It's not advertising. That's invasive and usually clogs activity.
The best way to monetize a community is to develop products/services that your audience really wants to buy.
You're best placed to do this.
You can identify the common problems that keep coming up. You should know the audience better than anyone. What would their dream products/services look like?
Do you know the best part? You can ask your members what their dream products/services look like and develop these for them.
It's not as passive as advertising, but it's far more profitable (and less invasive). There are plenty of good examples here.
The best tend to be educational courses, coaching, books and guides. But you can also do events, develop entirely new products/services (see The Travel Hacking Cartel), and exclusives.
It's only "far more" profitable if you value your time at zero. When you start trying to figure out the value of your time, it gets more complicated. That, plus one of the great values in online communities is that they (mostly) have the ability to give unbiased views on products in the industry they cover, when the owners of the community are also selling the product you can't expect that to be true.
Posted by: Peter Davis | Friday, 23 March 2012 at 15:05