So I've generated a business plan where i'll get registering 25 different domains and have forums connected to each of them. Figure 200 for domain cost and for now am planning to use phpbb for cost concerns. Plan to use whatever adsense adds or advertising adds there are for income towards the sites... When planning to install 25 forums on separate domains, anyone got a timeframe on the time it'll take me to..... a. install phpbb on 25 diff ftp/domain accts. b. make necessary revisions on forum names, etc c. make whatever adsense/advertising adds are done... any input appreciated... i'd go with VB, but 25 x $62 per leased domain = $1550 more than i'm ready to part with for an unknown business plan.. Thanks all
As a genreal rule, it can be hard to make good money with forums, especially when using normal contextual ads. If you can get to a point where you can sell adversiting space it's a bit different. But when it comes to using adsense on forums, you end up with tons of pageviews with low ctr = bad revenue. Of course there are plenty of people who do make good money with forums, but most of those have LOTS of traffic which can be a challenge in itself. Trying to get 25 forums moving with real traffic will be much harder than it may seem. You would probably be better off spending the time building one forum...or maybe a few at the same time but 25 will kill you lol. Just my humble, small time, opinion though . I'm sure someone who has a ton of forums and making money would have a better answer for you. I believe VB is quite a bit more than that as well...though I know they have volume discounts, not sure if it gets that low. Haven't looked into getting 25 copies though, so could be completely wrong lol.
invest money of 25 forums in 2 forums , make one huge then making 25 small, or if u have enough funds to power 25 forums, bang do it ! but make sure all of them are active
Iagree. If you have the funds to start 25 forums, I would take that money and invest it into 1 or two forums and grow those comunities first. Then start others because then you will be known as a person or admin that know his stuff and runs good forums.
I think low traffic forums in niche areas have lots of value even if they never make any money directly. Vbulletin is a really slick piece of software. It might be worth getting at least one copy so you have personal experience with it. I suspect the savings in management time and energy when the forums start to take off may more than make up for the cost.
as a person with many forums I can tell you that it is difficult to make money with forums. I have several with 15,000-20,000 members, and they barely pay the hosting bill.