Your missing the value in forums completely
Once you've developed that niches community you have all the users of that niches data.
Take a carp fishing forum - I'm not involved in this niche but run forums in other niches all my forums are public forums
all links users post have affiliate ID's added on, (if its amazon it gets amazon aff id, if eBay eBay aff id, super retarded bollie company, super retarded bollie company aff id)
I also have username, email, real name, mobile number (for 2 factor

) and address, from their address I've looked at their post code and can work out the average earnings or someone at that postcode and their nearest fisheries.
I can direct the narrative if I don't like a certain fishery I can encourage the forum to have a negative vibe about that fishery, maybe a rumor gets set off about how they sold off their big fish or there's a disease infecting their fish.
Maybe I'm looking to diversify and buy myself a fishery (never do this by the way - more pain than its worth), I have a captive audience my catch reports are going to be flooded by my fishery, any negative reports get ghosted.
forums are incredibly valuable if you can get them active but my good you will give yourself multiple personality disorder getting one going.
Wanna see the most valuable forum in the UK?
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/ (yes its the face of most of the bitcoin scams - well Elon may have taken his place.)
He actually sued facebook and won! He's a bit of a knob but his wife is smoking hot!
When people in the UK want advice about money they go to that forum! Imagine how much you could make from all the financial affiliate programs!!
by the way they hate spammers and its the hardest forum ever to market on getting links or anything to stick is a nightmare! - that's years of experience there!
I often use MoneySavingExpert as to what I want my forums to become.