How much do you earn on your big board?

[zkilzz]

Hey guys!
Just out of curiosity i was wondering how mutch you make on your big boards?

Type in forumname, rank on Big-Boards and how mutch you make.

No need to say how you make it.

:banana:

[Lee]

I would be surprised if anyone shares what they make. I share some things on my blog, but I am not ever sharing exact specifics about which of my forums earn $X.

[Rahuldhanpat]

i earn 0$..... :(

i have made one section for free ad also and i m waitng for some to come for free ad their site..but even no body comes....but u guys know i have 20000 hits a day..in which unique visites are 2200(aprox).....

[kall]

i earn 0$..... :(

i have made one section for free ad also and i m waitng for some to come for free ad their site..but even no body comes....but u guys know i have 20000 hits a day..in which unique visites are 2200(aprox).....
2200 uniques a day? Is that on the site in your signature?

I especially liked the "**GUEST ARE NOT ALLOWED TO SEE ANY THREAD TILL THEY ARE NOT A REGISTERED USER**"

[Erwin]

2200 uniques a day will mean you should be making a fortune. :)

[white_2kgt]

$0, have a few sponsors that pay the bills but not all of them, im in the hole a few $ every month.

[creedmaniac]

I don't own a big-board, but am a co-admin on a semi-big board i think, it has 25,000 members (just pruned) and about 130-180 posts a day. We make our money purely by subscription to our 'members section'

amount edited...asked by owner

[Erwin]

$20k a month is a great effort. :)

[FlyBoy73]

2200 uniques a day will mean you should be making a fortune. :)

Define Fortune. ;p

While I see some profits now days, I think my happiest moment was finally breaking even! :) I won't even go into the debt I reached prior to that point.

[Brandon Sheley]

whats this ?? you can make money on your forums ?? news to me..lol

[5wayshosting]

I earn about -$30 each month for hosting payments. Anyone double that?:banana:

[fcreature]

I'll just saw I make $xx from some of my forums.

[Mr Chad]

I dont even have a big-board, but on my other site BeastToast.com I make very little $260 mo/ just from one affiliate ad image. (aftet hosting its around $240)

[Bhuwan]

losing lots of $$$$

[The Wedge]

losing

[Xorlev]

If you enjoy running it, then does it matter? Consider it an investment into your entertainment.

[Paul M]

Surely no one running a 'Big Board' should be losing money. Ours not the biggest by a long way, but adsense more than covers the cost of actually running it.

[99SIVTEC]

I pay about 300 a month for my dedicated server, and I make about 300-400 a month off ads and subscriptions. Definitely not the business to be in if you want to get rich

[almukmin]

I just started as well, I made 2k+ in my second month, and hopefully will start making 10k+ next month.

[Jay...]

I earn nothing at the moment, however if i get another 800 members i will be earning at least 1500 GBP for sending out a promotional e-mail, averaging about 7 members a day at the mo, shouldnt be too long before im coining it in!

[Ranma2k]

I'm not earning I'm losing $500 a month
and i have 2500 unique visits a day

never thought about adding ads to the site since members doesn't like it

[Darmak]

I earn about 800 dlls / Month whit average of 12000 uniques per day

[reebosak]

I am currently losing money too. I've spend a couple thousand dollars easily over the past 3 years or so of my forums, only recently have i actually started to try and earn some of that back in ads and donations.

after YPN money and donations are figured in, i'm still probably losing around $140 a month on average for this year. hopefully that will change soon

[Ahsin1]

i earn like 2xxx$

[Lazorfist]

Make no $. T__T
I especially liked the "**GUEST ARE NOT ALLOWED TO SEE ANY THREAD TILL THEY ARE NOT A REGISTERED USER**" A large number of the members on my board lurked for a while first, so I bet that probably isn't good for activity in the long run.

[FlyBoy73]

Very rarely will any forum owner not go into the hole (some times very deep) while starting their forum. I got into around $8k in debt (hosting) before my main forum finally started covering the hosting costs.

Rare is the situation where you do this as a living or even profit from the git-go. I've said this before, but you gotta love it.. Most of the people with Big-Boards today did not start out with money in mind and they busted their asses to build the community. That was early in the forum "game" and now I would image it would be even harder since most topics are covered and the leaders have emerged in each niche for the most part.

[Wifey]

Losing!

I don't run ads on my site though. I qualify, but I can't bring myself to put them on my site. It would be nice though. I have over 12,000 members but not that many are active, LOL. I prune sporadically though, so it's all good :)

I'd like to just break even a month. My hosting is great -- I host most images on fotki as well so that helps with bandwidth, but it's still around $50 a month. I'm praying I don't have to go over that because then I'll consider closing it. It's not as "grand" as most of the other big boards on here!

[Scrolls]

I am co-owner of a new board that we just created a few months ago (right now, we are in the hole around $1000, but this is our first VB, and I think we are working backwards lol) We started the site before adding all the content that we really needed I.E. The personalized skin/theme, organizing each forum, etc. so now we are working on the site as 50+ members navigate it and post lmao (but at least its only 50 for now)

FlyBoy-You say leaders of each topic niche is pretty much covered, and this is very true, ALTHOUGH, competition can be swift in the coming. Think search engines ;) who was number one before Google seemingly came out of nowhere? Everyone has a chance to become the number one of thier chosen topic, it just takes alot of time, effort, luck, and a damned good marketing ploy! lol

[The Chief]

I can say I am making more then what I am losing, mostly because of my other sites, but I am not even offering subscriptions yet :)

[FlyBoy73]

FlyBoy-You say leaders of each topic niche is pretty much covered, and this is very true, ALTHOUGH, competition can be swift in the coming. Think search engines ;) who was number one before Google seemingly came out of nowhere? Everyone has a chance to become the number one of thier chosen topic, it just takes alot of time, effort, luck, and a damned good marketing ploy! lol

Oh, you are right about the "competition" or new arrivals in the same niche, but to overcome an established community that has a lot of momentum already built up is a very hard thing to do even if the new forum actually does things better.

A few years back I started up a community covering jetski racing since I was pretty heavily involved in that. My graphics / skins were tops.. I had the best software (vBulletin) with lots of features, galleries and much more, whereas the community that had been around for about a year and a half longer when I started was running a basic phpbb and had no graphics and very few features. As hard as I worked it was a huge uphill battle to get people to do more than register and check it out. We had a number of solid members but most just were not going to move. To be honest though, it was not my primary community and after about a year I got disillusioned with it. If I had kept up 110% it very well could be the premier community now since the guy I was competing against pretty much let it go. I could have also thrown more money at it, etc... etc.. So, yes, it can be done, but it is hard as heck. ;)

With regards to search engines, they constantly flux, but the community with the most threads/posts usually have the most links/references in all the major search engines. My Big Board's links pretty much come up near the top for any thing you can think of in my niche. The only way for that to happen is to have a ton of unique content and time. If there was a new forum on the block it would cost them a fortune in adwords (etc) to get noticed. That, fortunately, is not going to happen in my niche since it isn't a big money market.

Again, it all comes down to lots of hard work. Nothing is impossible. ;)

[IncredibleHawk]

I dont even have a big-board, but on my other site OnlineGameHacker.com I make very little $260 mo/ just from one affiliate ad image. (aftet hosting its around $240)
This is what I would most definately be interested in! It would go great at www.xtremedownloadz.net in which I am Owner!

[Cky47]

I have 3,000+ uniquesa day, but I am usually luck to make more than $40 a month. My site is still only 3 months old though.

[Wordplay]

would any of you guys be willing to share the sponsors/affiliate/adprograms you use?

[creedmaniac]

would any of you guys be willing to share the sponsors/affiliate/adprograms you use?

the website i mentioned in my first post...has 0 sponsors/ads/affiliates...revenue is pure subscription

[lafsunlmtd]

on www.abadss.com we make about 30 or so per day off of adsense. and we make anouther 50 per day off of subscriptions. we have a dedicated server that hosts it and other sites we have. we have about 17000 members and about 40-50 on at any given time. we get about 1200 or so uniques per day

[Markro]

My community is 8,000 + members strong and I only make ~250 USD monthly (costs already deducted).

[Erwin]

It's not the number of members, it's the number of active users, traffic and demographics.

[phkk]

MY site NOW ( 3 months from now ) have 12000 visit per day and I make $200 ++ buck from google. They pay me like 0.03 cents per click. wtf. I am normaly got 0.21 per click . . I have to pay for the server $350. So I made negative -$100 ++++. I am Still have not get money from google yet. crap. also I ran the site free for like 3 years . ( each month in past I got $50, Hosting -$250 ) You get the answer how much I lost . Crap

[davidw]

I have to hand it to Erwin - he does an outstanding job on his site. I run a similar type of website that handles maybe 1/1000th as much as him. Great job, Erwin! Currently, I am at 1% big board status :(, but I'm also fairly new - less than 2 years young.

[Lqd]

I have a radio station with an average of 300 listeners @ 96kbps, it's up and running for 2 months now, got 1200 members on a new domain so far, 20+ new members a day... no need to tell you how NOT rich I am... :(

Care to look? http://hard.fm (Dance music - Dutch style - Hardstyle)

ps. don't tune in.. ;)

[FlyBoy73]

This may have been covered under "demographics" partially, but what your niche or market is makes a big difference. What are advertisers paying for their adwords? Are they 10 cents a click or 50 cents plus? If you have a community that has high ppc rates and a lot of people competing for placement, you could make a lot of money with not all that many clicks.

[webgroup]

HEhe, I feel very lucky!
With 0 SE traffic, literally 0.

We are making about $4-5K monthly.

This includes PPC ads, Chitika, Subscriptions and paid banners spots.

We could be making more if we have a salesman for the banners and paid text links.

[Erwin]

Chitika making money for you?

[ConqSoft]

I'm not quite into the "official" big-board status yet; 430k posts, 10k members, but on my site Adsense alone pulls in about $50/day, and rising daily... I only have ads showing for guests and non-paying members.

