I ask this question because I ran 2 very successful ones and sold them last year for enough money to pay off my mortgage. But it seems like, on this board and on others, they jsut don't see to do that well. On the other hand, take cruisecritic.com look at the traffic on that website.. The reason I ask is because i have yet another good topic for forum discussion...and I jsut don't know if the effort is worth it monetarily. Collective opinion from the experienced is appreciated.
Yes they are worth it. Digitalpoint makes over $10k/month nevermind the fact it has so many users. You even answered this question yourself in the first sentence with them making you enough $$ to pay off your mortgage so in my opinion forums are still worth it if you target a large enough niche and make sure you get to the top
Forums can be the easiest way to make money. The difficult part is to reach the "critical mass" stage. Once a forum has enough content and active members, it will keep generating fresh unique content - day after day. For every forum, the first days are very difficult - there is no content and so people don't sign up. People don't sign up and thus there is no content. Many forums don't survive this difficult period. However, once a "critical mass" is attained, a forum owner with just mediocre knowledge about SEO, can earn a substantial income from his forum. DP is a very good example of it. Even if Shawn would not look at DP for days (or maybe weeks) DP can keep going on its own.
There are many, many....many inactive, or very slow webmaster forums on life support around the web. 3 years ago, that was the "Big new thing". Today it adsense. Both ideas are and were 3 years too late. Anybody starting a webmaster forum now, is 3-5 years late,and anybody just getting into adsense already missed the "hey day"
If you are willing to put in the TIME and EFFORT, it's not too late. It also helps to have people who have highly popular blogs to support you. What hmansfield mentioned above is true generally. However, a HUGE webmaster forum was launched relatively recently and it's doing great. Bottomline: Starting a webmaster forum is like starting a restaurant. Most fail. So do your homework and prepare to hit the ground running...... HARD. I wish you the best!
I ran talk-psp.com which almost had 1k users. Made good money and then my friend sold it...... It can be very profitable. You can even ask people if they will help you with your website. Thats what I did and they still help me to this day.
Forums can be as profitable and as good as the work you put into them, less work, dont expect much in return, more work, more in return.
i don't think anyone is late to anything. There is constantly a stream of new people looking for something fresh & new. I think in all honesty that life repeats itself, if you are strong enough & willing to keep up with everything, then you can continue to be successful in creating forums & whatnot. There may not be as big monetary gain as there was in the beginning but there still is. You just have to be diligent & passionate enough to make it happen. Don't give up on anything, just because it looks like the hype has died down, just means that you have to work a tad bit harder to get to that point again. Alison OP, i'd be interested in hearing your idea, I have an idea for a forum that I have been toying with but I want to go in with someone
I know of one that just opened to day and is really worth it. You have to pay $10 dollars to get in, but.... it weeds out the people who are just here as a hobby and everyone who joins is both a potential buyer for your lists or a JV partner who is willing to pay to make things happen. Anyone interested in joining this new forum simply pm for the link.
I was responding to this part in hmansfield's post: "Both ideas are and were 3 years too late. Anybody starting a webmaster forum now, is 3-5 years late,and anybody just getting into adsense already missed the "hey day"
Do you think buying a forum that is starting to grow is the way to go, or just to start from scratch?
After I finish the current 500K word client projects I've been working on I'll be doing "microforums" on a JV basis. The key is to find the right niches and demographics. My approach would be "less is more" ie., don't shoot for large groups of people who don't click or buy stuff--shoot for people with very targeted needs who are looking for specific stuff.
I know you were replying to another post, I was politely telling you that you were wrong. No one is too late, it just takes the right person to make the right actions is all.