Bread n' Butter: Is Your Site Your Livelihood?

[Digital Jedi]

Something interesting occured to me today. Whenever vBulletin problems arise, I often hear people state how awful the event is for, at least one reason being, livelihoods are involved. Which got me thinking. Do you run, or do you know of a lot of sites which are more than a hobby, or means to generate a little extra revenue? The statement is often made as if to suggest that the vast majority of vBulletin license holders are holders for primarily business reasons. And yet, anecdotally, I can only think of a handful of forums I've run into over the years where it was a primary source of income. Where you would be devastated, rather than inconvenienced, if your forum went offline for too long. Most people I know, or have helped, or have visited run forums either as a supplement to their existing business, or as a hobby. How many people are there actually putting all their eggs into one forum software basket?

Now, I understand that a lot of people invest money in SEO solutions. But I always presumed this was to make their site worth running, successful, rather than making it be the primary support of their financial income.

[nhawk]

I have several clients where while it may not be their primary source of income, their sites are a substantial part of their income. I know for a fact one of my clients brings in somewhere in the 30k per year range from his site from manufacturer sponsors and access fees. I now instantly if something goes wrong with his server and drop everything to correct the problem.

[Morrus]

Yup. Mine's my full time job. Has been for years.

[BirdOPrey5]

Probably the people who use the software as their primary income, or any serious portion thereof, are the most vocal about issues because they have the most to lose.

Obviously as a percentage of license holders go those making big money off it are the exceptions, not the rules.

[DivisionByZero]

I can tell you this for certain.... in 12 years, i've seen a billion boards go up in hopes of overnight success, yet inevitably end up as either weekend hobbies or abandoned altogether.

Because yes, mainstream social media is murdering forums. someone needs to completely rewrite the concept of forums from a standalone product to a big facebook extension.