[Allenport]

My "fun" site has 95,000+ users and had about 18,000 uniuqe hits a day. Since we lost the .com the number dropped but is rising again. I run a fully Add free site but am having no financial issues.

[ChrisTech]

Not really a big board with these stats ( Threads: 1,631, Posts: 5,773, Members: 3,226, Active Members: 650) but I figured Id chime in. I get around 22k uniques per month, adsense is decent, it pays the bill. Worst part is it seems a majority of the users are from south america or asia area of the world, Which doesn't really pay out adwise. Looking at running an extra banner at the top to just sell off to some monthly sponsers. Im still on shared hosting, usually 5-25 online at a time, fair amount of posts. Forum is a few years old, but I started fresh when I setup my vb forums last september.

I have adbrite on another site that I co-run, which does pay out (net-60 my first check was $34). But they go in and analyze your profits later, and take away for the traffic from countries that don't speak english it appears. Had over $600 for the next payment, but its been knocked down to under $400. =/

Ive heard that adgage is good for ads, haven't checked them out yet.

[creativepart]

I've just made it into big board territory with 520,000 posts and 10,000 members. I have 6,000 visits a day with 60,000 page views a day. Using Adsense, Amazon, Affiliates and fundraisers the board earns a modest amount a month. The fundraisers are the biggest thing.

We give away prizes donated by companies that benefit from the site. Prizes usually are worth $500 to $2000 each. And we generally have 7 or 8 prizes to give away.

We only do the fundraiser once per year, in the fall.

[Adult SEO]

2200 uniques a day? Is that on the site in your signature?

I especially liked the "**GUEST ARE NOT ALLOWED TO SEE ANY THREAD TILL THEY ARE NOT A REGISTERED USER**"

LOL

I have a radio station with an average of 300 listeners @ 96kbps, it's up and running for 2 months now, got 1200 members on a new domain so far, 20+ new members a day... no need to tell you how NOT rich I am... :(

Care to look? http://hard.fm (Dance music - Dutch style - Hardstyle)

ps. don't tune in.. ;)

You have a verry nice site! You should considder AdWords feeding of traffic, I think it will work great for you.

I've been working on a secret money making hack for vBulletin, it's accepted with google and works great so far.

My forum is online now for 1 week and I have 60+ members and aprox. 400 unique visitors per day from Google AdWords and aprox. the same amount of traffic from own SE listings via an SE targetting system I ran on the site before I installed vBulletin.

The site makes aprox. $10 per day from Google AdSense + has sold 1 link via AdBrite ? $3 for 7 days recurring (real cheap, but it's a start).

:)

Best Regards,
Adult SEO

[Redclan]

:banana: Wow its interesting to learn and see exactly how well you guys are doing compared to other websites.

Discussions like these are great and really put things into perspective in terms of where I should be financially and what my site should be earning.

Well I run a somewhat hugh site here in the Bahamas. Roughly a little over 10,000 members, good demographic hits and somewhat an average of about 5,000 - 6,000 unique members daily.

We offer email services, profiles and entertainment resources + some other stuff.

Monthly google ads range from anywhere from $285 to $500 due mainly to our photo gallery and forums. Once we re-introduce our Voice/Webcam I am hoping that it will increase.

We charge for different ad sizes on different pages for local businesses and entertainers/promoters having local events. This is where the bulk of our funds are generated which ranges from $75 for a small banner to $1200.00 (3 Month ads or sponsor programs).

Marley

[u4ea]

I have about 60,000 page views a day. 4-5K unique visitors a day. I make ok money.

[Adult SEO]

I have about 60,000 page views a day. 4-5K unique visitors a day. I make ok money.

What niche
How much revenue per day (average)
How many signups per dayAn answere on these questions wil be loved and very useful ;)

For new posters, please also state:

How many pageviews per day
How many unique visitors per day

[marksman1]

I think Adsense is probably one of the worst ways to monetize a forum. Some of you have traffic levels that should not be leaving you in the hole every month. You need to look at some alternative forms of monetization. I know it is easy to throw up adsense or yahoo but that is rarely a way to make any money with a forum.

[Shazz]

$1! so far..

[Adult SEO]

I think Adsense is probably one of the worst ways to monetize a forum. Some of you have traffic levels that should not be leaving you in the hole every month. You need to look at some alternative forms of monetization. I know it is easy to throw up adsense or yahoo but that is rarely a way to make any money with a forum.

It really depends on how you use it and for what niche you are using it. It can be great extra source of income for your forum.

If you can make 5000 euro extra per month by installing AdSense, why wouldn't you. Since that is possible if you have 100k+ uniques (per day) on your forum.

There are ofcourse better ways to make money with your forum, but AdSense can provide a solid extra source of income.

Best Regards,
Adult SEO

[vktechnology]

10,000 UIP perday
100,000 page views per day
52,000 members

earn $ 20 per month for banners

[marksman1]

It really depends on how you use it and for what niche you are using it. It can be great extra source of income for your forum.

If you can make 5000 euro extra per month by installing AdSense, why wouldn't you. Since that is possible if you have 100k+ uniques (per day) on your forum.

There are ofcourse better ways to make money with your forum, but AdSense can provide a solid extra source of income.

Best Regards,
Adult SEO

Yeah but we don't live in a bubble where you just ad adsense on top of something else. You might have other means of generating income or ways that don't harm the user experience or impact it in a different way.

By that logic, pop-ups and pop-unders also could generate extra revenue, but I would not advise most people to use those to monetize their forums.

[Peter_Rosado]

10,000 UIP perday
100,000 page views per day
52,000 members

earn $ 20 per month for banners
hmmm, you could be making more :D

[labrocca]

I think I made about $4-$5k last year from my biggest forums. It's a gaming forums (low PPC) with 300k posts and 10k members. I hope to be in Big-Boards within 6 months. I make most my income via subscriptions and selling points. I get about 2000-3000 uniques per day.

[Dave#]

200,000 page views a day, 27,000 visitors according to google analytics - no ads :)

[bolly.beats]

i m earnin about $400 a month :-D

[Ig@r]

i m earnin about $400 a month :-D
Cool. And how many uniques do you have?

[Shazz]

pff 600 average.

[flfooty tv]

18k members

earning bout 7k GBP a month thats bout $11.000

[baronvonwalz]

Our forum is unusual in that it has only a few hundred active members, but averages 40,000 posts a month. We just hit 500,000 posts this year and will probably be at 1,000,000 by March. We lose an average of $20 a month.

[ninjashoes]

I make enough to pay for the hosting a buy a couple new video games every month, not bad. Its free money!

[ecansel]

-500 USD... I'm hopeless

[Tru2Chevy]

My board/club has averaged about -$120 per month over the last two years. I have a little over 1,100 members, and about 275 active. Our only income currently comes from a few paid sponsors. We are slowly making more money, so hopefully things will turn around soon.

- Justin

[FalkinPro]

I just started mine about 9 months ago, and traffic is steadily rising (still extremely small compared to some people on here):

Uniques a Day: 50-100
PageViews a Day: 600-1000

We just crossed the 500 member threshhold 20 days ago, and are closing in on 600 pretty quick (avg'ing 4 new registrations a day). Our net profit is about $20-$40 a month right now off the forum (from $0 not even 40 days ago). Only guests see ads, and we use adsense. I think the advantage we have though is that we are a financial site; some advertisers pay as much as $2+ per click which is great. Our blog (http://falkininvesting.com/blog/) and stock articles (http://falkininvesting.com/articles/) though bring in double what our forum brings in with 1/4th the traffic, it's weird.

Main Stats:
-581 Members (135 Active)
-6,448 Posts
-954 Threads

Cheers,

-FalkinPro
http://falkininvesting.com

[Ntfu2]

Losing tons of money, but just joined with Clicksor and its showing great promise, payouts are already almost twice that of google/ypn. Check it out if you want to test the waters, but i'll warn you know you wont return to Anything else. Clicksor has been the best by far yet.

[Shazz]

Just got it raised to 1200 a month! :D

[theChronic]

hey folks,
i don't run a big board site, but i was wondering for some of the other members here who have stated there stats and aren't huge but are paying like $300 / month for hosting, what are you thinking? why would you pay so much?

[MRGTB]

Losing tons of money, but just joined with Clicksor and its showing great promise, payouts are already almost twice that of google/ypn. Check it out if you want to test the waters, but i'll warn you know you wont return to Anything else. Clicksor has been the best by far yet.


read this:

http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread24656.html

[GrendelKhan{TSU]

ok. so like everyone's covered most of range of possibilities... which is great and very useful (the point being..it is possible to at least not be in the hole every month).

so let's say someone has a new board and growing with all the required minimum whatever to make money.

HOW would you recommend that person implement their ads for the first time?

two parts:
1. what PLACEMENT are your best performers?

ie:
-- after first post?
-- after last post?
-- top of forumhome?
-- left/right column skyscraper banner
-- header?
-- pay donations? (placed where)
-- etc.

(this is the stuff that I would most helpful and love to hear discussion about at this point, imo)

2. and of course, what ad network do you use?

-- adsense? mirva? YPN/overture? monthly subscription banner ads ? advertising.c0m? other?


3. then we can compare across size and demo stats more meaningfully (imo)

anyone?

I just launched a tiny board for fun and a few friends to do their thing a few months ago, and haven't tried any monetization yet as it was just for fun. but monetizing is fun too. Knowing I'm nowhere near big-baord status yet doesn't mean I don't want to optimizse or ramp-up as best as possible.

so, like.... where would recommend one start?

