Ive never made a fan site and I rarely go on them. But are they popular among other people? For example, if I was to make a fan site about a tv show. If I made like information on all the people in the show, made episode guide and a discussion board. Would this have potential to become popular and profitable or would it just not get much traffic?
take it from me and my signature, the fan site niche is low paying usually around 3 cents per click and even lower if you have a community or message board with lots of repeat visitors. i think it's great though to study human behavior and usability. you get a lot of visitors though and from just a day or two of volume, you can learn a lot about how your user base responds to different changes on your site. you can also learn how to manage people on forums and what rules to develop that apply to other sites. from that aspect, i think it's a great learning experience but if you want to make money go for other niches. i have other sites in development like dui, privacy and saving gas now that i've learned i'll never be rich from what i love - celebrities gossip.