Have no fear, Turbine is here to help! Que the theme-song! ... Alright, first thing is first, as you know your forum is a big small/young. Under 1,000 posts could be considered in the first baby-steps of a blooming forum. If you had around 2,000 posts to your forum's name I would suggest actually putting up a paypal donate button, but I don't think you have that kind of connection to your community yet, unless you specifically invited personal friends to help launch it. Either way, my guess is putting up a donation button wouldn't earn you much, HOWEVER
I do suggest you do it anyway. A paypal "Donate!" button can be just the extra helping hand you need!
The first thing anyone will tell you to do is sign up for
Google AdSense, but to get AdSense working for YOU is to get clicks, but to get clicks and to get MORE you need members, so it's a vicious cycle! Right now, in place of trying to focus on outlets to earn income for your site, work on promoting it's name. Get out there and start beating the streets for like-minded individuals to join your community!
In the mean time, plug your website up with AdSense and add a donation link so you have the outlets open and ticking.
Spreading awareness for a forum that is sub-1,000 posts means you're going to have to work extra-hard and make direct content with your first few strong members. Visit chatrooms through
Yahoo! Messenger that match a topic you might find people that would be interested in your forum.
MAKE FRIENDS! The strongest initial members that you earn your forum should be your close friends. These people will stick around and be your community's foundation.
If you can social network enough through Yahoo! Messenger chat and mySpace chat you will have yourself a few buddies to sit back and talk on your community forum. By doing this word of mouth will start to take off, and the more traffic you start getting the more likely people are going to start clicking on AdWords, and there you go! The key to money is TRAFFIC, so maximizing traffic right now will maximize income!
Work hard! Forums are VERY good at growing on their own and turning into a monster. Once you put in enough hard work and do enough, your community will evolve into a living thing that can do it's own member recruiting and your community will develop it's own momentum.
Right now all you need to know is Google AdSense, it'll be the exact thing you need to get the income you need. If you can't make it with AdSense, you won't be able to land much more with other services, and it offers you all the features and tools you need as a community leader.
So work hard on your community's member base! Use myspace, use chat rooms, think hard and come up with creative ways to spread the word! Make up cool little graphic icons that represent your forum and make a thread on it in your community asking members to put the icon on their myspace, livejournal, and so on to help get links to your forum for more members. Encourage spreading the word about your great community and how wonderful the topics are! Make it an adventure to be apart of your community!
Make it warm and welcoming, and you should be perfectly set, my friend.
And at the end of all this you won't need AdWords to spread the word about your site. You'll be earning income from clicks and you won't need to spend it looking for new members or exposure! Right now in your community's life it is the typical development stage. MANY forums out there don't bother using AdWords to promote their forum because they understand there IS a natural slow period in forum community lifecycle. Ride it out and work through it.
Also! Start looking into "modding" your forum with extra features to make a member's stay more fun! Hope all this info helps! If you have any side questions or comments feel free to send me a private message! Remember, keep a good outlook on things!
You are a community leader!
-Turbine.