When i first started a forum, everyone said work hard and pour all kinds of money into the project. And, that it will eventually pay off. It's been a year and the project has not paid off. And, I really put a lot of time into it. Now my forum is taking away time from my paying job as freelance writer. Of course, the forum earns money but not as much as I earn from writing and blogging. Just wondering how long one should expect to wait to start earning more than a few dollars a weeks on ad clicks? And, also wondering if it's just not a better idea to scrap the forum and go to blogging full time.
Most of us have some form of paid advertising in place on our forums, to help pay for costs and extras but at what point do you think it is okay to actually go in and monetize your forum? Do you start trying to earn money from the outset or do you wait until a certain amount of time has passed? I prefer to keep my websites advertisement free until they are eligible to be accepted into BuySellAds mainly due to the fact the money and customer support is much better than adsense and most other monetization techniques I have encountered to date and to give the site breathing time to find its feet and then I won't go overboard with annoying ad's everywhere, I will place them in less annoying places.
I've never considered advertising at all, I prefer to ask for donations to help keep the board ad free, it works to small extent, but mine is a very small forum. All my members use adblock anyway, so it wouldn't produce any revenue from clicks
I do not like ads on sites but sometimes you have to have them to be profitable. I usually wait for a bit and then try to make some money off it.
I think you should work on the forum but concentrate on your blogging mostly. Do not give up on it yet as you never know how well it will go unless you give it some time.
Define profitable I have spent more than 1K into my forums (and with the contest I run it will get close to 2k). it makes few tens of bucks right now. If it wasn't for the investment, I'd have a 'profit', even if it just covered the VPS we're running on.
From day one if possible. Any money you can earn can be re-invested in the community to make it better. So, if you get money as soon as possible, it's better
+1 to the above post. As far as forum goes, we have to keep the forum alive and kicking, and we need to actually have products either for a cost or free which would lure a lot of people. Contents no longer interest people..
It depends on the traffic and content you have, I have made more than 1000$ with my forum in previous days. But it has restarted . But i will make it soon bigger as we have crossed 50 members now.
Forums can be great cash earners but first things first you should not open a forum with the sole interest of making money, money comes and it goes but your forum will always be there if you look after it. I make quite a bit from AF per month and most of that goes back into websites and other projects.
It's up to you and your niche, if you can make your forum big fast than you will have a profit fast too.
Real effects start to punch in after a few month. Three would be sort of a optimum. The same goes for a "regular" website like blog and for forums as well.
