[Creative fossil]

I was just observing forum membership numbers etc

One forum I visit
has 22,081 members 1,316,393 Posts:

There was big caffuffle on this other site when it changed hands and went all Ad orientated.

Can one earn a good income from a site like that just from Ads alone?

[MichaelWinicki]

Originally Posted by Creative fossil

I was just observing forum membership numbers etc

One forum I visit
has 22,081 members 1,316,393 Posts:

There was big caffuffle on this other site when it changed hands and went all Ad orientated.

Can one earn a good income from a site like that just from Ads alone?

Very good question.

My personal belief is that forums on their own are not very good revenue generators... I think it's more of a "labor of love" for folks like Michel that invest the time and money to start a forum.

Now this isn't to say that there aren't forums out there that earn a decent income for their owner(s) via advertising but I think it's a pretty poor business model if your goal of the forum is to earn you a nice chunk of change. Let me give you a real life example...

I'm a moderator on a sports oriented site that has been in existences a little over two-years and has over 82,000 threads, almost 10,000 members and almost 1.5 million posts. Pretty significant numbers huh?

I can tell you the ad revenue is pretty low. You couldn't support a family off of it.

The site owner admits that he could get more aggressive as far as ad placements and such but again it's a labor of love. However, and we've talked at length over this, he knows that owning even a large forum is no ticket to wealth.

In my eyes the best way of turning a forum into a money-maker is to employ a business model like bodybuilding.com that is part forum and part store. That particular website does over $40 mil a year in sales and the forum is a huge traffic provider.

Ads don't seem to do the trick on their own... you incorporate ecommerce into it in the shape of a storefront offering products and services the people visiting the forum can truly use and I think you'll have a money-maker.

As a matter of fact over the past year I've had this thought for a forum/ecommerce site rolling around in the back of my head that I know would be a winner-- I just haven't had the time to do it on my own.

[Ken Strong]

I seem to recall Michel posting here that this forum was mostly a labor of love for him.

OTOH, I bet that Allen Says, who owns the Warrior Forum, must be making some pretty good money from that venue, although the only advertising there is from other Warriors. Every so often, he sends out a broadcast PM to all members recommending another Warrior's product -- because of the trust and good rep he has among the membership, I'm sure he makes thousands every time he does that (the WF probably has ten times as much traffic as this forum -- it's almost ridiculous).

I'm sure it's not his only source of income, but I be he makes a pretty penny from that forum.

[Creative fossil]

Originally Posted by MichaelWinicki

Very good question.

My personal belief is that forums on their own are not very good revenue generators... I think it's more of a "labor of love" for folks like Michel that invest the time and money to start a forum.

Now this isn't to say that there aren't forums out there that earn a decent income for their owner(s) via advertising but I think it's a pretty poor business model if your goal of the forum is to earn you a nice chunk of change. Let me give you a real life example...

I'm a moderator on a sports oriented site that has been in existences a little over two-years and has over 82,000 threads, almost 10,000 members and almost 1.5 million posts. Pretty significant numbers huh?

I can tell you the ad revenue is pretty low. You couldn't support a family off of it.

The site owner admits that he could get more aggressive as far as ad placements and such but again it's a labor of love. However, and we've talked at length over this, he knows that owning even a large forum is no ticket to wealth.

In my eyes the best way of turning a forum into a money-maker is to employ a business model like bodybuilding.com that is part forum and part store. That particular website does over $40 mil a year in sales and the forum is a huge traffic provider.

Ads don't seem to do the trick on their own... you incorporate ecommerce into it in the shape of a storefront offering products and services the people visiting the forum can truly use and I think you'll have a money-maker.

As a matter of fact over the past year I've had this thought for a forum/ecommerce site rolling around in the back of my head that I know would be a winner-- I just haven't had the time to do it on my own.

Very ineteresting reply, thank you and I agree re the business/forum combo.