Earning a living off a web forum?

I have a few web forum communities that I have run for many years, mainly as a labor of love (a hobby). And I do earn a bit of money from them (not a ton but enough to pay for the site expenses and so on).

What are the thresholds for actually turning your web community into a way to make a living? How much daily traffic do you need?

One web forum with approx. 9000 members gets about...
25,000 page loads
5000 unique visits everyday.

The other forum gets about half that much.

Or is it even worth it? Should I not waste my time thinking of expansion and just keep these sites as hobbies??

Thoughts?

 

It's not about traffic chief.

It's about the value you bring your members, and capitalizing on your different revenue streams.

 

Barefootsies is correct, you need to create those added value to the members, observe what they are looking for most of the time and see if there is any suitable product/services that you can bring to your members.

 

Interesting....

 

"chief" wow... and I am not even native American.

True, but isn't there at least some threshold of size, traffic, and page loads that make turning your website into a career feasible?

 

Any successful enterprise on the Internet follows the same rules as a successful business. If you want to succeed in making a living off it then first you need to ask yourself which people are on your forum and then you need to decide on how to target them.

If you just leave it as it is then you will make just a few bux. 5000 unique visits would mean about $10 if a cpm network accepted you and a cpc network would probably mean $50. So you see these networks are of no use.

Now if you REALLY want to make money you target these visitors with affiliate programs. You turn the "tide" on your forum in such a manner that these people begin to buy those products. Now those 5000 unique visits are going to do you good. But the whole process is a business secret, a mode, a manner - it is in essence what differentiates a business mind from a layman.

So the short answer to your questions is Do you have a business mind? Only you can answer that. And if you do, shoot the hobby in the foot and get that money rolling. Otherwise just enjoy yourself.

 

This is a good post. Very well thought out, and making some good points on your thought process.

 

It's funny because way back in the day I was really into affiliate-stuff, then I sorta went away from it and have been relying on AdSense and other business ventures. But lately I have been getting more interested in affiliate stuff again. In fact I have been trying my hand at building ebay affiliate websites which is kind of fun. So you are saying I should bring affiliate marketing to my web communities eh?

 

What are you doing right now to make money?

I don't care what anyone says, 5000 uniques per day is a goldmine.

 

You have the traffic, now you need to find out how to best turn the visitors into cash...this takes a bit of trial and error as you can imagine...

 

It is certainly possible, but it will be no easy task.

Depending on what your forum was about, you could make money from things like affiliate marketing by posting reviews and linking to the product after each one. You'll need to find more than one way of monetizing the site, else you'll never make it.

 

With that kind of traffic, I think you could easily sell banners and minibanners. If you are using vbulletin I believe there are modules for that. One forum that uses this extensively and to great benefit is namepros.com (mods feel free to delete the name if it isn't allowed, I'm new here and just learning the rules).

If you go to that site, look at the top banner, then the three mini-banners along the bottom. Make sure they are related to what your forum members are interested in. Also, you could add a premium section for an additional fee.

Good luck and get paid!

 

I don't agree that 5000 uniques per day will be $50. Depending on niche you can get $5000 and more per month just with Adsense on such traffic. I think you should just experiment with different monetization scenarios. Put adsense there and see what happens. Take some products from affiliate networks and see whether they work. Keep experimenting until you find something that works good. Make sure that you don't frighten your users with your experiments

 

I think making money right now is all about building communities and that doesn't always mean high traffic volumes. It's far better to build up a small community of users who are interested in a particular niche.

 

you can make a lot of money with that traffic and page views. I know an affiliate program that pays .20 for 1000 page views, if you have 25,000 x.20, it's 5 dollars a day, 150$ a month additional income for just displaying one banner ads.

 

Just Google Adwords and member subscriptions.

 

Yes, I do sell banners on my smaller site. I make a few extra bucks that way.

 

I make about $4 per day on adsense.

 

Do tell!

 

If you're going to sell ad banners use this company adcreatepublish. If they accept you you will be able to make $20 for 1,000 page views, clicks do not matter. I'd recommend this or Adsense depending on the content and how valuable/unique it is.