If their money having a forum?

[Dante63s]

Hello, I am making a forum with SMF, and I was interested to know if theirs chances of making money by loading it with banners, It makes the forum look worse, so I only want to put banners if I know theirs some income. Of course this depends on how many hits I get every day, right?

For example Google Adwords are on millions of sites, but that many people click on them? I personally don't.

Sorry for my english, and thanks.

[karlbenson]

Forums are generally lower paying than normal websites because they have less unique traffic.

Advertising when placed correctly can be fine.  But sometimes loading a forum with tonnes of ads can be offputting.

[Dante63s]

Can you make enough money to pay the hosting atleast?

Thanks

[青山 素子]

Can you make enough money to pay the hosting atleast?

It depends. It depends on the payment from the ads, the clickthrough rate, etc.

[sherpa サイバー侍]

For me I never click Google ads and banner on any site because I don't want to waste my time however very often I do click banner and Google ads on community site like SMF.org because they are doing a lot to help people.
Why?
Just say if I go out to buy some same software that SMF providing free will cost me 200+$. To being a Charter Member of SMF and playing with Beta scripts was not my needed because I am really satisfied and happy with free script they are distributing to public. It is just a contribution to encourage SMF staffs to keep continue with what they are doing now and let them feel we are here to support them. You are in this forum so you might had realize support here are better then support of your paid service and staffs here are more friendly then your 24/7 support. I am spending lots of my time here reading each problem posted by admin of many forums and from last one year and in this one year I had learned many things form SMF.org.
So build a site like SMF and do as they are doing, I am sure one day you will make money from banner. Till don't make your site ugly by placing stupid Google banner on top of your site. You working hard to build your site and you make 1 cent per click but they make 1$ from that now you tell me who is the looser?     

[Dante63s]

Totally agree, SMF provides great service for free, and it helps people like me, that don't have much income to spend $200+ to have a forum. But to get back to topic, I am sure that some forums make some income, but like KarlBenson stated you don't get much unique traffic.

Let's say you have a forum with 5000 users, most of them visit the site daily, with a few banners can you make some money?

Don't think I want to make a forum just to make money, but nowadays it's good to have, haha.

[RatedZ]

I've honestly never really noticed Google Ad Banners on forums.  Maybe I'm just blind.

[sherpa サイバー侍]

Let's say you have a forum with 5000 users, most of them visit the site daily, with a few banners can you make some money?

I didnt said you have no right :p
All I wanted to say is make sure half of those 5000 users hits the banner otherwise no meaning of placing banner on your site. It only reduce the performance of your hard working.