Making a living?

wk38 · December 14, 2007, 10:21:36 AM

Who here is making a full time living with their forum or has plans to?

skript · December 15, 2007, 03:58:51 PM

id imagine thatd be pretty hard....unless u get tons of traffic.

karlbenson · December 15, 2007, 05:12:19 PM

Its very unlikely you will make a living from a single site.

Also note forums generally have alot lower cost per click, which means earnings are generally lower than websites.
This is due to recurring non-unique traffic.

Most people are lucky if they manage to scrape their hosting/domain costs.

wk38 · December 15, 2007, 05:19:39 PM

Hum. I know a guy that has an R/C helicopter site and pulls in about thirty grand a month. We are projecting that my site will do about $16k per month by this time next year. We don't charge based on clicks or impressions. It's x amount per month to have a banner <period>. I was just curious if others were having success.

christicehurst · December 15, 2007, 08:44:52 PM

My forum doesn't use banner promos but as a writing forum we are setting up a bookstore to sell Anthologies. This will cover the hosting costs.

1MileCrash · December 15, 2007, 08:48:10 PM

I'm too lazy to. My forum has about 6 thousand members but I'm just not good with money. The most i'll do is put up adsense. Members donate for a supporting member status but that's bout it.

dxyy · December 16, 2007, 06:44:52 AM

Gosh, my forum doesn't even have ads.

Haha, but I plan to maybe use Adsense or something else in the future. The first step is getting the traffic though. Later hopefully the money will come.

My website does not only have a forum though, and there is more to it than that. Anyway, whether or not I make (a lot of) money doesn't really matter. As long as I'm not always losing money I will continue doing this because I enjoy it.

Noddegamra · December 17, 2007, 06:01:12 AM

I plan to release a guide on how to make money with a SMF forum/site. The trouble is I don't know if it's better to it as an eBook or webpage. Do most people here know what an eBook is or how to read/open one? I don't want to make it sound like I think people are dumb, I just want to reach/help as many people as possible. What do you think?

+ In answer to the main question, I don't make a living on my forum. Those with better member and post counts can probably. But I've made enough money to easily pay for hosting over the next 20 years or so. lol. I already have a job that I make a living from, the money I make from my forum just pays for great days out and a decent christmas for my family

karlbenson · December 17, 2007, 08:02:24 AM

These days most sites will not make you a fortune. Never mind a living.

Alot of the buzz around making sites and having ad income is a scam. There maybe the odd one in a niche area who is making mega bucks. But for 99.99% of publishers, its a sparce living.

wk38 · December 17, 2007, 10:15:30 AM

It's about about having the right idea and putting in mega hours in just like any other entrepreneur or small business owner. Scratching for members 1 at a time of you have to. Sometimes it can take years before you see money in your pocket. Small business owners know about that one. It can however pay off big. I've seen it many times.

Noddegamra · December 17, 2007, 11:47:08 AM

I think it's definately possible to make enough money to pay for hosting. There are just SO many ways of making money these days online.

The guide I was proposing wasn't guaranteeing to make everyone a millionaire. lol. Far from it, but you can still make a decent amount of cash to make it worthwhile implementing.

tumbleweed · December 17, 2007, 02:28:55 PM

Quote from: karlbenson on December 17, 2007, 08:02:24 AM
These days most sites will not make you a fortune. Never mind a living.

Alot of the buzz around making sites and having ad income is a scam. There maybe the odd one in a niche area who is making mega bucks. But for 99.99% of publishers, its a sparce living.

I agree with this statment and really it applies to the internet in general. If you are setting up a forum or site just to make money,Odds are it will not pan out.

