Does the average forum make money?
 

How many forums actually have good income. What kind of numbers for membership do you need to start making money? any other comments would be appreciated as well.

I would use a membership called a VIP or something simular, and you want members to think its worth paying for...

I would say most forums lose money - simply because they are not run for profit, but because the owner has a major interest in the subject - i.e. for most people they are a hobby.

That was my thought, that most were for hobbys. Do you know of many that make a profit?

Yes, there are many that do that as well.

where does the profit come from? mostly from advertisers?

this is totally my opinion...but i'd say the ones that make good profits are from subscribers rather than advertisers...though i've only really been on about 100 forums...and i know there is way more than that...most of the ones i've seen don't have a lot of advertising...which leads me to believe most that make good money use subscriptions (and the fact i'm an admin on one that makes a lot of money through subs...that might bias me too :))

why do people pay to sub.? what do they get....there are so many free forums they could go to.

Thanks for the help.

If there is something special on your fourms, that guests, or anything that looks interesting on your fourms. Members would suscribe to a subscription, This could come in handy if many members know about it and you have a decent size forum.

Hi,

if you run a forum, you normally have one or more topic of interest your users share. If you have a lot of users that share the same interests, you are interesting for advertisers. Listen carefully to what your users say. Do they recommend products? If so, try to find out if you can sell those products or try to find partners offering those products that pay a commission. Offer premium memberships where you offer useful things with a real benefit only to the people that pay for it. Over time, you`ll gain valualble content from your users. Encourage them to produce content and then market the content. Extract the most valuable stuff and create (e)books out of it.

Make your community stronger by organizing real-life meetings. If the community -feeling ist strong enough, set up a merchandising shop (spreadshirt).

There are lots of possibilities to make money out of a community. Just take care that your useres don`t have the impression that money is more important to you than the users :-). If you are successfull, give your community something back.

Ciao,
Sacha