# Forum Monetization (Without AdSense?)

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/forum-monetization-without-adsense/125480
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [August 11, 2019, 5:43pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/forum-monetization-without-adsense/125480 "2019-08-11T17:43:30Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 3

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### Author: ![bts](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/bts/32/184556_2.png) [@bts](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bts)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2019, 4:23pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/forum-monetization-without-adsense/125480/3 "2019-08-12T16:23:40Z")

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I’d say the best alternative would be not using ads at all, and instead trying some kind of patronage / membership program.

Not knowing your forum or audience, this is general advice, but: the ad-supported model can sometimes work, for example when you have a very large audience, and/or users (e.g. students) that either can’t afford or just aren’t inclined to pay. However for many niche forums with a clear, unique value proposition, I think it can make a lot more sense to ask folks to support you directly.

For a nonprofit, rather than making it a hard paywall to access the forum, you could have it be an optional but encouraged donation. Folks who pay could be added to a special group on Discourse…this could be used to unlock a private “patrons” category or something if you wanted, or it could simply be used to add a badge subtly indicating that the user is a supporter.

This may or may not tie into a broader sort of membership program on your site, but I think the idea would be small bonuses or ways of recognizing folks that incentivize membership while not costing you much extra. Even if a fairly small fraction of users end up paying, depending on the pricing tiers you set up it’s likely this could net you at least as much $ as ads, as well as being a better way to more strongly engage a core part of your audience.

There are many ways this kind of thing can work with Discourse:

- Simplest might be the Patreon integration: [Discourse Patreon](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-patreon-integration/44366)

- If you have a WordPress site, you could use a WP membership plugin + custom code to sync paying users to certain Discourse groups: [Manage group membership in Discourse with WP Discourse SSO](https://meta.discourse.org/t/managing-discourse-group-membership-with-wp-discourse/74724) (similar but more plug and play: [Memberful](https://memberful.com/))

- ProCourse Memberships is a similar thing but lives entirely within Discourse, a good bet if you don’t have a separate site you’d want to integrate memberships with: [ProCourse Memberships 💸](https://meta.discourse.org/t/procourse-memberships/57558)

- Subscriptia seems very similar as well: [https://meta.discourse.org/t/subscriptia-simple-paid-memberships/99275](https://meta.discourse.org/t/subscriptia-simple-paid-memberships/99275)

- And perhaps simplest of all, the Stripe Donations Plugin could be great for one-off donations: [Stripe Donations Plugin](https://meta.discourse.org/t/stripe-donations-plugin/59036)

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