I was just wondering if Forums can make enough money for you to actually quit your day job. My plan was if that were so, I would set up one successful forum and them being full of user-generated content, I could simply be focusing on finding newer niches and replicate my success there. Do you anybody who has been working full time on Forums?
It is commonly said that getting a successful forum off the ground is one of the most difficult things to do at this stage of the internet. There are many forums that have been around for years that still only have a trickle of participation... if you can find a niche that is not filled that would be busy enough to be successful, I'd be surprised. Forums are notorious for being a difficult thing to monetize, as well, as forum users tend to not click on ads... It takes a pretty busy forum to even make enough to pay the hosting fees. A good friend of mine has a forum that gets over 10,000 posts per month and he makes less than a dollar a day off of it..... and it isn't easy to get a forum going to the point of getting 10,000 posts a month... most visitors to a forum don't even bother posting.
Of course, you could lose all your morals and do what some of the scumbags do and start a theft forum helping people steal software or video or mp3 content, and that could get busy fast, but that would be completely wrong to do and those that do take that easy yet dishonest route deserve to be punished for it.
...and don't let me scare you, it is just the reality of most forums if you really like a subject and want to work on it, you can do ok, but it is not anywhere near as easy to pull off as many other types of websites it for sure is not as simple as setting up and expecting the users to show up and fill your forum for you... it just doesn't happen that way anymore
Ruffnat, please don't double post. I agree with ruffnat, there's quite a few things you need to learn in order to gain a successful forum, targetting a niche market is probably the best way to suceed. Meti
Any idea about who the owner of DP is? Is this his/her full time profession? After reading your post, I am unsure how much this big a forum makes!
It'll take years for development but if you can get them large - bringing in a ton of traffic, then yes, they can make a ton of money.
uh..$15000 is so low compared to the kind of traffic this site must be receiving. Adsensemeter showed 475000 and I was kinda shocked!
ugh! Why do people put so much faith in stupid ALEXA??? I would bet a ton that Alexa is so far off that that adsensemeter is completely out to lunch.
Yeah, I knew somebody would point out that. But the fact is that with the kind of popularity that DP enjoys, it probably should be making much more than just $15000. It's not motivating at all.
There are very few forums that reach anywhere close to being as popular as this one. Also, another thing I have seen with forums is that an eCPM rate of less than $1 is more typical... often much less
It’s very difficult to make money by running conventional ads like PPC and CPM. Those who make some money using forums typically run text link ads; some directly offer ad spaces to advertisers. One (smaller) forum can make $500 or more. If you make 5 or 6 forums, then you can make $2500 or $3000. If you add earnings from PPC, maybe you can make $3000+ or so. If you want to earn a lot more, then you somehow need to make a message board like the ones listed in http://www.big-boards.com/. I don’t know how to make a message board like those, to be perfectly honest with you. Another option is to make message boards that make some money and sell them. Make more and sell more.
Not exactly, depends on what side-on services the forums provide. I know several people who are employed to staff forums - look at WHT. iNET e.g
Forum owners can make money by offering paid membership (like dnforum) or by offering different items (virtual or physical) for cash (like gaiaonline). Apart from that simply showing CPC ads does not offer much reward for running a forum full time.