I heard a lot of ppl said that forum can't make money

I'm planning to build a forum for my country. However, after I spend few hours reading comments in this board I'm not sure about it anymore....Can forum really makes money? Also when ppl say "change traffic to money" you mean ads(pay per click, etc.) in your forum, am I right? Thanks

 

I dont think people say that you CANT make money, its just that it can be a long haul getting the members, the traffic and then making money.

But anyone operating a forum purely for the money is in it for the wrong reason, cause you also need a passion for the topic. The money is probably just a bonus...

 

What snooks said. Running a forum with earning money as your goal will never work out. You need to be dedicated to pull it out. Running a forum is a marathon, not a sprint.

 

If you were to have set your forum up 6-8 years ago when the market was ripe for the taken, then I suspect
you would be a bigboard, but today is another story. all the niches are raped with forums. If you are in this
for a quick dollar, then do not go into forums...most these days report bad or poor results....you would
have an easier time getting an actual job today then making money with a forum tomorrow.

The market is just oversaturated where it was not a few years ago....

 

You can make money with forums. At least it's possible. I would also not advise a newbie enter the market. It's saturated and the less experienced do not do very well. I'm a guy making a living from forums telling you this. Basically forums are a lot tougher to manage and monetize than other sites. Without experience with communities, servers, hosting, graphics and scripting you'll probably do poorly. Forums require well-rounded skillsets imho. Even if you're using scripts like MyBB or VB. You'll need to know how to market, manage, and monetize. The learning curve is steep.

I'd work on social networking sites for money. You'd be shocked how some are making loot from their Twitter and FB accounts.

 

Forum owners do earn from their community.... but it does not happen overnight. What i am saying is starting forum owners, need to invest their time and probably money in order to earn in the long run.

 

You can make a lot of money with forums if you know how to monetize them properly. And no, that doesn't mean displaying adsense ads all over the forum.

 

It's not that you CAN'T. You can, and you can make a lot of cash, too. But it's a long & tiring process getting that loyal member base.

 

Don't expect to make much money though adsense or a service similar. Members know not to click ads as they visit the board often.

 

forum it need to run a long term for getting a cash to your pocket

 

I don't think any of the people I know who own forums make much money from the forum directly.
It seems that they all have stores relevant to the forums subject matter that the forum serves to draw customers towards.

 

Of course you can make money... I manage dozens of forums, own half a dozen and am partner in another 28... One of them just made 13,000 USD in December 2010!

 

It's all about you know what do with your forum. Forums that don't make any money in them are just cause the owner doesn't know how to make money with them.

 

Mine is a not for profit fan forum, but I know if I put adsense on it it'd probably pull in about $100 to $200 a month.

Yeah, a real whopping paycheck eh

And it is time consuming, and the bigger your forum gets the more time consuming it is. I am damn lucky to have an amazing host who understands my forum's software {SMF} as he is a developer for it, I had a problem with site lag over the past few weeks, he went into the code and fixed the problem up quick. But running a forum isn't a "passive income" by any means. It's hours a day for me to run mine. You want easy money off a website, I'd recommend a blog over a forum simply becaues of how much easier they are to manage and upkeep. This is a labour of love for me.

 

Great points.

Forums only make money if they have receive a lot of traffic - has good content and is doing well in terms of ad placements. It takes time for forums to earn money, but once its in the green, there's no stopping the money from flowing in - unless you run into server problems.

 

can't you make money with installing gumgum ads in the forum. i have seen several forums with gumgum ads. If you have a lot of "official picture threads" in your forum. i think it's possible to make money vs using the google adsense ads.... Once you install the gumgum ads it automatically detects all the pictures in your forum and place the in image ads..

 

Forums can make money. It's all about your content, and traffic. If your content isn't good - and your traffic sucks, then you won't make anything.

I'd recommend reading this article on how forums make money.

 

There is a rap forum guy put a lot of ads on it he made like $200 to $400 month off of it

 

What rap forum are you talking about? Link?

 

Forum is no more now it was Realestniggas