[bada_bing]

I have to hand it to Erwin - he does an outstanding job on his site. I run a similar type of website that handles maybe 1/1000th as much as him. Great job, Erwin! Currently, I am at 1% big board status :(, but I'm also fairly new - less than 2 years young.
How are you on big-boards with these stats?
Active Members: 74
Threads: 2,026, This Month: 69 (-19%)
Posts: 7,223, This Month: 165 (-46%)
Members: 158, This Month: 7 (7%)

[Shazz]

How are you on big-boards with these stats?
Active Members: 74
Threads: 2,026, This Month: 69 (-19%)
Posts: 7,223, This Month: 165 (-46%)
Members: 158, This Month: 7 (7%)
Posts: 7,223
Members: 158

WOW

[curriertech]

I'm on track to do about $60 in revenue this month from AdSense - 99% of that being from a single small add in my navbar template. This is my first full month with an ad in that location and my traffic is steadily increasing so hopefully my revenue will also increase. :)

[Revpolar]

I used to make some money at a big board but sold out and created a smaller private one. The big board made alot of money all by subscriptions. While similar sites were selling subscriptions for alot of money the membership was not growing. I figured that this was due to high subscription prices and started a site purely as a test to my theory. I ran 3 subscription packages at $5 a month recurring $15 every three months non-recurring and a $25 for six month package. The site took off to about 2500 subscribing members in a years time. . It was alot of money. And alot of headaches which I gladly walked away from it. I now have a small site with 180 members and about 145 are paying subscribers. Its private and the members have been together for almost 5 years. I profit about $600 a month and once a yaer give most of it back in raffles.

[Invalid ID]

I don't intend to earn money, Apni Mehfil is just free for all to come and have fun

[GamersHQ]

Well by tomorrow I should earn my first piece of money. $10. Since I only get like 350+ uniqes so my adspace is realy cheap.

[UncoderMom]

I have had a recent jump in members and my google impressions are up to about 30+k a day

I have 172k+ posts and 1100+ members. And since july I have given google over 716,000 page impressions for a measly 133 bucks! 60 of that is all this month and 444,000 page impressions just this month. I really dont think its worth it considering it looks like google puked all over my site lol. I tried CJ briefly but was getting NOTHING.

Im on shared hosting but looking to move to dedicated soon. So when I move Im going add a few more payed mods and start up memberships! That seems to be the way to go!

I only get about 12 clicks a day though.... I need to improve my Meta....I think.

Oooh yeah, my site just turned one yr old and I have been a vb site since may.

[JD45]

I MUST be doing something wrong with Google/Yahoo.

We get on average:


2500 Uniques per day
25,000 page views
110K hits



google is giving us a whopping $1 per day....:tired:

[Adult SEO]

Hi!

Contact me for monitizing solutions for your forum!

Best Regards,
Jan Jaap

[kanadian]

site makes about $1000-1400/month but we also pay our members to post but that only costs about $50-$100/month typically and it's not even out of our pocket, we've got a site sponsoring that pays for member posts.

[yoyoyoyo]

I make about 75 cents a month

[Adult SEO]

site makes about $1000-1400/month but we also pay our members to post but that only costs about $50-$100/month typically and it's not even out of our pocket, we've got a site sponsoring that pays for member posts.

Hi!

Could you please show us your site? As it's probably not talkonlinepoker.com?

Best Regards,
Jan Jaap

[Make Money?]

ok. so like everyone's covered most of range of possibilities... which is great and very useful (the point being..it is possible to at least not be in the hole every month).

so let's say someone has a new board and growing with all the required minimum whatever to make money.

HOW would you recommend that person implement their ads for the first time?

My forums ads are very often custom made - just to run on my forum. The CPM is VERY high.. its not competitive with other Internet banner opportunities. we run NO generic ads, no ad agency's serve our ads we serve them ourselves. We reject ads that aren't specific to the core topic of the forum..

If you are in a NICHE market as I am, perhaps start by giving AWAY ads to key players to make your self look cool and attractive to other potential advertisers in the same NICHE MARKET.

or use your banner ad area to run competitions - give aways - that might make people pay attention to the banner area.

As more (paying) folks come aboard slowly creep your prices up... start to charge the freebie customer..

We try to stay number one in our topic field but it is hard...

I find things snowball, success breeds success..

I do a LOT of hard sell work to get the ads to come in.. I pound around on foot at 3 & 4 days trade shows twice, sometimes three times a year in the USA and Europe to sell ads for the forum.. most of the work is persuading folks to drop print ad budget to come and spend it with us instead.

That's my story, I am sure everyones' is a different one..

it feels good to give something back...

I've just been take, take, taking on this forum...

[doug97gxe]

doesn't matter what i make.. it goes back to the gov during tax time anyway

[Billspaintball]

I make enougth to cover the cost of my vB license, domain rego and hosting.

Ive often wondered about making a bit more from the site but Im really not sure where to start.

[kanadian]

Hi!

Could you please show us your site? As it's probably not talkonlinepoker.com?

Best Regards,
Jan Jaap

Sorry Jan...haven't updated my profile in a long time I guess. the one in there now is the correct one.

[Shazz]

Lowered to 500 on my board a month :(

[org knopper]

7000 Hits $7 per day by google AS

[zkilzz]

Theres a board i know very well that make 100 $ a day.

About 100.000 page impressions. 6000 unique and around 120-160 clicks a day.

[Adult SEO]

Theres a board i know very well that make 100 $ a day.

About 100.000 page impressions. 6000 unique and around 120-160 clicks a day.

Hi!

That means an average PPC of 83,33 dollarcent.

That's really a lot but possible, for example the personal consulting niche easily pays a few dollars per click ;)

Could you please share the URL with us so we all are able to see how it's done?

Best Regards,
Jan Jaap

[BigJimTheLug]

I MUST be doing something wrong with Google/Yahoo.

We get on average:


2500 Uniques per day
25,000 page views
110K hits



google is giving us a whopping $1 per day....:tired:


Nah, I can't believe it.
You must get more than that.

[letsjoy]

10$ per day

[Ted S]

That means an average PPC of 83,33 dollarcent.

That's really a lot but possible, for example the personal consulting niche easily pays a few dollars per click ;)

Could you please share the URL with us so we all are able to see how it's done?


It's likely they're getting a lot of CPM ads with their traffic level and thus making money without clicks.

I've worked for several sites in the past that used Adsense earning about 5k a month off of 3m impressions. Money Making Hint: Use your archive.

Of course when we started moving those sites from networks like Adsense to private label PPC ads and advertisers, the earnings go up, way up. If you're in a good niche, with a good brand and the right sales force, you can pull in CPM rates of $5, $10, $20 or more.

[Hornstar]

I currently only have a leader board on my homepage which is earning me $5 a day. I will trial the archive and homepage and maybe left navigation bar shortly. I have approx 2000 members visit the site daily was almost 3000 recently but dropped.

[aceofspades]

How the hell can you be losing money? $8,000 in debt? WTF were you buying?

Im 17, i have a vbulletin forum with a custom made skin which cost me $400 from a very talented designer (9thsector), i have only one advert on my forum and its a clan forum, im still making over $80pm in profit after deducting my loses. How can you be losing money.

[Mr Chad]

How the hell can you be losing money? $8,000 in debt? WTF were you buying?

Im 17, i have a vbulletin forum with a custom made skin which cost me $400 from a very talented designer (9thsector), i have only one advert on my forum and its a clan forum, im still making over $80pm in profit after deducting my loses. How can you be losing money.
well for BeastToast.com Im in debt $1,600 (Licenses and Hosting). But thats because i have not tried to monetize it in any way. Recently added that donation hack and it seems to be helping.

[andrew67]

A couple of years ago I was making approx $35-$40K AUD a year , but these days a lot less , maybe 5K. But its no longer a fulltime job , it was then.

Its not much reward for the work :) Especially considering the size of the site , www.austech.info for those interested.

[zlos]

+27000 UIP/day
+10 000 posts/day
+8.000.000 pageviews/month

Single Google Adsense covers costs of my machines... :) The rest is sold to the media house.

[tryckj?vel]

no ads on mine, all hosting and additional costs are paid for by the members donating. theres a couple grand excess that will be used up when we go to a dedicated server.

[ByG SteAm]

I get around 1600 Unique a Day and make less than a dollar everyday with google ads. I need some help from someone to help me make more. Everyday according to good i break 7,000 impressions.

[silvermerc]

I making a small profit.
I have lost though in a way.

[pgb]

i run a very small board, but i assist a 13K user board pay their bills with custom printed apparel with no up front costs. nice stuff too... not the junk that everyone else is selling. pm me for details.

[Smoothie]

I don't earn mutch. LOL

[jarosciak]

My board is not that large, getting now maybe 400 posts a day on average and 8000 pageviews. Google AdSense brings in at most 30-40$ month.
If not for donations, it would not cover the hosting.

[Smoothie]

Golden Retrievers rule.

[TotalTorque.net]

I earn nothing at the moment, however if i get another 800 members i will be earning at least 1500 GBP for sending out a promotional e-mail, averaging about 7 members a day at the mo, shouldnt be too long before im coining it in!

Less than a year later I note that this site is now closed down! Not meaning to sound funny, but it can't have been doing quite as well the above makes out.

[tormodg]

We average about 2000 visits per day and some 8000 page impressions. We spend $150 on a dedicated server (running 4 different sites we own) and forum revenue is about $270 off Adsense, $50 off subscriptions, and $100 on text links so we're not rich but it pays enough for us to upgrade our products and pay for software we use etc. We also invest some of the profits into new sites that we incorporate into our forums.

[woodysfj40]

5195 posts yesterday, my forum has been growing gently for quite some time....

last day at my "day" job was last Friday (11 years as a marketing director), have a 9-month PR gig (driving a 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser around the country) and then my site will be my fulltime life.

it's taken 30-40 hours a week over the past year to get things where they are, and I'll have about $20,000 in hardware installed by the end of this year....

Income will cover expenses ;)

[cameronbailey]

How the hell can you be losing money? $8,000 in debt? WTF were you buying?

