Making money with a forum

I've had experiences with forums and social sites, you need a huge audience and a lot of content to be profitable in the long run, not to mention it needs to get to a point where it can be 95% self-sustaining, before that there really isn't quick money to be made with this.

Another important thing is don't depend on ads to monetize, the best practice is to monetize using a subscription based system in place, but again, you need to have some authority before that happens.

No one wil buy subscriprion if there is no activity in the forum.
Well after some time when there is a lot of people on the forum, i could make a subscription an option.
 
Op go with hot niches if you want to be successful or go with adult, hacking etc forums.

My niche is very a good niche. If its a adult or hacking forum, there would be too many spammers.
 
Message Forums are not easy to monetize, especially from scratch. Sure popular ones like this and others seem to make endless money, its just that. Activity attracts activity, generating the activity is the hard part. Doing it on a small niche, just won't generate the activity you need and trying to cover a large niche, someone already has it and since they have activity they will attract it.

That being said, if you purchased a message board, You can go back and edit old post and place strategic link in the posts that rank to generate revenue from affiliate marketing etc. No one will have a clue you did that, or change old posts with SEO and make them rank higher then they currently do to drive traffic.

I seen one message forum get 30% of their traffic from one silly post.
 
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So lets say if i got 20000 views a day on my forum, how much money would i make if i only used google ads to monetize?
 
So lets say if i got 20000 views a day on my forum, how much money would i make if i only used google ads to monetize?
You could look around $200-$400 a day with that many page views and a small click rate just through ads depending on CPM and CTR, so in the long run it can definitely be a very profitable business
 
You could look around $200-$400 a day with that many page views and a small click rate just through ads depending on CPM and CTR, so in the long run it can definitely be a very profitable business
You could look around $200-$400 a day with that many page views and a small click rate just through ads depending on CPM and CTR, so in the long run it can definitely be a very profitable business

$200-400 a day on 20k page views, i doubt it, maybe 200k
 
You could look around $200-$400 a day with that many page views and a small click rate just through ads depending on CPM and CTR, so in the long run it can definitely be a very profitable business


$200-400 a day on 20k page views, i doubt it, maybe 200k

I know a guy that has 3000 pageviews a day (a blog) he makes 100 dollars a day.
 
I have a friend in Thailand who created a forum for buddhist amulets. Moderate traffic, and the advertisers' ad banners on it bring him $15-$20k a year. I think profitability depends on the niche, and the amount of users you can get. Outranking sites in SERPS is secondary-profit is all that matters.
 
I have a forum and it ranks well for any thread. I can make a thread with the title "How to rank high in search engine using an online forum" and the next day it will be as high as no 1 for that.
 
I have a forum and it ranks well for any thread. I can make a thread with the title "How to rank high in search engine using an online forum" and the next day it will be as high as no 1 for that.

Do you make money with adsense? If so, how much?
 
Despite popular belief with entering a niche and making a forum, it's extremely difficult in existing niches because competitors have swiped the market with something already there.

Now if a new video game came out you could easily make a forum, but growth is a race with this type of website so always remain at the top or it isn't worth risking effort into low ranking communities as loads of volume is necessary to break even.

Now if that game ever dies, all your work would be for nothing. Find the right niche or stick to broad evergreen portfolios.
 
Despite popular belief with entering a niche and making a forum, it's extremely difficult in existing niches because competitors have swiped the market with something already there.

Now if a new video game came out you could easily make a forum, but growth is a race with this type of website so always remain at the top or it isn't worth risking effort into low ranking communities as loads of volume is necessary to break even.

Now if that game ever dies, all your work would be for nothing. Find the right niche or stick to broad evergreen portfolios.

This niche is evergreen, and will never die.
 
go for a forum.. while doing so make sure that the forum posters talk about your topic/niche 90% of times (max 10% can be off-topic).

let me give you few numbers.. just started a forum for a client of mine (very specific niche). 1 month later we have ~500 posts/replys (can't remember the number of threads) and already have 25-50 users/day from organic search + almost 600 keywords in seach console.

the most difficult is to stay on the topic.

gl
 
there are many ways such as social media (buysellads) or solo ads to email newsletter to your users.
 
Do you make money with adsense? If so, how much?

not much as I have very few active members at the moment and I don't have adsense on that forum until it gets more members.

I would not worry about how to make money from the forum at this stage, first work out how to get traffic. Obviously you need members too. Once you get the traffic and activity then worry about monetizing it, I'm sure that will be the nicest part....
 
Lately I have been thinking of a forum to create, and I have a perfect niche that have not been used. im just thinking if there is any money in owning forum, or if i should just create a blog around this niche?
The reason im thinking of a forum is because, other people will help me create content.

If you have passion for this go ahead and do it, here is what I do, I have a couple Xenforo forums just like this onc, my traffic is free and from Facebook, it's politics related, it's easy to get members and monetize, it will take a while, but if you're passionate just stick to it and do it, don't monetize your forum until you have 1000 members and 100 daily posts.

Facebook traffic is easy to get, simply write great content on your forum and share to groups on Facebook, don't spam and create valuable content people want to read, setup the Facebook login on your forum, with groups above 10,000 members you should get 1-5 members for every link you share, and these are members who love your forum and will sign up to post and read your content.

For monetizing you can use native ads and adsense or literally any other ad network.
 
Are there companies working in that niche? Are there people buying things related to that niche? If so, you can generate money from several ways.
1) The traditional AdSense ads.
2) Have companies buying ad space in your forum;
3) Have merchant/sponsor accounts for companies to promote their products (you charge a monthly fee). Don't allow promotion on signatures, or selling.
4) You can set up an affiliate system in-forum. Imagine that your forum is about flowers and people are talking about fertilizers, so whenever they talk about a fertilizer that exists on amazon, it will automatically create a link to the product, if people buy, you will make them moneys.
5) Merchandising, white branding/forum brand products. If the products around your niche aren't very VERY expensive and hard to source, you could create a brand with products that people usually want or need, or a product that it's too overpriced. If it is something like space exploration, you could stick to the old way and do the common mug, shirt, stickers (this is more helpful than anyone thinks) pen (or others, but you get the idea).
6) Grow your socials and have sponsored posts there.
7) If you feel greedy enough and you have a lot of golden content, create a paid part on your forum, I don't like it, I don't advise it, but in some forums, it can work. Ferrarichat pulls it off, but people there aren't counting pennies, aren't they?
 
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