I know that many of you guys are offering paid posts for the new forums, so.. How many bucks are you willing to spend on it in the beginning time please? If you have your forums running for years, how much money have you spent in total please?
I spent around $300 up front when I first started my forum, which consisted of: - A custom forum style. - 1 year of pre-paid hosting. - Domain registration. However I used phpBB3 a free forum solution, if you buy a paid forum solution then of course you'll be spending more then $300, however a custom forum style is not needed, it's just nice to have
I used to own a forum, about 4 months ago, but I sold it. My set up fee was about $60, and that included domain name registration, hosting, paid posting, and custom forum style. I just recently realized I gotten extremely lucky on the prices.
When I opened the first forum I was spending a lot 50 USD per month plus the initial costs of the license and so forth. Right now, it only costs the domain registration. Since I have http://f0rums.com and use it as a multiforum, new forums are free of costs.
I've had a few forums over the years, but all on a $0 budget. Last week I decided to do a big project, running on vBulletin 4.0 Publishing Suite. My costs so far are: - vBulletin 4.0 Publishing suite ($285.00) - Custom vBulletin skin ($225...lucky I got it cheap from a proper designer) - Domain ($22.50/3 yrs) I haven't even bought hosting yet (if anyone knows a *cheap* VPS ($15 is perfect, but anything <$20 which is decent), let alone the SEO/Marketing. I'm not paying for posting though, I have done before on older projects but I'm investing a lot on money on this site and I really have the determination to make it big. I would give a link, but it's not even anywhere near done (let alone properly configured) yet. I would appreciate GREATLY a PM from everyone with a decent sized forum, with tips and advice. It would mean a lot...I can do everything but I don't even know how to begin getting users...I'm so worried that there will be only 1 registered user (me).
its not about just about spending the money, its about spending in the right direction. If you hire a professional services with complete promotional plans, I don't think that you are going on the wrong way...!! You are free to ask me about the forum promotion services.
This guy is pretty much my parallel in this regard. I spent the same for the same suite. Approximately 20 dollars for 2 or so years of hosting. 30 or so dollars for 3 years of domain. Approximately 300 dollars. I'd LOVE to see Allthegoodname's forum to see his skin and see what a 200 something dollar skin would cost.
Spends zero then it's easy to make money. I rarely spend any money on my forums beyond domain/hosting. You don't need a fancy design for a forum to be a success. Those that open up their wallets too deeply are usually the people who don't know what else to do.
On my new forum, I will spend a little on a domain and hosting, and I'm getting a Modification developed just for the use of my forum!
I spent $0 getting my old forum set up the way i wanted it to. What I did was have a friend by me a domain that would be perfect for the forum than I went to a free web host with excellent service and server uptime. I setup the domain to the nameserver, installed my forums (phpBB3), installed mods and used a free template but edited it to go with the mods and type of forum it was meant to be.
Actually, I was surprised to find the hosts didn't complain when my forum got big. I had about 75,000 registered users, about 1.3 million posts and my forums were always up. I didn't have my members upload images straight to the forum but we used a free image hosts instead.
NONE! At least none of my own. I was lucky enough to have been a Mod on a forum that got hacked and then left by it's admin for dead for several months. I contacted several of the members that I had the emails too, and several more for it's off-site chat room. I offered them special status if they would donate money to get a new forum started. I collected $500 from them (7 members) and that kept the site up & going for its first two years. Now I rely on gold memberships & ads to keep the site above water.
first spend zero as my forum is beginning mode then it grows so i spend about 10 dollars using VPS just it for the script i use phpBB