How much revenue potential does a very active forum have?

I'm working on creating a new political forum that I'm hoping will take off. I'm just wondering if there's anyone here who owns a forum and if you don't mind, how much it brings in for you.

other stats like traffic and amount of ads would be helpful too!

thanks!

 

I think it dont really matter to be honest ever forum going to have different amounts of traffic and revenue to there site, depending on a number of things how they promote there start up marketing funds, whether they charge or not, bla bla bla, but if you just curious then i dont see that being of any harm, well i dont have a forum so i cant tell you any firgures im sure there be some people in here with forums, I know they can go pretty well depending how and where you market it.

Good Luck Though Let me know when you complete your forum ill join

 

Forum traffic is notorious for low revenue productivity.... First of all people going there are expecting it to be free. They want to talk and interact, if they want to buy something they go to bestbuy.com. Now dont get me wrong there is obviously some money to be made in the forums game, but I would do it only if you know you have a great idea for a forum and one that can exceed past the "run of the mill" site. My two cents

 

I would say very low chance of making really significant income. In my mind, the kind of promotion it would take to get a forum to any kind of reasonable size would be better spent on another kind of site if profit is your biggest goal.

 

well check out my site:

http://www.writeinyourvote.com

the forum is just one aspect of the site.... although my site is kind of a "social politicing" community, so essentially the whole thing is a forum....

it's under construction btw it'll be totally done around Christmas...

 

Keap in mind traffic = $$$

 

word.

I just got the site online. most of it hasn't been added yet. what do you all think of the concept though?

 

I have a small forum
5k threads
30k posts
650+ members, gaining about 10 a day now
anywhere from 350-600 guests viewing within 24hrs

And just 1 ad, that doesn't get full impressions, running only adbrite.
I get a few cents from them a day, roughly 10 cents.

Waiting for widgetbucks to get the ads going really.

 

It depends on the traffic..

 

Active forums = unique visitors + lots of pageviews. If you can push your community to the limit (activewise) then you can make a ton.

 

I think the revenue potential is pretty huge actually...you just have to work out the best way to go about it!

 

DP makes over $10k/month

 

Keep in mind however that hosting costs will be a lot higher with forums compared to other types of websites. Also, even with the best as placement, regular users tend to become ad-blind so that you won't see any impressive conversion rates either.

Alan Johnson

 

why are hosting costs higher? more bandwidth used?

 

The more users are active on your forum at a certain point, the harder it will be for your server to handle the load so that, once your forum becomes popular hosting it will indeed become a challenge

Alan Johnson

 

Forums CAN make very good revenue. However, it takes a lot of hard work and a bit of luck to get there. I've been at it five years and am finally making some decent money. The thing that I'm not sure of though is whether political sites will generate the ads. I know that a lot of advertiser steer clear of certain kinds of sites... politics being one of them.

 

I heared $20k per month still its good

 

I'm sure it is about that. The latest stats I could find were published (I believe) in 2005.

 

More than that I believe. DP was making $10k/month last year (at the beginning)

 

Assuming Forums are successful and get lots of Traffic.

Does one need to spend huge amount of time to maintain the Forum ie moderate posts etc, such it becomes like a Job anyhow? I though I read somewhere that someone had to purge porn from their forums.