How much do you earn on your big board?

[Duncan]

Paid subscription is a special usergroup which can only be accessed by a certain fee. Sometimes this fee is monthly, annually, or lifetime.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Paid Subscriptions (http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/subscriptions)

[zink]

LOL some of you guys with 3-5k uniques per day either losing money or making very little need a marketing lesson.

Making money on the web is a simple numbers game - if you send X number of people to a page with cleverly positioned ads X% will click through.

[manning]

LOL some of you guys with 3-5k uniques per day either losing money or making very little need a marketing lesson.

I would guess some also need to learn the difference between page views and unique visitors. If they truly are getting 5k uniques a day, they SHOULD be making plenty of money.

[MRGTB]

I would guess some also need to learn the difference between page views and unique visitors. If they truly are getting 5k uniques a day, they SHOULD be making plenty of money.

Yeah, totally agree! 5000 unique visitors is a lot, and I would expect to make some good money each day if I was getting that ammount of new users coming

[WFZ]

I earn rougly $xx per month.

And its not really a big board.

[jiffylb1]

I charge $500.00 a year per ad sponsor.
I tell them that for that they will get a specific forum topic that they can adminstrate and advertsie there specials in and also include is one mass email a month and one 468 x 60 roatating banner
we have after cleaing out all inactive members and kept only posters etc gone form 2500 members to 175 mmebrs
btu our local stores are now
cyclegear
jiffylube
ronjon
a few law firms and etc etc

I did nto make anything of google more than maybe $20.00 a month
as I am doing it now we generate
3500 a year
I think that it oculd get better iof the affiliate programs were better
but I generate $50.000 a year form my own link to the shop part
so I would say that my advertisers have stayed on year after year and always renew so I assume they all like to be featured on the portal..

[fabiocesar]

$45 day !!
Threads: 24.095, Posts: 249.739, Members: 375.081
2300-2600 Online
20000 visits uniques/day

[Greenskull]

Can anyone help me out? I get over 20 thousand unique hits a month and over 70 thousand page views a month, yet I make less than a dollar a month! Any suggestions or anything? Help would be appreciated!

[kartik786]

Can anyone help me out? I get over 20 thousand unique hits a month and over 70 thousand page views a month, yet I make less than a dollar a month! Any suggestions or anything? Help would be appreciated!

BUZZ ME with your url.. i'd be glad to help you out.

[Greenskull]

BUZZ ME with your url.. i'd be glad to help you out.my site is www.readyuplive.com

[lane]

My board is not huge, about 2K members, 1K unique daily, 5K page views and we pull in about $1 or so a day. Along with our download section (4-6TB Monthly bandwdith). Needless to say, we are in the whole each month and a quite deep whole i must add.

As in "we", I am the owner but there is a few of us who help foot the bill and run the site.

[MRGTB]

My board is not huge, about 2K members, 1K unique daily, 5K page views and we pull in about $1 or so a day. Along with our download section (4-6TB Monthly bandwdith). Needless to say, we are in the whole each month and a quite deep whole i must add.

As in "we", I am the owner but there is a few of us who help foot the bill and run the site.

Thats very bad! Your only getting $1 dollar a day from ads revenue and you have 1000 unique daily visitors. I think it's fair to say you need to totally re-think your ads campaign.

[MissKalunji]

i make fair enough but with the cost of server ah lol ain't about to get rich anytime soon and no i'm not a big board but i do get a fair amount of visitors.

[JD45]

I have to be doing something wrong. What exactly that is, I'm not sure.

On average we pull in around:


3800 Uniques/day
60K pageviews/day
300K hits/day


I've played with Tribal Fusion (who seems to be the best so far), Adsense, Burst, RealTech and with Tribal Fusion, we're only able to bring in about $5/day which just covers hosting.

It seems like we should be doing better?

I'm at the point where I'm willing to hire someone with ad management in order to get our sites revenue up.

[MRGTB]

Well for starters, you have not taken advantage of the Google Adsense colour pallet to change the colour of your ads to blend in much better, quite frankly they stand out as being ads a mile.

Also, your not taking advantage of the amount of ads by Google your allowed to display on any one web page (forum page). You can display 3 text ads, 3 link units, 2 search boxes, 3 referrals. But what matters to you the most is the "3 text ads and 3 link units" you can display on any one page.

All I've seen on the forum is a one text ad displayed below your shout box, and you've used the Google default colours (which makes it look really obvious). Oh, and you have one I just spotted displayed after the first post in a thread which is even worse. Because your using a white background for the ad. You also have a Picture Banner displayed near your footer. Picture banners from Google are pretty useless. Just about every web user avoids picture banners like the plague, unless there not served by Google and instead are the ones that entice you to click to win something, or "beat the monkey" type banners. Google picture banners are a waste of space though, because there is nothing interesting enough about them to make anybody want to click them!