Im 17, i have a vbulletin forum with a custom made skin which cost me $400 from a very talented designer (9thsector), i have only one advert on my forum and its a clan forum, im still making over $80pm in profit after deducting my loses. How can you be losing money.
I'm wondering the same thing as aceofspades. Why are so many people here spending more than $100/month on hosting when they only have a few thousand unique visitors/daily? I pay $70/month for a reseller account with Steadfast Networks. I host about 15 sites, and I have 500GB bandwidth/month. Only get a dedicated server if you really need it.

I can understand why some people are only breaking even, or making tiny profits, but losing any significant amount per month because of hosting means that you have a setup that is likely too expensive for your needs.

[Tourmeister]

It has been very interesting to see everyone's responses.

My site: www.twtex.com
Pushing 4000 members
A little over 200K posts
No clue on the uniques per day

I am donation supported only with no ads and bring in a few hundred $ a month. After my wife and I were in a motorcycle accident, the donations spiked to $3500 within a few weeks. I don't recommend this form of attracting donations... :D

I have been recently thinking about bring ads into the mix. They would be very targeted though and regional. I am not real interested in the adsense stuff yet. The big focus on my site is community. My users repeatedly tell me that it is the sense of community that keeps them coming back. I am wary of messing that up with ads.

I plan to do some merchandising. I think I can really make more money this way than by doing the ads.

I have never been in the hole with the site once I got up around 500 users.

[jarosciak]

One of my boards has Adsense on it, with approx. 1000 posts a day. And 20000 page-views daily. But no matter in what form I present the ads, I am not getting more than 3-4$/day. That is maximum. I don't know what I am doing wrong, but my members are just set to overlook it :(
Is there any other advertising module other than Google Adsense, which pays (let's say) for page-views, which would make at least enough cash to cover the expenses of my dedicated server?
Joe

[tormodg]

One of my boards has Adsense on it, with approx. 1000 posts a day. And 20000 page-views daily. But no matter in what form I present the ads, I am not getting more than 3-4$/day. That is maximum. I don't know what I am doing wrong, but my members are just set to overlook it :(
Is there any other advertising module other than Google Adsense, which pays (let's say) for page-views, which would make at least enough cash to cover the expenses of my dedicated server?
Joe


I don't know what the board is about, but I think I get more conversion from my guests than from my members. I only have two adsense spots on my forums (header and before a thread), and with about 2,000 uniques on average (8,000 impressions) I get about $7-15 from that forum. It really goes up and down a lot but with your stats it sounds like you need to try different placement etc...

I also use CasaleMedia for popups for visitors (not for logged-in users) and that pays about $100 per month for my forums, so it's a welcome extra.

[oldfan]

We get about 1500 hits and 8000-9000 page views a day.
I average about $2.00 a day with Adsense, $30.00 monthly from advertisers and on average $40.00 in donations/subscriptions.

Threads: 2,797, Posts: 33,714, Members: 4,425

[josh_B]

I have just started using adsense. We do have forum subscriptions and donations buttons.
Went live around mid-december and have made around ?800. I have no server costs though, so all good.
Threads: 6,367, Posts: 20,454, Threads Today: 17,
Posts Today: 37, Members: 976

Slow but getting there..

Since Adsense started 1st of the month we have made $18 from it!! Wont be moving to Spain just yet though :)

[M-Tuning]

I got 7000 unique visits a day and I earn about 50 Euro's a month.

My site is sponsored so I don't have to pay for my dedicated server :P

[Ronak]

i make out very very little...

i will give forum url though here are my stats

Threads: 3,770, Posts: 23,178, Members: 5,549

i make out around 10$ frm ads and 5-10$ frm subscriptions ..though my hosting costs me very less

[soletrader]

1900 members. $300/month on adsense and $1200/month from sponsors, $100/month from amazon, and $100/month from textlinks.

Approx $1700/month.... board is 6months old.

Expenses: VPS $50/month.

[KHALIK]

1900 members. $300/month on adsense and $1200/month from sponsors, $100/month from amazon, and $100/month from textlinks.

Approx $1700/month.... board is 6months old.


Expenses: VPS $50/month.


whats the link to your website ?

[soletrader]

pm me

[darkie79]

I won't go much into detail, but we are seriously considering our options at this point.

Our gaming community has been around for several years (1998) but we lost a bunch of members with a move to a newer game.

We currently have around 90 members, 34 of which are active.

We are lucky to get 3 posts/day, and 1 registered/month.

I know it is a niche site, and that everyone has a gaming community these days, but it's so frustrating in the same instance.

Not only have I not made money on this, over the course of the past year, I have dropped over 2k for logo's, contests, etc with little to no improvement on things :(

[XxBuLLeTz]

i make a few bucks a day on http://www.gowboards.com

[zkilzz]

Back in time i remeber i placed some ads at the top of and in the bottom of forumdisplay. I used colspan 5 to get the ad to span over all cells underneeth to get room for a big 728 size banner there. I went from 25USD to 60 USD a day by doing that. :) Its the best place on the entire board.

[ktutorials]

tats rocking earning man... i will be happy if i get aroung 50$ a month... my server charge is 15$ avg per month... :)

[Ranma2k]

I have always wanted to know how to earn money from the website..

i have a website that have been running for almost 4 years now.
we have over 60k members and we have 2000 uniqe visits / day
but we don't do any kind of advertising actually never thought of doing so.

so how can someone revenue from such site ?

[soletrader]

I have always wanted to know how to earn money from the website..

i have a website that have been running for almost 4 years now.
we have over 60k members and we have 2000 uniqe visits / day
but we don't do any kind of advertising actually never thought of doing so.

so how can someone revenue from such site ?

Can I take a look at your site? Interested in selling it?

[cajunboy2208]

I don't believe in ads. And thus is the reason I have made $0 a month. I am thinking if this continues, I might have to give up on my belife. I hate forums with ads, but hey, it keeps the forum itself going when members don't want to help support the site. Instead you drop nearly 500 bucks in 3 months to keep the forum up, and to try to get more people joining and involved. So yea... I am giving it another month, if I don't yeild around 50 bucks from donations, I will have no choice but to revert to ads.

[Jay...]

Less than a year later I note that this site is now closed down! Not meaning to sound funny, but it can't have been doing quite as well the above makes out.

sorry only just seen your post. The club i was doing the promotion work was sold, refurbed and took a whole new angle. They did not want to continue working with me despite my promotional emails and event organisation giving the club the 2 busiest nights it has ever had, pulling in over 7000 people over 2 weekends (Making me nearly 14k in the process) . I have started a new site not long ago and im currently working with 3 promoters to build this site up to what my previous one once was

[cajunboy2208]

What are the best ad programs to have? I would like to pull in around 40-50 a month with the ads. I am guessing Google AdSense?

[cartooner]

I make zero. I don't run ads, I did try asking for donations but that did not bring in much of anything. I get about 150 uniques a day. Average 1000 posts per day.

I do have a web-site to go with the forum www.edtoons.com that I have Google Adsense on, but I only just started that.

BTW how do you make money running a forum, It seems almost impossible.

My Site is at http://www.edtoonsboard.com

[cajunboy2208]

I make zero. I don't run ads, I did try asking for donations but that did not bring in much of anything. I get about 150 uniques a day. Average 1000 posts per day.

I do have a web-site to go with the forum www.edtoons.com that I have Google Adsense on, but I only just started that.

BTW how do you make money running a forum, It seems almost impossible.

My Site is at http://www.edtoonsboard.com

Ads is the main source I would say. And then have a membership fee of a few bucks, and offer them something, along with removing of ads. As long as your forum has something to offer, so they will stay around, they will purchase that membership.

[Duncan]

HabboDiscussion.com

Earns approx $60/monthly from google.

Earns approx $50/monthly from text ads

[tecdady]

man what is wrong with my forum... 14K+ members, tons of traffic, been around for 7 years. i make nothing. i get $100 check from adsense about every 4 months. im losing money every month for YEARS. after reading this, heh, im even more depressed.
http://www.sacpaintball.com

[cajunboy2208]

man what is wrong with my forum... 14K+ members, tons of traffic, been around for 7 years. i make nothing. i get $100 check from adsense about every 4 months. im losing money every month for YEARS. after reading this, heh, im even more depressed.
http://www.sacpaintball.com

Well the problem lies with most of your members arent active. If they arent active, your adsense isn't getting used much. You have less than 800 active, and I am not sure what you have the counted as active set for... Also the most users ever online was 121, So on average you get what... maybe 50 members on in a day? That is the only problem... you are a big site, but you don't have enough active members. Send out an e-mail to your inactive members and hopefully they will come back. I am sure you can get around 1k a month if most of those 14k were active.

[talkeaton.com]

I am just now starting to tinker with adsense and integrating it into my website. My forum is just featured around my local community. I started in august of '06 and at this time I have 483 members 250 or so that are active. I receive anywhere from 650 - 900 visitors a day with roughly 2500 uniques a month. Am I wasting my time with adsense or is the potential there?

[DefenceTalk]

Our forums are not "big boards" but earning around $550-$700 per month from two forums using google adsense.

Just switched the ads around on one of the forums see if that changes anything. :D

[QsKGlobal.com]

One board, around 50,000 impressions and 100 clicks per week, around $500 a month from adsense alone.

[AzzidReign]

After paying for my expensive ded. server, I profit around $1k a month from adsense and vibrantmedia...my adsense hasn't been doing too good lately though :(

[volknet]

Anywhere from $5 - $70 dollars a day depending on how good my search engine placements are.

Usually I average about $10 - $20 a day.

But it's a smaller forum - around 2k members.

[Sean James]

im losing also, but its worth it hehe

[lauxanh]

i earn 100USd perday from ads

lauxanh.us/diendan/

check it out

[iogames]

Ok, ok, ok... how can you enter to the www.big-boards.com ranking?
Want to beat #10 [Fok.nl] everybody say I can't but my Mom say I can :D

[no mods]

Im no were near a big board, but I has a phpbb for about a month. Made enough to get a Vbulletin and pay for hosting for 2 months. (Just asking members to buy premium status) Hopefully I can start it up again on my Vbulletin now. Good thing in my hosting is $12 a month, so not to much.

