messikecil wrote:My forum subject is general and my goal ofcourse to have a big forum and i can earn money from this
General boards rarely work.
People search the internet for experts or people of a like minded interest. They will naturally be drawn to large boards on a specific subject as that's where all of the knowledge is.
If your aim is to make money you're barking up the wrong tree. Things like google ads will usually cover your server costs and maybe give you a little bit extra. You can make larger sums if you have sponsors but again they will be much more interested if the board is on a specific subject and you have high traffic.
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You need to generate unique content! A general board will not work. FB has taken that domain.
We have been up and running for 12 years soon. It took 7 years for the forum to take off.
Now we have 650K posts and 56K members, generating 10K posts per month, and the members and content is drawing a lot of sponsors to our site. The site is an absolute niche-site, and we have the experts among our members.
We are using Google Adsense ("hidden" at the bottom of the pages) and we are selling adspace to companies fitting into our scheme.
The adspace size is the same for all and they pay a certain amount for 12 months, all the same, no exceptions. We are not selling adspace based on adclicks or adviews. We are solely basing the stats on pageviews and unique visitors. We dont care about analyzing about adblockers and such.
We also advertise in the press and we are sponsoring local "festivals" within our scheme and they put up our large banner on theire ground in exchange.
The money we generate is mainly spent for the servers (3), security, coding, new features, related domains (our network contains 30+ domains). We are paying a coder doing all the PHP-stuff and our own customizations.
We also buy stuff to give away in monthly competitions.
Maybe some day it will generate more money then we can spend, but for the time being almost everything is invested into the site.
Last edited by Holger on Thu Apr 23, 2015 6:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"The good news is hell is just the product of a morbid human imagination.
The bad news is, whatever humans can imagine, they can usually create." - Harmony Cobel
Hi all , i[m pablo from argentina , living in Brno , i have to say I like what I read and seems amazing toughts , and I Tought I had a Gold mine with 10000 users for the Cirtoen C4 Club !
Start setting up Google Adsense ("hidden"), a month ago , not set up yet , No selling adspace yet , no adclicks or adviews.
We dont care about analyzing about adblockers and such yet. The little money we generate is mainly spent for the meeting I work for free , as I started this forum with 3 colleages back in 2008.
I' m doing all the PHP-stuff and using only good phpbb customizations. Maybe some day it will generate more money then we can spend, but for the time being almost everything is invested into the site.
I'm a bit intrigued. Most of you don't put ads on your forum and has set it up as a hobby so what makes you think paying for domain is worth it?
I have made passionate forums before for fun. But all the time I used forumotion free forum services which was good enough for me (not trying to promote or something lol).
If your hobby was woodworking, you would probably buy a saw and not go down to the local woodshop and borrow one each time you wanted to cut something.
hobbies usually require some investment of money and not just time.
domain names and hosting are so cheap these days that there is little reason not to take advantage of the benefits of having your own.