The bottom line is this, it's not all bad news. At least you don't have great ad placement and are making nothing, you have very poor ads placement and colours. So it's no surprise your doing bad. There is a lot you could do to vastly improve your income from ad click-throughs from what I've seen.

[JD45]

Well for starters, you have not taken advantage of the Google Adsense colour pallet to change the colour of your ads to blend in much better, quite frankly they stand out as being ads a mile.

Also, your not taking advantage of the amount of ads by Google your allowed to display on any one web page (forum page). You can display 3 text ads, 3 link units, 2 search boxes, 3 referrals. But what matters to you the most is the "3 text ads and 3 link units" you can display on any one page.

All I've seen on the forum is a one text ad displayed below your shout box, and you've used the Google default colours (which makes it look really obvious). Oh, and you have one I just spotted displayed after the first post in a thread which is even worse. Because your using a white background for the ad. You also have a Picture Banner displayed near your footer. Picture banners from Google are pretty useless. Just about every web user avoids picture banners like the plague, unless there not served by Google and instead are the ones that entice you to click to win something, or "beat the monkey" type banners. Google picture banners are a waste of space though, because there is nothing interesting enough about them to make anybody want to click them!

The bottom line is this, it's not all bad news. At least you don't have great ad placement and are making nothing, you have very poor ads placement and colours. So it's no surprise your doing bad. There is a lot you could do to vastly improve your income from ad click-throughs from what I've seen.

Thanks for the input. The google ads are being served through RealTech Network so I don't have control over the colors as if I was running it through my own adsense account.

I am looking to hire someone to help with ad placement/management if you know anyone off the top of your head and would feel comfortable recommending them.

[MRGTB]

well, anybody who is well versed in the vBulletin code could intergrate them for you much better. But I would tend to check their own vBulletin site out first, to see what type of job they have done with there own site first regarding banner intergration.

How comes your not servering ads from your own Google Adsense account anyway? So you can control the colours etc

[JD45]

well, anybody who is well versed in the vBulletin code could intergrate them for you much better. But I would tend to check their own vBulletin site out first, to see what type of job they have done with there own site first regarding banner intergration.

How comes your not servering ads from your own Google Adsense account anyway? So you can control the colours etc

Thought we'd get paid more from RealTech with the variety of ads they serve. Had no clue they served google ads.

[iogames]

$45 day !!
Threads: 24.095, Posts: 249.739, Members: 375.081
2300-2600 Online
20000 visits uniques/day

Your Site?

[JD45]

Your Site?

The one in my sig.

[fabiocesar]

Your Site?

http://www.plusgsm.com.br

[Marco van Herwaarden]

http://www.plusgsm.com.br
Please see Restoring the Required Copyright Notice (http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/restore_copyright)

your current copyright in the footer does not meet the minimum requirements.

[hotdude_55]

loosing a lot
any help ??

[hrk]

Now everyone using Mozilla for blocking ads. there goes the revenue from ads :(

[fabiocesar]

Please see Restoring the Required Copyright Notice (http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/restore_copyright)

your current copyright in the footer does not meet the minimum requirements.

sorry, restored ... =)

[Leo Renard]

I just started using vBulletin, but with my old forum and website combined, I am making approx. $400/mo. on average. I foresee more profit with the high requests of an 'Adult Section', heh heh.. Don't worry, I host myself, so no ToS to break. :)

[Greenskull]

I just started using vBulletin, but with my old forum and website combined, I am making approx. $400/mo. on average. I foresee more profit with the high requests of an 'Adult Section', heh heh.. Don't worry, I host myself, so no ToS to break. :)

how do you make so much? I really need some advice, I make literally nothing on my site, despite tons of unique visits! The site's www.readyuplive.com! Please help, someone!

[Amenadiel]

I make about USD 400 from a CPC program (the best known hehe), now I'm adding a coregistration which pays me about a quarter for every person that checks on a newsletter. That should be about USd 500 a month...

It's still not enough to leave my job and focus only on my website *sigh*

[montsa007]

Just Started Hoping to make Few $XX

[ultraname]

Making average 20-25 per day with adsense only.

Average Unique visit per day - 7500
Average Page View per day - 60k

[sinfull]

I don't own a big board, yet anyway ;), but I remember my friend (He owns a 30k member forum) Saying that with ads and donations he still doesn't break even.

