ForumUp English Language Support

danielbc · Member Joined: 08 Jan 2008 Posts: 3

Could i use Adsense on my forum or it violates any rule?

danielbc · Member Joined: 08 Jan 2008 Posts: 3

as i cant edit my post here is my forum adress ->

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FoxLeonard · Member Joined: 25 Feb 2007 Posts: 821 Location: Hyperborea

Daniel, you cannot put any kind of advertising or similar on your forum.

The main relevant parts of the Terms of Service (ToS) say (emphasis added):

not

Load, send, publish or spread advertising

You will find the complete ToS here:

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Register or Login on forum!

FoxLeonard

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Jacko · Member Joined: 05 Jun 2006 Posts: 25

We cannot even advertise our own shops? What if we pay for the no-ads... can we then display ads/links?

thanks,
Jacko

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FoxLeonard · Member Joined: 25 Feb 2007 Posts: 821 Location: Hyperborea

Jacko, if you pay for No-Ads does not make a difference. You cannot use your forum for Advertising, nor for "commercial purposes"; i.e. you are not allowed to directly, or indirectly, use your forum to make money.

What you can do is to "promote" and link to your homepage(s), in the way you are doing, for example. Assuming that your "homepage" is not an eBay store, or similar, in which latter case we are back on "commercial purposes".

FoxLeonard

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Jacko · Member Joined: 05 Jun 2006 Posts: 25

FoxLeonard wrote:

Jacko, if you pay for No-Ads does not make a difference. You cannot use your forum for Advertising, nor for "commercial purposes"; i.e. you are not allowed to directly, or indirectly, use your forum to make money.

What you can do is to "promote" and link to your homepage(s), in the way you are doing, for example. Assuming that your "homepage" is not an eBay store, or similar, in which latter case we are back on "commercial purposes".

FoxLeonard

Thanks for the quick reply FoxLeonard! Smile

Jacko

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gg'ssimon · Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 1:18 pm Post subject:

Jacko wrote:

We cannot even advertise our own shops? What if we pay for the no-ads... can we then display ads/links?

thanks,
Jacko

The way the TOS is worded it can be interpreted that members may not put any kind of advertising on their sites. However, Raulken does allow some kinds.

You can put links to online stores that would be of interest to your members. That is legimate to help your users on some kinds of forums for them to know where they can buy certain types of products, such as, for example, the best cat toys. Wink

You can even have a clickable image to such stores. A few clickable images linking to another site is fine and not using your forum as a commercial webspace. In this use, one is just letting members know of online stores you believe in and recommend over some other stores that sell items relating to the subject of your forum.

A commercial webspace would be where the main activity of the forum is selling something or mostly just existing to make money.

So, for example, it is ok if you had a forum about building model airplanes, for example, and you put a clickable image link to a good online store selling model airplane making supplies. That type of thing is just letting your members know about an online store you found and recommend that can benefit them to take part in the hobby the forum discusses. It is even ok to put links to online stores if you are what is called an "affiliate" where you can earn a small percentage of a sale if anyone buys something through your link. Amazon.com affililiate links are ok, for example- within reason; not pages of links or lots of banner ads.

Yes, you can advertise you own shop on your forum. As long as your forum is not the forum site of the shop where the only purpose of the forum is for you to make money on your shop. If you have one of those CafePress shops to earn money for a cause, such as animal rescue or raising money for a certain charity, for example, you can put a link to it.

danielbc, you cannot put Google Adsense links on a ForumUp forum. Google wouldn't likely allow it anyway.

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Margaret /gg'ssimon~ForumUp World-Wide Administrator

kitschkitty · Member Joined: 19 Sep 2006 Posts: 29

Thanks for this reply it's really good to know, as some of my members have asked in the past if they could have adverts on our forum for thier bead shops, to raise money to keep the forum free from unsuitable adverts.

