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.

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.

modmymoto.com and modmyiphone.com

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

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.

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/

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

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.

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

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).

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.

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. :(

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

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

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.

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

That's ok

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

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 :)

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.

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.

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

?xx per month.

Just from Paid Subscriptions! :D

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.

Such a new forum and so many visitors?

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

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

Forums will not really make money

What are you talking about?

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

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.

$xxx to $xxxx a month on paid subscriptions

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.

Thats awesome.

I make about ?xx a month from Paid Subscriptions.

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

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

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.

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

there...i pmed you.

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

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. 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.

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.

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!