I on the other hand. own a small 500 member forum, and I break even with adsense :)

[lasto]

serious would`nt know how to make money from my forum.I have about 8000 users but i tried google ads and only made about $22 per month so i removed the code as it was`nt worth having adverts everywhere.I know google does work and it proberly me not being good at placing the ads in the correct space but running a site to me is not all about making money but it does help if one manages to earn something back from all their hard work etc.

[Amenadiel]

Yes Lasto, but when you find yourself spending USD 500 or more each month for housing costs, then you cannot go philantropic any more. The board should at least pay its costs.

[Deriel]

serious would`nt know how to make money from my forum.I have about 8000 users but i tried google ads and only made about $22 per month so i removed the code as it was`nt worth having adverts everywhere.I know google does work and it proberly me not being good at placing the ads in the correct space but running a site to me is not all about making money but it does help if one manages to earn something back from all their hard work etc.

I've been in this side of the situation too. The money I get from AdSense were few and I opted to remove the Ads and do what ehere in Brazil we call "vaquinha" (little cow, in english): every month each one give the $ ammount he could. Worked for a while...

Yes Lasto, but when you find yourself spending USD 500 or more each month for housing costs, then you cannot go philantropic any more. The board should at least pay its costs.

... until the costs get over $100/month (the visitation, users and posts increased too). Then I put the AdSense back and it worked.

[lasto]

so without hijacking the thread (i have an adsense account) where is the best place to put it etc and ive seen a program called SEO or something - is it worth purchasing this as well ??

[Deriel]

so without hijacking the thread (i have an adsense account) where is the best place to put it etc

In my forum the best places, by far, are the archive and below navbar.

and ive seen a program called SEO or something - is it worth purchasing this as well ??

vbSEO? There are mixed feelings, but the consensus seems to indicate that it do not help your pagerank but the human readable URLs are very atractive. Something like it. Anyway, too expensive to my pocktes :)

[Amenadiel]

VBSeo is more than just nice urls.

In my forum the best place for adsense, by the way, is a 720x90 leaderboard below navbar. That one alone has more than 100 clicks a day. Latin surfers are not so eager when it comes to adsense.

[altunozara]

i just cant get ppl onto my site...there are never guests and its empty i have put int in hundreds of searches aswell....im losing a few hundred a year :-( sigh

[csalbuchi]

i just cant get ppl onto my site...there are never guests and its empty i have put int in hundreds of searches aswell....im losing a few hundred a year :-( sigh

I?m far away from being an expert, but it seems that your forum needs a little more content so new users and google :p feels interested.

Pretty nice Lineage 2 icons, i love that game

[noox]

I've a Site about mountain biking (downhill, freeride), consisting of a "main" site and the forum. 30,000 uniques/m, 450,000 pi/m, 530,000 posts, 8,600 members, 1200 active.

700 Euro per month by CPM ads from online shops and bike parks. 100 Euro through eBay (I modify links from my marketplace to eBay to go through an affiliate programm. Additionally some eBay relevance ads). 80 Euro paid links. 30 Euro Adsense. Additionally I'm now getting some high priced CPM campaigns from an ad network which concentrates on selected extreme sports sites.

-100 Euro for the server (thanks to the USD/EUR exchange rate). But I need a new one, as it becomes 5 years now.

[commandoone]

I just migrated over to VBulletin and had to dump all my users (500+). Bad idea I won't do that again. I used to have SMF but it was garbage.

But my AdSense revenue actually didn't change at all.

My stats are:

+ Average 200 unique visits a day
+ Around 2000 impressions per day
+ CTR around 1.5
+ Adsense makes an average of 3$/day

I looovveee VBulletin. I 'm glad I could finally afford it.

I've really worked hard to "tweak" the way I present ads. It's a really young site but if you look at the ratio of dollars to visits you'll see I'm a fan of making your visits really count.

I'm also a huge proponent of, "don't pay for something you don't need". I only pay like 4$ a month for my hosting service and I'm nowhere close to maxing out on anything. PM me if you want to know who it is. I don't want to post it and it look like I'm advertising.

www.AirbrushTricks.com/the-ultimate-ab-forum.html

[Al Gregory]

I have about 12000 members on one forum but its still 3.09 because I am no good at code. No hacks :( Your forum may be slow but you have all the stuff on it I wish I could put on mine.

i just cant get ppl onto my site...there are never guests and its empty i have put int in hundreds of searches aswell....im losing a few hundred a year :-( sigh

[Vtec44]

Big Board requires you to have at least 500,000 posts to be listed on their database. I'm about 1/2 way there but I earn a little bit with Google Adsense and Text Link Ads. Text Link Ads require you have a decent PageRank score and Alexa rank.