[clarkstoncracke]

200,000 pages per day, 4000 uniques per day, and I make negative $440 bucks a month.

Stupid $440 buck server fees. :D

I get around 8000 landings from search engines each month.

Wonder how much I could make with ads? Not that I would do it, I'm just curious....

I'm a huge fan of an Ad-Free environment.

[Viking Monkey]

Great Thread!

Its amazing how much some of you guys are making from running a VB site.

How did you go about building up your members? What sort of marketing did you use and how long did it take before it got to the level where you have stats that sponsors might be interested in?

This has really got me thinking, but clearly there has to be some marketing investment in order to get people in. Why would people sign up to an empty site?

Intrigued as to what you all did.

[cajunboy2208]

Are you guys using Ad Units or Link Units? Or both, and how many of each?

I currently am using 1 Ad Unit for my header, image only. 2 Ad units, text only, inside the threads, and 1 Link Unit at the footer...

[wrestlepower]

out of interest, to all of those who offer paid subscriptions to their members, what added features or incentives do you give them to donate? I imagine that this will depend on what market you're in, but surely there must be some generic options that can be offered?

I'm nowhere near a big board and have had Adsense for about a year and have yet to hit the $100 limit to release payment. I have two people subscribing at $10 per year, and that was only beacuse they were my mates who didnt mind throwing me a few $$. Recently i've been thinking of trying to pursue donations as opposed to adverts, but i need to be able to sell the idea to my members. So far the only things i can think of are offering e-mail addresses, viewing the forums ad-free and a monthly raffle to win back their subscription for the month once i ahve enough subscribers for that to be viable).

Any help on that would be greatly appreciated.

[cajunboy2208]

I tried donations in the beginning. And that was such a bust. Just a few buds of mine would donate, which wasn't nearly enough. So I added Adsense on April 3rd, and right now I am nearling $90. It is way better than donations. But... I do offer a membership, for a few bucks, you get a special colored name, and the ads are disabled. Also, you have your own section of the forum for the donators, and I usually put some special stuff in there, such as a certain account to a website, that costs a few bucks...
But yea, just donations, I would get nowhere at all... But most of the people on my site are younger viewers, usually around 15-16...

[wtrk]

were not a big board, but were extremely nitch and topic specific, and we were the first forum on the topic of our kind at the time (now there are lots of copy cats). we have proprietary advertisers (ie, its not adsense or some other click through system, we actually go out in real life and hustle ad sales for banners). it took 2 years of hard work before we made any money at all. you can make a ton of money, you just have to get off you ass and get out there and hustle for it. its not going to fall in your lap just because you have a web site. its called WORK for a reason..

[no mods]

I use the donation method, $20 for life, for premium, then they get all types of special stuff. You just have to keep asking everyone, and sooner or later someone will say sure, why not. I would like to do ads, but I have no idea were to start when it comes to ads.

[AzzidReign]

Are you guys using Ad Units or Link Units? Or both, and how many of each?

I currently am using 1 Ad Unit for my header, image only. 2 Ad units, text only, inside the threads, and 1 Link Unit at the footer...
If I were you, I would do text and image ads. It gives you a larger database of advertisers...when you have more advertisers, there will be higher biddings...only the highest bids will be placed on your site...meaning you make more money.

I have 1 banner ad below the navbar and 2 inpost ads (first and last post). Right now, my inpost ads are rockin'. Yesterday they made $20+ while my banner only made $8.

out of interest, to all of those who offer paid subscriptions to their members, what added features or incentives do you give them to donate? I imagine that this will depend on what market you're in, but surely there must be some generic options that can be offered?

I'm nowhere near a big board and have had Adsense for about a year and have yet to hit the $100 limit to release payment. I have two people subscribing at $10 per year, and that was only beacuse they were my mates who didnt mind throwing me a few $$. Recently i've been thinking of trying to pursue donations as opposed to adverts, but i need to be able to sell the idea to my members. So far the only things i can think of are offering e-mail addresses, viewing the forums ad-free and a monthly raffle to win back their subscription for the month once i ahve enough subscribers for that to be viable).

Any help on that would be greatly appreciated.
Paid subscriptions is sort of like peer pressure...if you aren't getting any subscriptions...it's going to remain that way. You want to make your paid subscribers REALLY STAND OUT. For my site, I have a dark skin and have the premium usergroup color green and for their rank symbol, it's a really cool glowing green symbol I made that says PREMIUM (everyone loves em). What you need to do is give away free premium to good friends of yours to make it look like you are getting a lot of premium subscriptions...once you do that, people almost feel "pressured" into buying premium (just like peer pressure...you're not cool if you don't have premium).

What I offer in my premium is emails, "secret" tutorials that not too many people know how to do, EXTRA help (this is a big plus, whenever a premium member asks for help, THEY GET HELP), and a bunch of more junk and goodies (I have a projects forum telling those premium members what we have "in store" for the site and they can offer suggestions as to what they would like to see us do with the site...so it's more like they feel they have a say on what direction the site goes).

I hope that helps.

I use the donation method, $20 for life, for premium, then they get all types of special stuff. You just have to keep asking everyone, and sooner or later someone will say sure, why not. I would like to do ads, but I have no idea were to start when it comes to ads.
I don't like this technique...but if it works for you, good. I don't ask anyone to subscribe and I'm getting $300+ each month...the more premium members I get 1 month...the more I get the next month...like I stated earlier...it's like peer pressure...when a lot of people on the site are "green" with a "cool symbol" by their name, others feel the need to have that too so they don't feel left out. I find that much better than "asking" every person that registers to the site...that's rude IMHO.

[s0lidgr0und]

2200 uniques a day? Is that on the site in your signature?

I especially liked the "**GUEST ARE NOT ALLOWED TO SEE ANY THREAD TILL THEY ARE NOT A REGISTERED USER**"Or the private forum that I can view as a guest.:D

[melscamera]

not making a dime but i am spending lots of dimes to get the board running. i have adsense which isnt doing much for me the last 3 months.. we have aobut 150 users 1100 posts about 2 new users a day if we are lucky.. any ideas how to get more users and also post messages instead of just looking. i am using google adwords which doesnt seem to do anything but cost me alot of money.. any help would be appreciated

Sorry another question if i wanted to offer paid advertising (banners / links) how do you go about contacting companies who want to advertise. Do you just send them an email or what would you guys recommend ?


not making a dime but i am spending lots of dimes to get the board running. i have adsense which isnt doing much for me the last 3 months.. we have aobut 150 users 1100 posts about 2 new users a day if we are lucky.. any ideas how to get more users and also post messages instead of just looking. i am using google adwords which doesnt seem to do anything but cost me alot of money.. any help would be appreciated

[sherytiger]

Well i get around 3500 unique visitors / day and i am earning about $80 / month through my Adsense! :)

[ByG SteAm]

Ah I get around 8,000 impressions a day and make around 35 cents a day if i'm lucky.

bygforum.com & thegowforums.com combined.

[cajunboy2208]

Here is my roughly average for the month of April per day.
1000 impressions
20 ads clicked
$4.25 daily

Still very small site. Roughly 100 active members, a little over 200 in total.

[ZomgStuff]

$0.

But I have gotten about ~$300 in donations in the past 3 months. I also don't force ads and never will because I am strong against forcing ads upon the user.

[Tourmeister]

Right now, I am donation supported only. I have just over 4200 members and get about $600-700/month. I've no idea what number of unique visitors I get or any other statistic as I rarely even think about that stuff. We average about 10-15 new members per day.

The site is four years old. It started off slow and then eventually began to pick up speed. The first few years, myself and a few others spent a lot of effort promoting the site directly to other motorcycle riders we'd meet at other events or while out riding. We visited several bike shows and handed out small business cards. Once that took hold, other people started spreading the word for us.

The key to getting people to donate is two fold, service and community.

You either have to have a LOT of one of those or a good mix of the two. My site focuses heavily on the community aspect as the service side is merely providing a place where folks can get together to plan rides, trips, and other events. It is a place where they can ask questions and get good help from the other members.

The community aspect is most important to me. My site is about motorcycling, specifically Texans that ride. My number one rule is that ALL members must be courteous and respectful towards ALL other members at ALL times, no exceptions. I laid down that rule early on and I have enforced it. The VAST majority of the people that donate to my site have included a reference to that rule as the reason for them supporting my site. If folks get beat over the head by other members and the environment is hostile, why would anyone want to keep coming back, much less send you money? Enforcing the rule of respect has helped tremendously in fostering a sense of community among our users.

I do differentiate between regular users and forum supporters. There is a private forum section that only supporters can see. Here I solicit feedback and ideas. As was mentioned by someone else, this lets the supporters feel like they have some say in the vision of my site. Best of all, I really do get some fantastic feedback and suggestions! The other things I do are stuff like more PM's for registered users, use of the VB Photogallery during the supporter term, a label under the username to show that the person is a supporter, and not much else. Most of the folks are not donating for that kind of stuff, they do it out of loyalty for the site and a recognition of the time and effort that goes into the site behind the scenes.

I have things set up so that people can make one time donations or yearly donations. I do not have lifetime donations. When people donate, they get a 30 day supporter status. After that 30 days expires, so to does their supporter status and all extra perks. I have a great many people that routinely do the once a month donation. I also have a great many that have paid for one year. Lastly, I allow for people to set up automatically recurring subscriptions to make their supporter status last indefinitely. I do not make all registered users donate. This may be appropriate in some cases, but not for my site.

The key is to work the numbers. My minimum donation amount is $5/month. For most folks, that is a coffee or two at Starbucks. When other members have pointed that out to them, most see it as quite reasonable to donate a mere $5 to a site they enjoy so much. Some have actually been QUITE generous with large one time donations. However, if I could get only 1000 of my slightly more than 4000 users to donate $5/mo, I would be doing this as my regular job!

