Can you make much money with forums?

so who is making decent money from a forum?

i was kinda scared off really pushing my forum due to someone telling me

the more traffic the higher the hosting costs etc and the more money ull lose


is it true that when you get to a certain activity you can;t make money!?

 

Depending on your niche and traffic, you can make cents to thousands. The more content and traffic you have, the better chances of making money.

A forum with only 50k posts may not make as much as a forum with 200k posts. See the drift?

 

Yes obviously - BUT


the more traffic the higher the hosting costs etc!

 

Forums can make money, but they aren't money-making machines. When you think "hm, let's make some money", you usually don't think of forums.

The more members and content you have, yes, the higher your hosting bill may become as you expand to more powerful setups. But along with the more members comes the greater possibility of donations and support. With that, you can help defray hosting costs, domain costs, software costs, etc. Donations do not equate to profit. If you get more donations than you need to spend, then you better find something to spend the donations on, such as paying your hosting bill several months in advance, renewing your domain name in advance, or purchasing premium add-ons for your forum.

Other ways to monetize, perhaps for profit, would be advertisers, partners, or affiliate commissions. Although this can be profitable, I'd rather put it towards the site than in my pocket.


As far as your concern about losing money - eh, that's not something to really worry about. Forums are easy to setup and make successful with a tight budget. On my Linnie Forum, it became successful on MyBB (free) and a domain (~$9), and a colleague hosted me for a short while (if I were to use some shared hosting, it wouldn't be expensive; let's just say $10). It doesn't get much better than that, to be honest. I spent $0 on software, $0 on advertising, etc.
Of course, as it grew, I made investments such as switching to vBulletin, adding premium add-ons, etc. These costs have mostly been covered by member donations.

Thread moved to Monetization section.

 

i expect to make some money via adverts tho also!

 

surely big forums are making alot of money tho?

 

Apparently so more than $500/day from Digitalpoint.com

 

the owner of realraptalk.com told me he was making on average 50k a month


could be bs?

 

shame i can't use adsense due to adult content!

 

If you look at any business, the more they grow, the more the over head but you also hope to see more profits as well.

 

He's more than likely making money from affiliate offers and advertisements. He owns a forum with more than 13 million posts, so why he be BS?

 

I don't make much money and more. It sucks. I need to do a better job with adsense.

 

I make okay money per day, but I'm always looking for improvements. Here's a great idea here in this thread: Quadrupled my CTR thanks to DP members.

Edited: Whoops, looks like it's no longer allowed to have the images above the ads.