[MissKalunji]

what's so special in being in "big board" database?

Text Link ads? my page rank are completely 0 i don't even know how to fix that

[Vtec44]

Bragging rights and exposure I guess. Check http://www.textlinkads.com, and no I don't work for them. I've been there for 2 months, and so far it's performing on par with my Google Adsense.

[MissKalunji]

ah i see Cool Thanks for answering

[HypedGaming]

My forums get around 2k unques per day and 10k page views, but I only get less than $1 per day. Right now I only have ads under the first post that show up for guests only. I don't know why but I can't bring myself to put ads on the forums

I purposely made the postbit visible so I could get more users to register ("Register to get rid of this advertisement") so I guess that doesn't really help. But you'd think it would make more than it does (on some days it only makes less than 20 cents LOL)

[Deriel]

Right now I only have ads under the first post that show up for guests only.

That's not the best place: try under navbar and in the archives

[MissKalunji]

That's not the best place: try under navbar and in the archives

i co sign navbar is the best

[chompychan]

$500/mo from adbrite

also ~$50-100 varying a lot for a Jlist affiliation

covers server fees anyway.

p.s. my site isn't an official "big board", it just gets lots of traffic (~7000 on alexa)

[GTX2]

Forums will not really make money

Sorry bumping this reply, but just check this website: http://blogger-hits.blogspot.com/2007/09/google-adsense-top-earnings.html
250.000 USD per month is not money?

Digitalpoint was earning in 2005 at their vbulletin forum, $10.000 USD per month.
Now same people say they are earning $40.000 per month just from adsense, which is pretty possible. I wouldn't mind to receive that amount.... :)

--------------- Added 1205417121 at 1205417121 ---------------

in my vb forum i have 100k unique visitors per month, 40k registered members and 8 milion hits per month (webalizer stats). Active users are more than 5.000...
From adsense i get about 4-6 usd per day, which i think its very poor... don't know how to increase click rate...

[volitian]

From adsense i get about 4-6 usd per day, which i think its very poor... don't know how to increase click rate...

Stick a whole page add in between the most accessed forum/content/download etc.. only as a trial and see what happens? perhaps change the adds to different topics?..

[MissKalunji]

something else i believe we have to keep in mind...

adsense search the page for keywords to show related ads

if there's no words on the page don't expect to have good add = no clicks

like volitian said most access page and make sure they are good content and that should help or else you'll see the same boring ads

[Amenadiel]

Thing is, if you have low CTR, you'll earn little no matter how relevant the ads.

If you don't have relevant ads, you'll earn little no matter how hight the CTR

Finally, Google is on an all time low these days, they got really cheap on CPC.

[MissKalunji]

Thing is, if you have low CTR, you'll earn little no matter how relevant the ads.

If you don't have relevant ads, you'll earn little no matter how hight the CTR

Finally, Google is on an all time low these days, they got really cheap on CPC.

i dunno i notice my earnings raised up a LOT this month :-/

[budatalk]

7.36 $ from adsense over half a year! :D

[z3r0]

Using adsense and kontera, i'm getting between $250-300 per day from 45k uniques.

[GTX2]

maybe changing the colours of the ads.. which colours would be better to use? text, background etc?

Stick a whole page add in between the most accessed forum/content/download etc.. only as a trial and see what happens? perhaps change the adds to different topics?..

[anakayam.us]

i have adult community,but i want make money,Google adsense reject my application form.

[Vtec44]

i have adult community,but i want make money,Google adsense reject my application form.

You may want to try textlinkads.com (no I don't work for this company). I have them on my site and it's pretty decent.

[Amenadiel]

TLA doesn't harm your Google PR?

[punchbowl]

just about cover costs through adsense but ad blockers are a major issue these days. Not a big board as such more a busy board.

what annoys me is some advertisers supplying graphical ad units only. A text link that I can pimp is far more worthwhile.

[B.Edward]

Anyone combine site sponsorships with google adsense or other such 2nd source advertising scheme?

[Bellardia]

I'm finding a lot of claims made by some people to be crazy, especially the ones with only ~500 members.

Currently, I run an ad-free forum, and use a very good host (unlimited bandwidth for about $20 a month). Some people are claiming hosting costs 200 a month for 500 active member forums (how?). The server has gone down maybe once in 2 years, and otherwise runs very smoothly.

Really, I'm just wondering how much people think I could make if I added some moderate ad-hosts. Maybe a single banner on the side or top, I'm not really willing to make the site ugly for profit.

Here are some stats:
2,500 unique hits a day
50,000 page loads per day
3000 member forum

Since july 2007, we've had 42 million hits, 88 million page views and 412,000 unique visits.

