i dont know it is correct place to ask this question. i saw most of them spending money for posts in their forum. how they will get their money back,i mean how they will get profits?some are spending 10-20 cents per post,i think they are loosing their money.is it true?
Forum is one the fast ways to increase the traffic and your web site popularity. High traffic site = more earning. So it is not true that they are losing money.
well i do agree forums are a good way of making money online. As it has repeat value because members of forum stay active and keep coming back. But however i have serious doubts about so many new forums coming up daily paying 10-20 cents to the people to post in the forum. I mean for few days they do make the forum active, but as soon as the admin stops paying these people, they move on to some other forum, and suddenly forum becomes very inactive and slowly dies down. so i think many of forum owners do loose money. But maybe smart and innovative webmasters can still create successful money making forums.
Many don't understand how to properly monetize a forum. It's about community and activity. Let's take for example DP. It has incredible power to promote other projects. Shawn is lucky enough that by itself DP makes plenty of money but even if you have a nice 10,000 member forum that's enough eyeballs to push other projects and expand what you are doing. I have sold forums in the low $xx,xxx area a number of times. I have sold just forum names for high $x,xxx. The value is there for those that understand how to properly run a community. Many forums are just 2-3 years old with incredible amount of content. I myself have 20,000 posts on various forums over the past few years. If I had the same work on my own blog it might be one of the most popular blogs ever. However I find it boring to talk with myself and just write a diatribe without discussion already started. I reply more often than I start threads. At least that's me. One enormous way I have monetized my forums is through subscription payments (via paypal) where members gain extras for the forums for a small fee. It really does add up. It makes up for the low CTR on ads. I also have guest only ads which actually have a fair CTR. Guest only ads also encourage signup which is the first step to getting them active. So guest only ads are a win-win situation. Either they click away on an ad or they join and help create content. I hope that satisfies your questions.