I too have long been against any form of advertising. However, the reality is that the bills have to be paid and the effort it takes to keep up a decent site is not minimal! I have approached my supporting members on this topic and they are all okay with me adding some advertising and that they would not necessarily stop donating. One option is to let the supporters opt out of the advertising. Although, most of my supporters said they would not do this even if it were an option. What is key to them is that the advertising be related to things they might actually be interested in knowing about: local bike shops, local events, places to stay on trips, etc,... For this reason, I will not be using something like Google AdSense. It will take more legwork, but I will directly solicit advertising from specific companies.

[feverhost]

I run two forums that bring in about $180/mo in adsense and roughly $50/mo with Adbrite. Music related and real estate related. 4,100 members on the Music site and about 2,000 members on the real estate site.

Always trying to get more members ;)


Tourmeister that is quite impressive. My forum has roughly the same stats as your.s. members, sign ups per day, unique hits per day.. and you kill me on advertising money. Whats your secret?

[briansol]

i thought this was the big boards forum? lol

IMO, if you're not GROSSING at LEAST $1000 a month, you aren't a big board, or you're doing something wrong (or not advertising)

[kall]

Amusingly, there's no actual criteria for 'What Makes a Big Board' as far as this Forum is concerned. ;)

[briansol]

I think common sense would point that "50 members" or "100 uniques a day" does not consist of a big board.

but what do i know...

[contemptx]

Strange, I thought Big Boards discussion would have people talking about how they reached 20k+ members etc..

I run 2 forums one has 31,000 members the other has 42,000 members

the first makes around $1,000 - $2,000 a month the other $3,000 - $4,000 a month

any board with 5,000+ members should be making atleast $500+ a month.

[soletrader]

Strange, I thought Big Boards discussion would have people talking about how they reached 20k+ members etc..

I run 2 forums one has 31,000 members the other has 42,000 members

the first makes around $1,000 - $2,000 a month the other $3,000 - $4,000 a month

any board with 5,000+ members should be making atleast $500+ a month.

Would you mind sharing us how you managed to obtain that many members? Thanks

[shaynehammy]

I cant understand adsense. Those annoying little text adds that display on sites. I cant believe people actually click them.

Seriously, its one of the mysteries of the world,

[diederik]

I don't think adsense is annoying at all. If integrated well, they will show relevant advertising for the topic/site, which will result in a higher CTR.

[kal-L]

My boards far from big, but I make about $0.11 per day from Adsense. :erm:

I started in 2 months ago and have 80 active users and 125 members.
Working on trying to generate more users.

[Twinkie]

The organization I work with, has just installed forums not long ago. Over 100,000 hits, and adfree. Though the board just ruled to have ads. The only hole in the finances was paying for vBulletin. The server was donated. It's the only thing ever donated to the organization. Money is not accepted, we usually tell them to keep it.

[oldfan]

I'd like to see some of these forums, I've noticed alot of you haven't included your urls

[Per-Aa]

15k users, most spam posts removed and users purged when inactive.

people still come in but the money from adsense is low

anyone tip for a company with banner ads perhaps ?

maybe that would make them click more :P

[Mikecp421]

Strange, I thought Big Boards discussion would have people talking about how they reached 20k+ members etc..

I run 2 forums one has 31,000 members the other has 42,000 members

the first makes around $1,000 - $2,000 a month the other $3,000 - $4,000 a month

any board with 5,000+ members should be making atleast $500+ a month.
I have almost 11k users and I purge users and we dont make near that much, we get donations and some subscriptions but with adsense I thnk google makes most of that money cause its crap. How do you make so much?

[woodysfj40]

<a href="http://forum.ih8mud.com" target="_blank">http://forum.ih8mud.com</a>

first step to any successful forum of your own is to spend lots of time studying the successes and failures of other sites....quietly keeping a pulse on other's traffic will provide you with the tools to properly make your own site successful. Despite the continued growth of mine, I still actively track a dozen other large forums to understand what they are or aren't doing to grow.

The other key is to have a site that is an extension of a passion you already have...my site began as an extension of my own passion for offroading, and I continue to participate actively both online AND thru my attendance at events....amazing how well passing out free coffee mugs and stickers and koozies can work for brand recognition.

I'm hard pressed to keep my weekly time below 40 hours...fortunately, my present job (professional offroad driver) allows me sufficient downtime to keep up.

From a $$ standpoint, my 2006 business taxes ran over $10,000...including penalties....uugh

[FatalBreeze]

i have 8000 uniques a day, and i used to make something like 9$$ dollars a month... but now i only make 0$.

[dagger77]

I have 22000 members 2200 unique a day making 5$ a day so far with AdSense. no other source of income (by the way the AdSense is not on my forum its on other site that I linked with a banner images in my forum.

because we know adding AdSense in the forum is risky!! :(

[svtsnake01]

I make $5K-$10K a month, depending on how many sponsors are renewing their advertising with me. I do poorly on Adsense for some reason, most I have made with Adsense is $1500.

Site has over 25,000 registered members.

[scoutz]

- 10k uniques a day / 80k pageviews
I make around $35 a day from popups on my mainpage (not forum) and around $10 a day from adbrite/admedian cpm banners. I hope i can do something with subscriptions in the upcomming months cause I dont like popups at all :( My stats:
Threads: 2,755, Posts: 39,658, Members: 47,539, Active Members: 11,706 and around 200-500 registrations per day. (Running on a dedicated server from softlayer, $190/month)

[gmtalk]

I make $5K-$10K a month, depending on how many sponsors are renewing their advertising with me. I do poorly on Adsense for some reason, most I have made with Adsense is $1500.

Site has over 25,000 registered members.

You would do better with some better placements. I see you did improve it by removing that annoying "please register" overlay you had on there. I am a member on your site and even with the "remember me" feature it would popover.

Better placements will improve your adsense. I changed one of my sites and went from 4k/ 5k a month to 11k/12k a month on one of my sites.

Your articles need better ad integration. It will pay out much better. If you have any questions dont hesitate to PM me. I check in here every other day.

[fly2hi]

losing

[joeychgo]

Another suggestion - try AuctionAds (http://www.vbulletin-faq.com/forum/auctionads.php).

I have found this to be very lucritive on my forums. It out performs adsense for me. (and I do ok with Adsense)

[AzzidReign]

I've tried auctionads all this month and made 10 bucks...before I tried it...I'd wake up every morning and already have 10 bucks sitting in my adsense. I know it takes time to get autction ads going but it really depends on your site as to whether you can run those and do well. People come to my site b/c they already have everything and they want to learn how to use it...so yeah...

[joeychgo]

I've tried auctionads all this month and made 10 bucks...before I tried it...I'd wake up every morning and already have 10 bucks sitting in my adsense. I know it takes time to get autction ads going but it really depends on your site as to whether you can run those and do well. People come to my site b/c they already have everything and they want to learn how to use it...so yeah...


Then it sounds like you might want to change your keywords around. I wrote an aticle about My tips for AuctionAds (http://www.vbulletin-faq.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9227). Maybe that will help you out.

[AmbitiousOne]

How do you do so well to get so many members?

Is that search engines that bring in all these uniques? or is it just the word has been spread widely?

[joeychgo]

How do you do so well to get so many members?

Is that search engines that bring in all these uniques? or is it just the word has been spread widely?

Im not sure if this was meant for me. But its a combination of things. Search engines play a big part of it, but so does promotion and word of mouth.

[Brandon Sheley]

Im not sure if this was meant for me. But its a combination of things. Search engines play a big part of it, but so does promotion and word of mouth.

don't you get a ton of your members from adwords ? seems every phrase I search has a vbfaq ad on it :)) google, msn, ask, alexa...lol


I tried auction ad's. I've made 1$ :D
I do have a few referrals, but I think it's because I run a webmaster site. I make Much more with adsense and so do most my members. Have you tried AuctionAds (http://forum.vbulletinsetup.com/f63/have-you-tried-auctionads-2638.html) ?

I think it's a great program for niche sites. I've left a small ad on one page, but I wont add much more.

I've started working with cj.com and have done well with it.
I make on average, $40 a day with all my sites.

[jawatkin]

Would you mind sharing us how you managed to obtain that many members? Thanks

I think that most forum owners with that many users would love to know ourselves exactly what the 'perfect storm' was to make our forums so successful, so we could replicate it over and over! :)

[Paul M]

We trialled Auction Ads in our footer (which only made about $30 a month on adsense) and it made us almost $120 the first month, great we thought. However, that soon dropped each month since - until this month - we barely had $4 in the first 10 days.

[frendzinc]

Well on my small board
i make $200 per month some time it goes 250$
& minimum it goes to $170 till now..

[wrestlesomnia]

I make nothing. I get about a thousand posts a day. I have adsense ads but so far, ive had it for a week and 21 clicks have gotten me 2 dollars :\

[Pandemix]

I make about $15 a month on my forum that has about 2,000 posts. These are not google ads or anything, mostly sponsorship and subscription purchases.

[jarosciak]

I make nothing. I get about a thousand posts a day. I have adsense ads but so far, ive had it for a week and 21 clicks have gotten me 2 dollars :\


That is exactly my experience.
3 Google ads, one at the top, two below the first post and out of over 20 thousand pageviews and over 1000 posts a day I get maybe (on a good day) 5-6 clicks, which makes me (on a good day) one dollar. I never made more than 30$ a month from this particular forum.

I tried everything already, different sizes, colors, placement and styles of ads and nothing seems to work, people simply ignore google ads on my forum.

Then I tried auction ads, people clicked them, but no one ever bought anything. After a week and not a single cent I turned it off.

So, ok, it took me a long time, but now, after well over two years, I realized there is no profit running a forum and I am running it just for fun, while paying all the expenses from my own packet.

I do not even want to think about monetizing it anymore.

[wrestlesomnia]

^Yeah pretty much, We need some way to get the profits rolling in.

