Can forums make good money? Or are they just a place/community...?? I have seen a pr6 forum, and just wondering if they make money or not. Thanks for the help
Sure they make money because if they're active they tend to generate a lot of new content, get regularly crawled, do well in the search engines and get a lot of traffic.
Depending on your niche you can sell advertisements at a pretty penny, For example Ford forums can sell banners to ford product producers for much more than you would make with adsense or similar.
I agree with NickD... forums do not have an excelent convertion rate but it is a great alternative or resource to offer links, ad space and to promote new content. If you can mix it with something else (site / portal / blog) you can get the most of it.
Yes, monetize your site. Don't depend on AdSense only, but secure advertisers through both banner and text links. Don't give away the store either; with a PR6 site your advertisers should fork over the green.
I am completely agree with ur second point. Mix ur forum with site/blog & few more ideas I am going to apply soon can get you most. Also alone forum can also gather good income. I have seen many many forums earning a lot.
Forums can make money once they take off, and you have a good team looking after them with you, but in the short term they take a lot of development and care. I would attach a forum to a content site that already had some traffic, rather than trying to develop a forum from scratch.
I agree with etali: developing a form-community is hard work. It's not like you can just install forum software and then visitors will automatically come, and post and multiply.
Forums are VERY hard ... I've been busting rear-end on one of my sites for 2 years to build it up to where it is, and I have a VERY hard time getting members to return.
It is hard to make a forum into a business.... what you can do is make a forum active, then sell it off (if you can't make enough $$ with advertising.. CTR is very low on forums.. so..)