Any modest estimates of possible revenue based on these statistics?

[MissKalunji]

I'm finding a lot of claims made by some people to be crazy, especially the ones with only ~500 members.

Currently, I run an ad-free forum, and use a very good host (unlimited bandwidth for about $20 a month). Some people are claiming hosting costs 200 a month for 500 active member forums (how?). The server has gone down maybe once in 2 years, and otherwise runs very smoothly.

Really, I'm just wondering how much people think I could make if I added some moderate ad-hosts. Maybe a single banner on the side or top, I'm not really willing to make the site ugly for profit.

Here are some stats:
2,500 unique hits a day
50,000 page loads per day
3000 member forum

Since july 2007, we've had 42 million hits, 88 million page views and 412,000 unique visits.

Any modest estimates of possible revenue based on these statistics?

I think the best way to find out is to test it yourself....whatever people tell you could be right or wrong each person is different. I have someone with the same amount of traffic killing his site with adds and making triple what i make while i have less making (fair) not enough but i rather that way then filling up a page. Best way is to try yourself each person is a different case

[Bellardia]

I suppose I really could test it, but I've always been anti-ads. I think they kill the visual look of sites. To test them I'd have to leave them up for about a month and I'd rather not put my users through that if it won't be worth it.

[teenhut]

I make $1500+

its 20,000+ member forum

www.teenhut.net

:D

[RobDog888]

<font color="darkgreen">Whats the best source of revenue for you? Ads or member subscriptions etc?</font>

[Satoshikai]

I don't make anything yet. I'm trying to get members to donate or subscribe. Also, I'm trying to find an ad system

[lauxanh]

making $$$$

[chompychan]

Anyone got any info on how kontera is for revenue? I'm currently making ~$20/day from adbrite with an alexa rank hovering around 6000, up by 3000 in 3 months.

I'm finding a lot of claims made by some people to be crazy, especially the ones with only ~500 members.

Currently, I run an ad-free forum, and use a very good host (unlimited bandwidth for about $20 a month). Some people are claiming hosting costs 200 a month for 500 active member forums (how?). The server has gone down maybe once in 2 years, and otherwise runs very smoothly.

Really, I'm just wondering how much people think I could make if I added some moderate ad-hosts. Maybe a single banner on the side or top, I'm not really willing to make the site ugly for profit.

Here are some stats:
2,500 unique hits a day
50,000 page loads per day
3000 member forum

Since july 2007, we've had 42 million hits, 88 million page views and 412,000 unique visits.

Any modest estimates of possible revenue based on these statistics?I dunno, I am struggling to keep up with over 500,000 pageviews per day, and yet only have 500-900 online at any given time.

I guess it depends where your traffics coming from and what they're doing when they get there.

[UncoderMom]

I was making xxx now its xx on google. Since december. It sucks and I find it all rather insulting that I give them 21 K in page impressions a day (really more cuz I use 3 ads on a page and 3 count as one) so its like they get 0ver 60 impressions on there ads and they wanna give me 2$

Google is on its way out for me! I'll be deleting all but the navbar ad. There are plenty others out there trumping google right now!

Less see how they like the 40 K ad impressions a day they aint gonna get from me..

[comicus]

Google is on its way out for me! I'll be deleting all but the navbar ad. There are plenty others out there trumping google right now!




such as?

i use adbrite, but they are very unreliable. banner ads will disappear....ads make it through even though you haven't approved them (including half naked women when you have selected "only family friendly ads"), etc.

are there any truly reliable, profitable CPM programs out there for sites in the 10-20k pageviews per day range? Thanks!

edit: oops sorry. Didn't realize this was in the "big boards" section. I think i'm more in the middle boards range lol. regardless, if anyone has a suggestion, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

[iogames]

making $$$$

Ur site? or secrets?

[UncoderMom]

Value click is a making a buzz! :)

[SEOvB]

The economy as a whole isn't spending much on advertising right now and everyone's Adsense earnings are down. Theres tons of factors that can effect your adsense income, such as your niche, the time of year and some other things.

Make sure you pages are optimized as possible, you've got the best locations for your forums, and you're getting relevant advertisements delivered.

And i'm earning $xx.xx on my blog thats not even 2 weeks old :D

[anakayam.us]

hello,i have 1 site present adult content and my site traffic in alexa 70.921 with PR2.
(the problems is Google Adsense doesn't permit adult site,anyone know to able to give idea besides TLA / GA ?

I have applied adbrite,but there is no one also advert in my site from adbrite. this is because my traffic still less or what ?

[Gharibe]

a forum will not make big money for you actually