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

I do it so I can meet people like Michael and enjoy the thrill of waiting for the next post to drop, well, also to argue a bit and make fun of people too (not Kier and Michael though :rolleyes:).
 
100% love, havent made a dime off of the forums... contemplating starting a new one for the money though.
 
I run mine because of love. I don't run any ads on my site, although I have thought about it once in a while to run them for Guests only, but never have.

I haven't had to ask for donations to pay for hosting costs and such, (I would like my forums to get that big) but so far I manage to pay for everything each month.

Jamie
 
Did you do it for love?
Did you do it for money?
Did you do it for spite?
Did you think you had to, honey?
Who is gonna make it?
We'll find out in the long run.
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I am paid to manage one site. They made an offer I couldn't refuse and neither would you. :)
My hobby site (318ti.org), I do it for the love of it. We have a tight community. Yes I use adsense and have site supporters. After paying for hosting and licensing fees out of pocket for years, I don't see the harm using adsense. I don't ask anyone to click on ads and people know that the internet is not free. It even supports my hobby to some degree. If I was providing a service whereas I was paid, it would be different.
My next site will be a little of both. It eventually needs to become income producing to at least cover expenses. It's going to need more baby sitting than my other two sites.
 
zkaraca said:
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.
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To be honest I don't know the secret of getting members. I don't have that many but some people thought I would have fewer. I had 6000 active users until I moved to vB and it steadily dropped for a while and has reached a new equalibrium in the 2400 active user range.

When I started my forum people all over the place told me I was doing everything wrong. I never learned how to do things right, it just grew by itself and I had no earthly idea what I was doing. I starting following suggestions and I destroyed it.

I didn't start it to make money, it seemed for a long time everyone was making money except for me on my forum so I had to change things as it was getting expensive.
 
Even if you do it for money, you still need the love behind the scenes. When you transform a forum to ownership and profit only... users just move to the next best thing, which is when you can start a direct competitor site and win away the others traffic... Just take a look at many big forums that get bought out for profit... they slowly dwindle as users shift away to the same topic forum elsewhere, that has the passion and enthusiasm from the team running it.
 
A sort of "build it and they will come" philosophy? (When I say philosophy, I do so loosly - in a Wayne's World kind of way! ;))
 
Anthony Parsons said:
Even if you do it for money, you still need the love behind the scenes. When you transform a forum to ownership and profit only... users just move to the next best thing, which is when you can start a direct competitor site and win away the others traffic... Just take a look at many big forums that get bought out for profit... they slowly dwindle as users shift away to the same topic forum elsewhere, that has the passion and enthusiasm from the team running it.
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That would be me in a nutshell. I run the site because I really do like what I do. I've made no aspirations that the site is a non-profit entity. The site is a direct competitor to a big site on the same subject matter that was sold to IB. I was an admin on that site and hated the direction IB took so I resigned and created an alternative.

I build out other sites for profit as well. I know I work longer hours for less money then when I lived the cubicle life but the quality of life is so much better when I am my own employer.
 
I'd love to get back to being full-time self-employed, but family responsibilities take priority at the moment. Doesn't stop me dreaming though ... :)
 
I sorta make a living off of running a Wordpress website... But I'm also a shift manager at Arby's. And neither let me install a forum. haha. But I probably will utilize forums to earn a living in the future (support, selling, etc.).
 
My websites are my living. I don't think I could run a forum if it wasn't going to be making money. The idea is absurd to me.
 
Why does it have to be either one or the other? And if there are people who are doing it for just the money then it's not going to last long. Even business-releated forums still need an CEO/administrator who loves the business itself. About the ads: what's so bad about them? I even keep them on for me as admin. Sponsors/advertisers make everything possible and in return they are allowed to offer services. If you carefully select your advertisers then your members will actually benefit from the cooperation.
 
You don't need to run adsense ads to make money from your forum. In fact I think it's the worst way, since you lose the earning potential for a lot more. I run forums as a hobby, I'm a marketer as my part time job.

Adsense ads will pay you between 0.01 - $1, and maybe higher on a good day. Per click. Now, that may seem great if you're getting 100 clicks every day and your getting $1, but unfortunately half the time -- that is not the case. The best way to do it, is to promote to your members what they want to see.. Ok, so what in the world do I mean by this.

An ole' buddy of mine, from back when I flipped sites, asked me... "I just paid 3k for this forum, dude... How can I make money off it {it's a sports forum}". First thing that had come to his mind was to sell banner space..., but guess what he was doing by that? No matter whether he sold ad spots himself, or had adsense do it, someone else would be making money off the traffic from that ads....

Have you ever noticed the amount of affiliate ads/peoples own products you see on adsense? There's a ton. People are making money off running adsense ads, because it's a business.

So why would you ever let them make the money, when you have a huge potential for a lot more profit... I said to my buddy, on your sports forum you're going to get lots of sports fans.. And what would a sports fan want? Shirts, Game tickets etc... I said, "what if you could sell them", and of course.. He didn't think he could, since how could he sell them...

So I told him straight up "What if you could be an affiliate for the seller?"... That's when it hit him, he could promote say StubHub {a ticket site} for Hockey Tickets with his affiliate link, as possibly a sticky thread, and make money off every sale. Ironically enough, if he had run adsense, there probably would have been a stubhub affiliate ad there anyway, with someone else making his money.

So how can you do this on your site, in a manner that doesn't disturb users. Well, in General, Amazon is used by many of your users... And if you're really against monetizing but want to pay the server bills.. You could seriously post a sticky thread, and call it "support us when you buy on Amazon".. Then give them your associates link.

It's not bad to do that. Your showing them, that you don't want to spam them with ads, but if they want to support you, just use your link next time they buy on Amazon. You'll make sales because there are a ton of people that use Amazon.

Now, that was a lot of typing..

Caleb
 
Caleb Spilchen said:
You don't need to run adsense ads to make money from your forum. In fact I think it's the worst way, since you lose the earning potential for a lot more. I run forums as a hobby, I'm a marketer as my part time job.
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I know. I think you have mentioned that once or twice. ;)

I don't want paid sponsors because you end up protecting those sponsors by censoring posts.
I've had a few auto related banners. Affiliates pay zip.
I don't mind making less using adsense. It's enough to keep my site running.
 
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