Google AdSense and banner from local area (small) business, all dependents on your niche of your forums.
They usually generate income through selling advertising space, adsense, or text links. VIP subscriptioins only work for some sites.
You have to be interested and passionate about your forum and then when people see that enthusiasm behind it, they would be much more willing to join. There are a lot of ways to advertise the forum: * Google adsense/Yahoo ads * Text links * Sponsor ads * My space * Affiliate networks * Contests (example: the person with the most posts wins a prize, points, etc).
This is a question I have been also trying to find answers about.I have seen some other responses and now I know you can use adsense, place banners, create some VIP sections... It is quite good and I do think that the potential of generating money is simply big!!!
I wouldn't suggest charging a fee for signing up unless people know it is well worth it, free is always better. Gain lots of traffic, then use your ads to bring in some revenue
Unless you have huge traffic, you really wont earn enough from CPC to even cover hosting expenses. Its really tough. I guess there are other ways that works better.
From forum u can make very high amount of money.There r so many ways to make money from forum like adsense,links,advertise etc.
there are several ways where forums generate income: ppc ads (google adsense is one of them) banner ads selling their own services and products offering a section where others would have to pay to get their products and services listed (like classifieds) joint ventures where they promote other people's stuff and get a commission