not going to make you rich but it does mean a couple of things:
- If you are lucky you will be able to cover your hosting fees.
- You can contribute to the ecosystem economy by supporting developers to create addons or add features to existing ones that you wish existed.
For this purpose I have used:
a PayPal button for voluntary donations
…for a while on one of my sites. (so in agreement with @JimPas)
It used to attract quite a lot of donations and the odd eye-opening one!
I’ve noticed that the more I get involved in that community (rather than just support it technically), the more donations I get. Visibility is quite key. Otherwise people treat it like any online free social media … instead of one stewarded (and paid for!) by key individuals.
Oh yeah, the fees they charge are a crime …
Affiliate links
These net a small recurring income but it’s not been a runaway success always. I have had the odd big win with these too though. It really may depend on the subject matter of your site. If you support car enthusiasts and post some appropriate affiliate links, it could be a good earner …