Effective strategies for monetizing a community without compromising user experience?

[Toni]

Most of us when we start a community tend to be looking at the future and the possibility of monetizing our community. 

When it comes to monetization, the last thing we want to do is make it so that the user experience is compromised, this is something we want to heavily avoid if we can.

Do you have any effective strategies that would allow community leaders to monetize their community but steer clear of compromising the user experience? 

[JoelR]

The way that you frame the question makes it sound as if monetization has to run counter to the user experience.  

I'd like to flip the question, and ask, how can you offer monetization to improve the user experience? If you can answer this question, then you will have a monetization strategy that aligns with your members and your strategy.  

What can you offer that empowers your members better? And sell that.  

[Maria]

I think for the sustainability of your community, you need to monetize your community, however, monetization should hurt your community. If you are using too many ads or intrusive ads, your users will stop visiting your site. One of the best strategy for community monetization is by selling membership, if you can get a couple of paying users, you do not have to use ads from other advertisers.

[Kane]

You can monetize your community through multiple methods, running network ads or selling memberships are some of the common ways to monetize your communities. You can also use affiliate ads or sell merch. No matter what monetization method you are using, you need a lot of users and traffic on your site.

[JoelR]

8 hours ago, Kane said:

You can monetize your community through multiple methods, running network ads or selling memberships are some of the common ways to monetize your communities. You can also use affiliate ads or sell merch. No matter what monetization method you are using, you need a lot of users and traffic on your site.

I disagree.  

You can make $1000 / mo by ... 

- Selling $0.01 ads to display to 100,000 people

- Selling a $100 course to 10 people 

In the second case, you don't actually need a lot of traffic or a lot of users.  You literally only need 10 people! But the value that you provide needs to be high value, specialized and worthwhile.