However if you are setting up a forum or website for your "Passion" then just paying the hosting bills would be reward enough.

tumble

wk38 · December 17, 2007, 04:04:34 PM

I think you are missing the point. One of the forums I have was setup "just to make money" and for no other reason. That particular forum happens to be the one that's growing the most and making the most money. Why? Because the community forum is being run like a business with specific goals in mind and a business plan. We do marketing, sales, merchandising, etc and spend an enormous amount of time working for it's success. It started with a good idea and an opportunity. Not only that, I don't have any personal attachment with the subject of the forum other than I enjoy the pure concept of community forums in general.

The second forum I have is actually a passion of mine and I treat it as my "baby." It does ok and is growing but I doubt I'll ever make much money with it. My third venture into community forums is new and not even officially launched although I'm taking on a few members here and there. This particular forum is the other one that is being built with the express intention of generating revenue. How's this, enough income to support two or more people full time. It's subject is also a passion of mine but it to will be run like a full fledged business. Marketing, sales, merchandising, the whole ball of wax.

It's all in the quality of the idea, how seriously you approach it and the amount of time and effort you put into it. There's a difference between a person who digs games and decides to start a forum and after awhile makes enough money to pay for hosting and a person that develops a business plan on a quality idea and executes it to success.

tumbleweed · December 17, 2007, 04:10:12 PM

Congrats on your forums success.

Do you use SMF for all of your forums?

If you do i am sure you make big donations to SMF for all of their hard work they put into the program that has made you so successful

tumble

wk38 · December 17, 2007, 04:24:28 PM

I do use SMF for our forums but I'm not sure what the later has to do with this particular discussion. My point is, no matter what software you are using free or not free, forums can be a successful model for earning a living depending on how it's executed and of course the subject matter of the community. Personally I think SMF should be charging for their software.

Noddegamra · December 18, 2007, 09:44:15 AM

Why should they charge? Open source software is one of the greatest things to grace the internet.

+if you think they should get money for their work, why dont you donate as tumbleweed said?

Dragooon · December 18, 2007, 09:47:49 AM

Quote from: wk38 on December 17, 2007, 04:24:28 PM
Personally I think SMF should be charging for their software.

And this will never happen, This is one of there core values.

wk38 · December 18, 2007, 10:28:26 AM

I was hoping to get a discussion going about making a living with community forums and who's trying to make a run at it full time. Maybe some of their secrets for success. All I got back was you really can't and why don't I donate to SMF.

Never mind.

karlbenson · December 18, 2007, 10:33:06 AM

We love discussion here.

If you want to find some tips see http://forums.digitalpoint.com

But many of the stuff you'll find there from full time professionals will be like whats i've said

- Don't make sites/forums just for advertising potential (Known as Made-For-Adsense)
- Never pay for advertising tips/ebooks (they are scams)
- Don't expect to make a living. If you do great, but its unlikely.

But if I had the secrets for success I doubt I would share them. I'd be earning

wk38 · December 18, 2007, 11:32:22 AM

I agree with the 1st one. You can't make any real money with Adsense. But you can build a forum just for advertising potential.

The way you make money is very simple (so to speak). Have a business plan, some capitol to work with, the right idea, market, drive traffic, create particapation, sell banner ads to those who would benefit specifically from your traffic. Keep your advertising specific. If you have a photography site, don't run banners for dating services. Forget about Adsense.

Unless you have a site that takes millions of hits a month, don't sell ads based on impressions or click throughs. Charge a fixed monthly fee for your banners. Less for button ads, more for larger forum banners.

Create reasons why advertisers want, need or must be on your site. Sell those reasons. Once you have traffic, you need to sell. If you aren't a salesman, you're not going to get anywhere. Like photography, selling is about 90% taking photos is about 10%.

I'll give you some examples. runryder.com is a site for model helicopters. Took him about 3 years and mega amounts of work before he saw success. Now he's full time and trust me when I say.. the money is gooooood. Here's more. rcgroups.com, helifreak.com, wattflyer.com, rcuniverse.com. All the same subject, making good money, run like a business, not a hobby. I can name many many more that are making great money, full time and in many different subjects.

It can be done but like any business, it aint easy.

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Making a living?