[joluis]

I have about 10K unique visits every day and more than 300K users every month. 1.5 million of page webs and i only have adsense in my forums.

I have 12000 registered users and 180000 posts.

What could be my earnings with this statics?. What do you think?. ( Only to know if i'm doing it bad or good).

[jarosciak]

Depends what is your forum about, but I would guess, you get somewhere between 5-10 dollars a day, if you're as unlucky as I am :)

--------------- Added at 10:49 ---------------

Btw. it's weird that you have 12 thousand reg.users and only 180k posts. I have only 3 thousand users, but 250k posts. It looks like you should give your members more incentive to post.

[gforce75]

I don't have a big forum, but I make tons less on my forum than with websites. Me personally, I never click on forums with ads because the content I'm looking for is in the forum or I hit the back button. Other than that, it just all depends on what you do.

[joluis]

Depends what is your forum about, but I would guess, you get somewhere between 5-10 dollars a day, if you're as unlucky as I am :)

--------------- Added at 10:49 ---------------

Btw. it's weird that you have 12 thousand reg.users and only 180k posts. I have only 3 thousand users, but 250k posts. It looks like you should give your members more incentive to post.

I think i have active about 3k or 4k members. 10 dollars / day is good ?

[gforce75]

Sounds good average territory. With 3 sites I run getting only 200 hits a day combined brings me in 10 bucks a day. Click thru % is 7.39

[DivisionByZero]

I wrote a mod for pixel advertising, similar to http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ for a guy about a year ago who reports about $100,000 annually in pixel ad revenue. I mean, they ARE attractive and mesmerising to the end-user. I find myself looking closely at the ads on that site from time to time .

[iogames]

Man! everybody scares me... I doing my boards to get rich! :D

[cyclone-uk]

Man! everybody scares me... I doing my boards to get rich! :D

Well you will either get rich or die trying :-) not many forums that have made people rich at all, the average big-board probably earns around $600-$800, there are forums that earn more infact way more but there very few and far between.

[MRGTB]

I think part of the problem is, over the years internet users have wised up to Adsense banners and avoid clicking them much more than they used to do by mistake.

[cash7c3]

modmymoto.com and modmyiphone.com

how much do they make? no enough . . . need to pursue alternatives to adsense

[MRGTB]

To be honest, I ran a 4 page website a while ago using html pages. And had much better results in getting clicks, even though my forum has many more pages to get clicks from.

I really do think if a person is setting up vBulletin purely to try and make money from adsense, you making a fatal mistake and should instead go the multiple website option instead. I personally don't think vBulletin is good were adsense is concerned.

[Jafo232]

I myself am a bit surprised at some of the posts here. I am currently doing some contract work for someone who has what qualifies as a big board so I decided to swing in here for any ideas as far as optimization.

I run several small boards and they make more $$ in adsense than what most of you big boarders in here report. I have one board that probably gets 3-400 uniques a day and it averages about $4-5 a day alone.

I think one of the problems with Adsense is that people just throw it up there and expect it to work. You have to be creative and test your ad placements and layout constantly.

Use CHANNELS! Make sure your ads are relevant, if not, start using the adsense filter to get those out, and also read more about section targeting. Make sure advertisers know how to use adsense to place ads directly on your site.

I just find it funny that most of the time I am looking for more traffic, and yet here I come to a place where traffic is not an issue (in comparison) and yet obviously some of you are not doing the fundamental stuff right.

For those of you looking to perform better with your adsense, let me be the first to recommend this free forum which is practically the defacto standard in adsense conversation, and even has someone from the adsense team as a member:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum89/

[dd4w2000]

dont make nearly enough for the time i put into it. there are some people who get lucky and some that dont.
good luck anyway

[tormodg]

I have a community that's separated into a content-oriented portal and a forum. The monthly income is about $1,000 from various channels, and only 10% comes from the forums although it gets 50% of the traffic. It simply is hard to convert from forum pages alone unless you have a topic that naturally makes people want to click on ads, I guess.

[Adult SEO]

Hi there!

I have a forum that I have been testing with to find the best converting setup for the past 2-3 years now and it seems that I have finally found the best solutions to convert a forum, little to no matter what traffic, into Google AdSense clicks and revenue!

The URL is http://www.scooterhulp.com/

The CTR is 9%! You may know the average CTR of forums is aprox. 2-3% so this is really a high CTR for a standard forum.

The CTR has been aprox. 1 - 2.5% on average with other setups.

The Scooter Hulp forum receives aprox. 1000 unique visitors per day.

Best Regards,
Jan Jaap

[Digma]

Never noticed this topic.. We're doing around 75,000 - 85,000 pageviews a day (not HITS :P) created by about 4,500 - 5,000 uniques, between 1,500- 2,400 posts a day (depends on the day) and only poor a little (for me acceptable) amount of money into it. So I am not making money out of it, but that's for various reasons.

This is just the forum. Since I closed the main site about a year ago due to lack of time (stats were about 1.5 of what they are now back then).

[wickland]

I really don't have a big board, big forum but maybe 150 members, 130 page views - 15 unique visitors a day, 1-3 member logins - 1-3 posts per day and I'm making about $1/day in Adsense revenues and a few bucks here and there selling ad space.

I am under, but progressing. The forum has been up about 3 months and I've probably gained half of the money I spent on this forum software. I cannot imagine how much money I would be making if I had 1000 unique visits a day.

[expatdirectory]

I think that in the end you have to play the long game to make money.

I got the money together for my vbulletin and hosting from my main site (I run a job section and this seems to pull the most cash). The forums seem pretty slow to generate funds but I put this down to the myriad of chat forums on which people now spread themselves. I think it is worth remebering that if you are not unique, why would anyone want to join?

From a forum only perspective, the revenue generation through ads is fairly poor. I put this down to the staitc placement of ads, this allows the users to become ad blind and consequently, you lose clicks.

Maybe someone should write an random ad placer which posts a specific ad format to differant locations.... time or cookie driven. If someone does build this, please PM me so I can upload it lol:D oh yeh... dont forgot to mention where you got the idea from, I could use the Unuque hits lol;)

As for how much I specifically make.... I still hold down a day job but there is some left over after paying for everything. :(

[rin]

I once was making 20 Euro per day with ~5000 Uniques. Thats long ago and I currently just make 2 to 3 dollars a day when I get lucky. :D

[ByG SteAm]

I am currently losing money too. I've spend a couple thousand dollars easily over the past 3 years or so of my forums, only recently have i actually started to try and earn some of that back in ads and donations.

after YPN money and donations are figured in, i'm still probably losing around $140 a month on average for this year. hopefully that will change soon


If you have spent that much money on your website...How about you invest in a template?!

[gforce75]

Ya, most people in forum have become ad bling. Maybe use piture banners rather than text? I make money from my websites. I made so little with the forum, I keep it ad free and as hobby. Do you guys think it's wise to do images? Good thing is now google lets you change the ads from the site. You don't have to change the forum codes all day.

[Frames]

Sorry for my bad english :D

I win only to pay the cost for the servers:

18 dedicated servers:

1 db
1 ads
1 flashcomm
1 backups
6 www
6 media
2 thumbs

Dual processor quad cores, 4 gb ram, 15k scsi

120.000 uniques
Near 1.000 in alexa :p

[Analogpoint]

Sorry for my bad english :D
That's ok
I earn only to pay the cost for the servers:

[Awjvail]

Sorry for my bad english :D

I win only to pay the cost for the servers:

18 dedicated servers:

1 db
1 ads
1 flashcomm
1 backups
6 www
6 media
2 thumbs

Dual processor quad cores, 4 gb ram, 15k scsi

120.000 uniques
Near 1.000 in alexa :p

18 dedicated servers; wow. That must cost a fortune to run.
What are you running? Google? :P

[Chance4Today]

Gezzz I am making nada on mine but still trying to learn how to do everything. Guess it just takes time and patience and probably a little knowledge of how to do things which is my excuse :)

[SuperJETT]

Members: 2,876
Threads: 26,782
Posts: 373,079
~750 posts/day
>1000 uniques/day

We were running on donations alone, then recently switched to Auctionads at the top and Adbrite at the bottom. Adbrite is more for stats and to allow one member to advertise/support the site, and I only do CPM ads instead of CPC since few people will actually click anyway.

Auctionads is rocking though, we're dedicated to a specific sport, so it's super easy to target our member's buying habits with the AA keywords. It started out ok, and has built and built. We're already over $350 through the 17th of this month.

Every forum is going to be different though.

[DarthCoder]

started a new forum 1-2 months ago.

has 12k Unique per day. ++++ing new adsense rules gives me measly 7$ daily.
I am setting up sponsor space and gonna sell it.

[dreads]

i am making some cash :D
$XXX>100 a month :D

[WFZ]

?xx per month.

Just from Paid Subscriptions! :D

[TundraSoul]

I have many properties that earn anywhere from 500 to 5 digits a month just in AdSense. Income is basically based on traffic, the more traffic the more likely users will click on Ads. It also helps to have a unique website that Google views as valuable so their ads will return a higher CPC than general websites.

[baerwurz]

started a new forum 1-2 months ago.

has 12k Unique per day. ++++ing new adsense rules gives me measly 7$ daily.
I am setting up sponsor space and gonna sell it.
Such a new forum and so many visitors?

Sounds great, what is your forum about, want to make the same but in german language. ;-)

[sinucello]

Hi,

banners and Adsense cover my hosting costs but me and some other people are working several hours a day to keep the forum running. Not only technically, most time is needed to maintain a friendly atmosphere and to help users.

So the forum has to return enough money to pay us theses hours with a rate that is comparable to a normal salary. To achieve this, we have to work and be creative. Extract the valuable information and present it in a more usable way, make use of the unique knowledge and experience that is bundled in your forum. That`s the real value of a forum. Details depend on the topic and details of your forum.

all the best,
Sacha

[Gharibe]

Forums will not really make money

[WFZ]

Forums will not really make money

What are you talking about?

