Do you make or lose money from your forum?

Discussion in 'Managing Your Online Community' started by Peace, Oct 9, 2013.

  1. Peace

    Peace Regular Member

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    I'm curious: does your website make money, lose money, or break even?

    What are your sources of income? Expense?

    For us, we typically break even each month, but keep a consistent surplus in order to remain comfortable on a rainy day.

    Income:
    • Google Ads
    • Donations
    • Book royalties
    Expenses:
    • VPS Hosting
    • Paid Modifications
    • Promoting the site on Facebook ads (we spend by far the most on this)
    Basically, we just spend all extra money on the promotions - so we're never making money, because that's not our goal.

    What about you?
     
  2. nafretiti

    nafretiti Regular Member

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    I tried having a forum once with chikita advertisements but that really hadn't worked out. I couldn't get enough traffic to go to the site, but really might change the whole concept of it and try something totally different. Adsense is pretty good in the way of having ads on it and then you can always have where you get members to pay to open specific areas of the forum like a supporter would and what they do is make donations and have special features like having a signature or something along those lines. There are a ton of free places to place that forum though, it takes a lot of work and dedication because you want people to visit and so there has to be effort given.
     
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  3. Cerberus

    Cerberus Admin Talk Staff

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    In most cases you are better off with only showing ads to guests, and then charging a subscription as an upgrade to the services provided. And let people know anything you get extra for the subscription is a bonus as they are donating to help the site.

    With that said, then run contests, raffles, giveaways. It is very easy to make money with any website IMO. You just put in the time and effort. But, you can always find a way. There are also more grey areas too :) Like a hidden iframe that is there for all guests, and only once for each member. A lot of sites pay for traffic, and you can turn around and utilize your traffic in any way you see fit :)

    But, yeah I have always made money off of a forum. If after 3 months it is not paying for itself or seems like it will, I do not keep it open. No sense in another money pit project. I have had too many of those LOL
     
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  4. bauss

    bauss Regular Member

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    My forum isn't generating any income at the moment, so I'm losing about $5 a month, which I don't mind, because the main focus right now is to build my community, and the money will come when we get big.
     
  5. Big al

    Big al Regular Member

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    We do not make any money and even refuse donations, as they could be seen to compromise our independence.

    The site is definitely a not for profit venture. The costs are paid by us as volunteers.
     
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  6. cpvr

    cpvr Regular Member

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    I was thinking about using Kontera or Vibrant Media ads once my community starts generating 10k pageviews on a daily basis. Right now, I'm at 8,000-8,500 pageviews per day. I used Kontera in the past and averaged $2/day. This was back in 06 or 07.
     
  7. KW802

    KW802 Regular Member

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    Since it is all a big hobby for me I'm not making money from it and don't even had any type of ads on my two main sites.
     
  8. MyDigitalpoint

    MyDigitalpoint Regular Member

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    Google ads is a no-no to me because they simply don't pay, at least not to me since my account got trapped into their interface change about 2 years and they cannot resolve the problem with my account yet, so not delivering the money that keep accruing and has surpassed the minimum withdrawal threshold shortly before the infamous change.

    So my forum revenue mostly comes from webmaster-related sponsorship, but since I have several different types of websites, my global income an global expenditure varies significantly but I'm not really making much money from them, and expenses are paid with what I earn doing other activities online.
     
  9. too_cool_3

    too_cool_3 Regular Member

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    I deffintley loose money as all the expeses are paid out of pocket, we are a local automotive forum in a city of about 100,000 with the only advertising for the forum being word of mouth. There are about 400 members with about 70 of them being active.

    Income:
    • Google Ads
    • Donations
    Expenses:
    • Shared Hosting
    • Paid Modifications
     
  10. BamaStangGuy

    BamaStangGuy Administrator

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    You have 4 adsense ads on your homepage and are only suppose to have 3. On top of that, 3 of them are stuffed in the footer. Where is the incentive for advertisers to pay premium if you are going to shove three ads in your footer?
     
  11. Sylvain

    Sylvain Regular Member

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    Anyone eBay partner network for more revenues?
     
  12. too_cool_3

    too_cool_3 Regular Member

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    I have two. One below the navbar and one above the footer.
    I'm not an AdSense expert so any advice is appreciated. I'm not seeing the 4 ads you speak of.
     
  13. JoshSmith100

    JoshSmith100 Regular Member

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    My forums make money but im not making aton. I really would like to make a steady nice income off of google adsense but my earnings are pretty inconsistent for some reason. I think im going to explore independent buyers for advertisements soon for I wont have to worry about adsense.
     
  14. BamaStangGuy

    BamaStangGuy Administrator

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  15. too_cool_3

    too_cool_3 Regular Member

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    Thanks for pointing that out @BamaStangGuy , when I load the page it's only loading two ads for me at the bottom instead of the four in your screen shot. I will try to fix this ASAP. I was also not aware that you are only supposed to have 4 adsense ads per page - as you mentioned in your previous post. Any other tips you can share for the use of adsense on my forum?
     
  16. BamaStangGuy

    BamaStangGuy Administrator

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    You are only suppose to have 3 per page. The more you have above the fold the better when it comes to adsense. It is a balancing act between keeping your visitors happy and generating revenue.
     
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  17. too_cool_3

    too_cool_3 Regular Member

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    I went ahead and re-vamped my AdSense placement (since quickly setting them up a year ago). I now have 3 banner style ads, all of them above the fold(right below the navbar). The ads are only showed to guests. My monthly revenue ranges from $3-$10 with the average ~$5. Hopefully, this now improves. :thumbsup:

    Can you take a look and tell me what you think?
     
  18. BoostN

    BoostN Regular Member

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    I'm making $200 a month from one of my sites on AdSense. It helps with the VPS cost.
     
  19. cpvr

    cpvr Regular Member

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    How much are your VPS costs? How much ram do you have?
     
  20. BoostN

    BoostN Regular Member

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    I'm paying $49 a month right now. But, I need to upgrade...

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    60 GB Storage1 TB Monthly Transfer1.5 GB Guaranteed RAM UPGRADEDHardware RAID 104 IP AddressesFREE cPanel/WHMFREE Daily Off-Server Backups

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