I am going to be working on an orchid forum and wanted to know what to expect from Adsense earnings for a forum...I know I have heard if you want big bucks-forums are Not the way. But this is a fun hobby for me and adsense would be an added Bonus! I would love to hear from forum owners as to how many users they have and how much adsense income the forum generates.
I average about 500+ posts per day, closing in on 4000 members, and over 125,000 posts, 750,000 pageviews/month, 30,000+ uniques, 50,000+ visitors, and I earn in the mid+ $xxx.xx range/month on adsense on that site per month... so yeah, not big bucks for the amount of work one needs to put into it... but it can be fun.
If you add it to your forum in creative places -- say, like the way they do it here on DP, you should make more than if you just slapped Adsense on the bottom or top or side, etc.
Thanks for the info Bassman. If I may ask What did you do the first couple months to get your forum "Crowded" with posts? Did people just happen on your site and start posting or did you hire someone to make like 100 Starter posts?
I did some post exchanges with other guys who were starting new forums - talked to myself with a couple of usernames, and hung out on competiting forums and posted useful posts (like photography critiques, etc) with a link in my sig. Once people on other forums saw that I knew what I was talking about, they would check out my site, and join in. From there, it's just link building and content building.
Thanks Tim, that's very useful information You probably have a dedicated server to push that traffic; could I inquire how much monthly bandwidth the forum is eating up, approximately? Have you been happy with phpBB, that is, if you were to start over, would you rather go with vBulletin or SMF? I own some programming-related forum domains that have excellent potential in their respective niches, and have been thinking whether and when to invest the time to start them up. I think I have a fairly good idea of the amount of work involved (I run a couple of small forums) so I have been a little hesitant As you said, though, if the subject is personally interesting or involving, the revenue is just one factor in the equation... And of course, once a forum reaches traffic numbers like yours, there's probably some potential for unloading the venture through a sale, as well.
Not dedicated yet, but I'm getting there. I like phpbb because it's so easily customizable... I'm reluctant to switch to vBulletin because of all the mods I have installed on my site. That being said, for my next site (www.zooseek.com), it will have a forum, and it will be vB for sure. I spend too much time doing updates and mods to my phpbb forum that mostly comes stock on vB. Plus it's a lot less likely to get hacked... My revenue above is a little misleading, however, as over half of my revenue comes from the photography resources section of the site, so the forum itself really only brings in $3xx.00/month... but yeah, it's a lot of work, and probably not worth it if you don't have other aspects to the site. As for unloading the site at this size, I've already have several offers in the mid $xx,xxx range, so yeah, you could sell for a decent price at that point...
i find Vbulleting quite attractive..it can drive visitors to our site..i just started a forum recently..Vbulletin works pretty good...but phpBB and SMF are not too bad..the only thing about Vb is that its not free... and its skins are also not free..but this is not the case with SMF and phpBB
I agree with Bassman on the PHPBB thing. My first board site used PHPBB and I love the ability to customize it.. It can do anything I want it to do.. However that is a completely impractical progression for more sites, and other software stock are better.
Be sure to check out http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/mainpage.php (if you don't already know about it)
Adsense can definitely work on a forum. You must be creative though and work with ad placement, never being satisfied with your optimization. I run several forums large and small and make any where from low $xxx a month to high $x,xxx a month from a single forum. Forums really take time to run and time to grow. Good luck!
May I ask which forum you get high $x,xxx.oo from? I'm always looking for inspiration and ideas to further monitize my forums.
I received your PM but since you started a thread, I'll post here. You can definitely make good money through AdSense on a forum. I found the best performance comes in the archive. I have 3 ad boxes and ad links in my archive but for my regular forum, I only have one ad box at most with a bigger ad box for guests. As mentioned earlier, running a forum takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of time for a forum to grow.
I agree. I run a forum with phpbb, and I get sick of the constant updates... I also have many mods and have to be careful during each update.. I will be using VB next time around.. As for ctr.. expect very low, as the people are mostly there to chat... when first starting a forum, i suggest keeping it ad free... get a few hundred members talking and then post the ads... Good luck to you.
I agree. I run a forum with phpbb, and I get sick of the constant updates... I also have many mods and have to be careful during each update.. I will be using VB next time around.. As for ctr.. expect very low, as the people are mostly there to chat... when first starting a forum, i suggest keeping it ad free... get a few hundred members talking and then post the ads... Good luck to you.
Thats good advice, you never want to make the users feel like their being suxored to clicking on your ads.