Of course you make money from forums, depends how you earn it,

[nyunyu]

If you look at my forum [HERE], I use Adsense Deep Integration. With my average of 140 visits per day, 82 Unique Visits, 42.86% increase in visitors, roughly my clicks ranging from $0.25 - $0.50 per day. I am now waiting for my first month revenue. The site was a reborn of my previous site but in a new domain. previous site gave me $100 in 2 month :P

My current forum has 97 members which 95 of them is an active members, 2806 posts to date and has been officially online mid november. So far, the method of marketing is via affiliate websites and AdWords. I just hoping that i could repeat the success of my previous site.

[jasculs]

$xxx to $xxxx a month on paid subscriptions

[TECK]

18 dedicated servers; wow. That must cost a fortune to run.
What are you running? Google? :P

What do you mean a fortune? This is a semi-light web cluster for a big board. :)
It is a flat price up to 22 or 48 servers. Probably it will cost him something like 600$/month for his connection.
He is doing collocation for sure and 600$/month is the price of 2 decent servers. ;)
Collocation is the way to go when you run a big board, you will save a ton of money.

[WFZ]

$xxx to $xxxx a month on paid subscriptions

Thats awesome.

I make about ?xx a month from Paid Subscriptions.

[Rob1986]

Not making much with my current forum. I used to make $xxx to $xxxx on my old forum.

[EricGT]

My site currently receives visits from about 1,000,000 unique ip numbers a day. We receive 55,000 or so new messages a week. The site started out as a hobby and it has only been in the last three years or so that I began to commercialize it. It is making decent money now, but I suspect that its earning potential is much higher.

google won't let me run Adsense, due to the fact that the topic of my site is firearms related. What are some other avenues I can follow to monetize the site? Are affiliate programs like Commission Junction worth the trouble? Any advice would be appreciated. Eric

[jasculs]

$xxx to $xxxx a month on paid subscriptions

Thats awesome.

I make about ?xx a month from Paid Subscriptions.

Yeah...it's really good...however I'm not really a big board either. I have:

1,925 members

1,595 threads

10,141 posts

So I'm probably still a small board. However most of my active users are "Premium Paid" members.

Sorry for posting in this thread even though I'm not a "big board", but my board is generating income.

[silver surfer]

My site currently receives visits from about 1,000,000 unique ip numbers a day. We receive 55,000 or so new messages a week. The site started out as a hobby and it has only been in the last three years or so that I began to commercialize it. It is making decent money now, but I suspect that its earning potential is much higher.

google won't let me run Adsense, due to the fact that the topic of my site is firearms related. What are some other avenues I can follow to monetize the site? Are affiliate programs like Commission Junction worth the trouble? Any advice would be appreciated. Eric

hi there
i think i have a nice suggestion to you :)
check this out, and if you like it it would be nice if you use my *** Refferal link removed *** link to make ur account ;)


*** Refferal link removed ***

i just signed in on 2 days ago.

My Forum Stats:

Members: 26349 | Staff: 22 (4 admins, 7 s-mods, 11 mods)
Threads: 13027 | Posts: 48712 | Private Messages: 14410
Forum Began: 25-07-2007 | Days Since: 156 | Posts per Day: 312.26
Last 24 Hours: Threads: 84 | Posts: 391 | Members: 311

i earned in 24 hours $12.86 from one banner and one footer advert :) ima curious whats gonna be in 1 month :D

around 100K page views ( and ads ;) )
now YOUR site will give you a lot of money, i hope :D
they dont care if you use adsense or limit you to 3 ads per page... :)

CHEERS !!!

edit
ok ok...i see they removed my refferal link, but i hope its OK to give u at least the site : http://www.adbrite.com

[EricGT]

hi there
i think i have a nice suggestion to you :)
check this out, and if you like it it would be nice if you use my *** Refferal link removed *** link to make ur account ;)


*** Refferal link removed ***

i just signed in on 2 days ago.

My Forum Stats:

Members: 26349 | Staff: 22 (4 admins, 7 s-mods, 11 mods)
Threads: 13027 | Posts: 48712 | Private Messages: 14410
Forum Began: 25-07-2007 | Days Since: 156 | Posts per Day: 312.26
Last 24 Hours: Threads: 84 | Posts: 391 | Members: 311

i earned in 24 hours $12.86 from one banner and one footer advert :) ima curious whats gonna be in 1 month :D

around 100K page views ( and ads ;) )
now YOUR site will give you a lot of money, i hope :D
they dont care if you use adsense or limit you to 3 ads per page... :)

CHEERS !!!

edit
ok ok...i see they removed my refferal link, but i hope its OK to give u at least the site : http://www.adbrite.com

I appreciate the information. I just tested Clicksor and even with adult ad content turned off, they were pushing ads for things like penis enlargement and adult escort services. It was disappointing. If it is allowed, you can PM me the referal link and I will give you credit, if I use the service. Thanks. Eric

[silver surfer]

there...i pmed you.

CHEERS and happy new year to all !!! :D

[TECK]

My site currently receives visits from about 1,000,000 unique ip numbers a day. We receive 55,000 or so new messages a week. The site started out as a hobby and it has only been in the last three years or so that I began to commercialize it. It is making decent money now, but I suspect that its earning potential is much higher.

google won't let me run Adsense, due to the fact that the topic of my site is firearms related. What are some other avenues I can follow to monetize the site? Are affiliate programs like Commission Junction worth the trouble? Any advice would be appreciated. Eric
Eric, from your current site stats, you should run your own software to advertise. Adsense is a very poor income producer and that comes from many experienced marketeers. If you want to learn new money making tips, hang on shoemoney's or John Chow's websites... they will teach you many great things.

While you read new things, install OpenAds (http://www.openads.org/). It is capable of serving billions of ads per month. The performance is dependent on CPU power, amount of RAM and disk speed of server you currently have.

[EricGT]

I am using the precursor to OpenAds. I just haven't gotten around to upgrading. I have a large number of advertisers now. I would like to explore other revenue streams though. Something like AdSense could be run concurrently to my current advertising system, without cutting into its earnings potential. I will check out the sites you mentioned. Thanks again for the tips.

[kmike]

My site currently receives visits from about 1,000,000 unique ip numbers a day.
Am I reading this correctly, 1 million unique IP's per day??? That's a crapload of traffic, you should be swimming in the ad money!

[EricGT]

Am I reading this correctly, 1 million unique IP's per day??? That's a crapload of traffic, you should be swimming in the ad money!


Actually, I screwed that up. I've never checked unique ip's in the tracking software before last week and when I did, I thought it showed an average of 32,000,000 unique ip's a month. It is actually 3,200,000 and change, which really isn't the same thing.:D I guess a 103,000 unique ip's a day is nothing to sneeze at. In my defense, I use Extreme Tracking and their stats are a bit confusing.:o. Eric

[zeropaid]

My site currently receives visits from about 1,000,000 unique ip numbers a day. We receive 55,000 or so new messages a week. The site started out as a hobby and it has only been in the last three years or so that I began to commercialize it. It is making decent money now, but I suspect that its earning potential is much higher.

google won't let me run Adsense, due to the fact that the topic of my site is firearms related. What are some other avenues I can follow to monetize the site? Are affiliate programs like Commission Junction worth the trouble? Any advice would be appreciated. Eric

By far the best program on Commission Junction is eBay. You send visitors to ebay and get paid for whatever they buy or if they create a new account you get $25. I make waay more from ebay than I do from adsense. For example I am running both adsense and ebay through ZinText (http://www.zintext.com) on my forum archives and I do 3x more with ebay.

[vNew]

HEhe, I feel very lucky!
With 0 SE traffic, literally 0.

We are making about $4-5K monthly.

This includes PPC ads, Chitika, Subscriptions and paid banners spots.

We could be making more if we have a salesman for the banners and paid text links.

Let me guess. An investment or financial site?

Regards
vN

[basketmen]

Am I reading this correctly, 1 million unique IP's per day??? That's a crapload of traffic, you should be swimming in the ad money!
i think its wrong, maybe its 1.000.000 page views a day i have seen it in few big boards

why i am can say that? because i have seen yahoo.com statistic just about 3.000.000 unique perday two years ago

[EricGT]

i think its wrong, maybe its 1.000.000 page views a day i have seen it in few big boards

why i am can say that? because i have seen yahoo.com statistic just about 3.000.000 unique perday two years ago

I addressed that above. Eric

[FRANKTHETANK 2]

i run a street bike site and a gaming site the gaming site make at least 100 dollars a month and my bike site doubles it and there both 600 members or smaller

[Digma]

Running a messageboard with 14K registered users, 1.5 million post in 40K threads and have an average of about 3,500 absolute unique visitors every day. I saw someone (on one of the first pages of this thread) make the remark that you should make a fortune with that. Apparently he knows how, so show me the way. ;)

I run a messageboard in the gaming industry and I don't earn a dime from it. Even though I have been offered 1-2 CPM rates by some respective ad-companies. So why do I don't earn a dime? Main reason behind that, from where I am standing, is because when you get an offer from an ad-company nowadays they only have a US-orientated inventory and only pay for the US visitors. Which at my site is only 4-5%. So my main problem is that about 75% is from Europe (55% UK & Ireland).

[NavS]

I don't own a big-board, but am a co-admin on a semi-big board i think, it has 25,000 members (just pruned) and about 130-180 posts a day. We make our money purely by subscription to our 'members section'

amount edited...asked by owner

You have 25,000 users that make 130 posts a day each or all together?!?! That seems a little off... I only have about 170 active users that make like ~1300 posts a day... but all together...

To answer the question, $0. I have no ads anywhere.

[azn_romeo_4u]

I was making 1500 a month before tribal fusion just drop dead for some reason. T_T

[kartik786]

I make about ?xx a month from Paid Subscriptions.


What exactly is a PAID subscription ? cud neone explain.. i am a noob.