As we are able to keep our forum add free by raising sponsorship in other ways at the moment I said no, but it's good to know that actually sponsorship adverts wouldn't be against forumups ToS as previously mentioned.

gg'ssimon wrote:

Jacko wrote:

We cannot even advertise our own shops? What if we pay for the no-ads... can we then display ads/links?

thanks,
Jacko

The way the TOS is worded it can be interpreted that members may not put any kind of advertising on their sites. However, Raulken does allow some kinds.

You can put links to online stores that would be of interest to your members. That is legimate to help your users on some kinds of forums for them to know where they can buy certain types of products, such as, for example, the best cat toys. Wink

You can even have a clickable image to such stores. A few clickable images linking to another site is fine and not using your forum as a commercial webspace. In this use, one is just letting members know of online stores you believe in and recommend over some other stores that sell items relating to the subject of your forum.

A commercial webspace would be where the main activity of the forum is selling something or mostly just existing to make money.

So, for example, it is ok if you had a forum about building model airplanes, for example, and you put a clickable image link to a good online store selling model airplane making supplies. That type of thing is just letting your members know about an online store you found and recommend that can benefit them to take part in the hobby the forum discusses. It is even ok to put links to online stores if you are what is called an "affiliate" where you can earn a small percentage of a sale if anyone buys something through your link. Amazon.com affililiate links are ok, for example- within reason; not pages of links or lots of banner ads.

Yes, you can advertise you own shop on your forum. As long as your forum is not the forum site of the shop where the only purpose of the forum is for you to make money on your shop. If you have one of those CafePress shops to earn money for a cause, such as animal rescue or raising money for a certain charity, for example, you can put a link to it.

danielbc, you cannot put Google Adsense links on a ForumUp forum. Google wouldn't likely allow it anyway.

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UK Beaders:

gg'ssimon · Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 1:31 pm Post subject:

Quote:

Thanks for this reply it's really good to know, as some of my members have asked in the past if they could have adverts on our forum for thier bead shops, to raise money to keep the forum free from unsuitable adverts.

Something like is fine, since your forum is used to discuss beading, and any such ads of member's sites would just be incidental links, and not the main focus of your forum.

You can have a thread or section where members can give a link to their sites. Or members can put such links in their signatures if you want. It never was against the TOS to do that, even if on that other site things are for sale. It is just that the forum as a whole can't be used as one big advertising forum or money making venture.

Don't forget that in the admin panel you can make a PayPal donate button show on the bottom of your forum so people can donate towards ads-free. It is already configured to be credited to your forum.

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Margaret /gg'ssimon~ForumUp World-Wide Administrator

pistachio · Member Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 33

Quote:

Amazon.com affililiate links are ok

Could anybody please tell me a little more about this. It was something that was discussed on our forum a little while back as a way of raising a little cash to pay for keeping the ads off the forum.

Thank you

pi xxx

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gg'ssimon · Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 2:43 pm Post subject:

pistachio wrote:

Quote:

Amazon.com affililiate links are ok

Could anybody please tell me a little more about this. It was something that was discussed on our forum a little while back as a way of raising a little cash to pay for keeping the ads off the forum.

Thank you

pi xxx

You need to go to Amazon.com and find out about their affiliate program.

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Margaret /gg'ssimon~ForumUp World-Wide Administrator

pistachio · Member Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 33

Thank you, I did have a look some time ago but I thought it was only for bloggers.

How can I put up those links from Amazon on the forum please.

pi x

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gg'ssimon · Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 3:00 pm Post subject:

pistachio wrote:

Thank you, I did have a look some time ago but I thought it was only for bloggers.

How can I put up those links from Amazon on the forum please.

pi x

You need to sign up with Amazon.com as an affilitate. Then you will see their affiliate help forum.

You add a link for anything the same way.

See our FAQ document for how to make clickable links.

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Margaret /gg'ssimon~ForumUp World-Wide Administrator

pistachio · Member Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 33

Thank you!

pi x

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