How to instantly make $5,556,364 USD revenue

Wow. After I wrote the title I can see how this probably looks like a joke. But it's not. I wanted to write about my observations of another discussion forum that just started charging it's members $37 each. Sorry if this is boring to anyone, but I have a financial mindset from business school, and I felt like my post would encourage others to analyze different aspects of their own projects to see how they can monetize it effectively.

Number of members = 150,173
One time payment = $37.00

Subtotal = $5,556,364

That is an amazing amount of instant revenue generated by the forum membership. But let's play with the numbers to see if we can achieve more realistic revenue figures. What if we set a goal to reach specific targets, and eventually convert all members? Even at 0.5% you could instantly generate almost $30,000.

Let's take the current stats for each forum section and pretend that each person viewing the thread had actually paid $37 to upgrade. How much revenue could each section generate?

Next let's continue looking at the stats, what about current members, those people we know are actually on the forum right now?

Currently Active Users = 2801 (1117 members and 1684 guests)

If only members paid = 1117 x $37 = $41,329
If only guests paid = 1684 x $37 = $62,308
If everyone paid = 2801 x $37 = $103,637

Simply amazing.

Blogs: 1,447, Entries: 5,108, Last 24 Hours: 2

Disregard the number of entries since multiple posts are likely made by multiple members. But look at the total number of blogs. The one time payment of $37 is required to create a blog or post to an existing blog.

If all blogs represented a one time payment = 1447 x $37 = $53,539

If there were two new payments every 24 hours = $74 per day, $2,250 per month, $27,010 per year

I'm sure there's more we could calculate, but I'm interested to know what others think, and how they analyze their earnings potential. Yes, this was about Warrior Forum, but it really could've been about any membership type project. Thanks!

 

What is it that would make you think even 5% of the existing members would pay for it?

 

Well 5% is a lot (7,507 x $37 = $277,759). I mentioned earlier about setting a goal of 0.5% (749 x $37 = $27,713). In any case, you've asked a great question "Why would they pay?" and to answer you I would say my observation at the other forum is loyalty. That's my gut feeling, that long time members want to lend their support and make the one time payment voluntarily. The other idea is to boost member confidence that spam levels are being reduced, because the last thing a forum spammer wants to do is pay money up front.

Actually I think the payment is for certain areas of the forum, like blogs and the private sections. People can still post but now the forum admin has place restrictions on those who have not paid. Interestingly, you can see a status message below each person's avatar that indicates if they have paid or not.