So what do you guys want to do with the revenue your own forum makes? Keep it to yourself or invest it on the site? I would invest as much as possible into the site to get better features like better software and themes and mods then I would start collecting money.
I usually spend the majority of the money I make online on my websites, Money I have made in the last few weeks has all gone into AF.
I used to invest it all in my site; removing ads, keeping the domain, doing contests with real money as prizes, etc.
Right now my forums don't earn me money (my money comes - mostly- from my Romanian blog). The money that comes is invested in scripts / traffic / content etc, so that I can grow them faster though. And some money is good for paying the other bills, of course
I've just added ads on the site so the revenue is low and all of this is going back into the site, to cover some of the costs at the moment.
Just used our built up revenue to buy a xenforo license, great buy. Rest goes to monthly server costs.
Investing it into the site would be the smarter idea. That way you can improve it by upgrading your hosting for example, or paying for the software if it's using a paid solution. If the money went to the owner directly and was not used for anything to improve the site, I'd think the members would not contribute.
