How many of you run forums for a "living"? and how many do it for the "love"?

CTXMedia

Well-known member
I'd love to make a living out of running forums, but can't bring myself to inflict ads on my membership so currently do it for "love".

I wondered, though, how many of you manage to run your forum/s for your "day" job?

Cheers,
Shaun :D
 
I've always created forums because forum software and designing is a hobby. I've always provided resources and styles for free. I keep saying to myself I'll be looking at commercialising my forum. Maybe when I migrate xenforo to my bbsmiley domain will see that step. Currently though, I do it as a hobby, and help people enhance their forum products.
 
Well, I do it for a living but it's mainly cause I LOVE it...I hate ads on other forums so I never inflict them on people on mine.
 
Same here. I always wanted my own forum to run. But I don't even get any members. Just a few. Why nobody joins my forum :(

But I know a few that have made a living by running forums with success. I think I woudn't even want that. Just want to have a nice community as a hobby.
 
We all would love to do it for a living, but for the majority of forum owners it is a labor of love, emphasizing LABOR (paying less than slave wages).
 
10 years in, it's not love, it's an obsession! Someone's gotta make sure a certain someone doesn't delete the forum... AGAIN... :)
 
100% love, any donations we receive are being used to cover the costs of the domain names and hosting costs.

If the site was meant to be income it would be a different approach, different tone, different set of moderators, etc. And I would certainly enjoy it 50% less.
 
Same here. I always wanted my own forum to run. But I don't even get any members. Just a few. Why nobody joins my forum :(

But I know a few that have made a living by running forums with success. I think I woudn't even want that. Just want to have a nice community as a hobby.
For those of us that have quiet forums, we should perhaps organise some post swaps.
 
For love not money :) Actually thinking of a forum idea that would be commercial but not sure if I really want to hit that to be honest, would take the fun out of things imho. Do work for a couple of commercial sites :)
 
Do it for the love :) the extra little income from adsense and donations helps out for sure but it just gets revinested back into the community whether its hosting upgrades or contests that I run.
 
Just the passion and love for running them, building communities and enjoying diverse conversation. I don't do ads... but I certainly promote internal network aspects, do sell upgrades, etc... and all monies purely associated to the cost of running everything... I still pay $$$ out of my own pocket to fund things.
 
Run purely as a hobby/passion with no intention of making money what so ever. I do not run any kind of ads and do not intent to run them in future. I just love what I am doing for the site which gives me much more satisfaction and than the $$ those ads can earn.
 
I'd just be happy to have a successful forum as a hobby. Even that's proving to be difficult :(
But I don't even get any members. Just a few. Why nobody joins my forum :(
A forum is like anything else on line, if you're unique, you can get something going. But why would anyone join a new forum on a topic that's already covered? Why would I join Gamer's Froum #49,836 or General Chat Forum #2,198,273? Build your forum around the weirdest thing you're interested in. Or just the weirdest thing you can think of. Then the other weirdos will find you and you can all be weird together.

The primary consideration though is it has to be something you really care about or are really interested in. If you start a forum just for the purpose of starting a forum, you're doomed to failure and a life of conversations with yourself.
 
A passionate mob then ... :)

I once gave a couple of my mods a breakdown of costs whilst stopped at a cafe for tea and cakes. I nearly ended up with tea all over me ... lol

I'm lucky to have a separate site that generates revenue to cover dedicated server hosting, so I can piggy-back CC and other sites off've the same server.

I would just love to have more time to spend on them really.

Saying that, Mrs.Admin doesn't get what keeps up until 2am. I've tried interesting her in PHP, MySQL, etc. but she'd rather watch repeats of Poirot. :)

Cheers,
Shaun :D
 
For those of us that have quiet forums, we should perhaps organise some post swaps.

I've thought about that too. It would be nice to have some kind of an alliance - a group of people who'd be willing to pitch in, not for posting but for events. Like for example, I would love to do a Halloween costume party this year but there just aren't enough people right now; I'd need to bring in some ringers. Otherwise we'd all identify each other inside of ten minutes... party over.

I also have a small forum and it's for love not money. There's no advertising, although I have wondered if Google discriminates against people who don't use their ads.
 
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