Is anyone making money with discussion Forums?

[Ray123]

I'm right at the beginning of my Forum journey.

When I do start my forum I would like to earn enough from it to cover annual costs.

Obviously, eventually, I would like to earn more than my annual costs but that is not a deal breaker.

Reading through the posts here, making money is secondary for most people and the pleasure comes from running a thriving community is an area of personal interest.

So is nobody here making more money than they put in?

If so can you share a little about your forum and journey, more for inspiration than anything else.

Thanks

 

[Tracy]

It would be interesting if there was somewhere that was able to generate statistics on how long new forums end up being "live".
No data to back it up, but I have a feeling that usually within 12-18 months those sites that are brought up end up going the way of the dinosaur once they aren't getting the traffic that the admin/site owner was unrealistically expecting.

As I said, several times, it takes hard work and time.

Yes.... and as I mention above... very few of those "new sites" end up with the "time" as the folks bringing them to life have unreasonable expectations of sudden popularity and inbound money. When they don't become successful within that 12-18 month time period they give up on it, and several of those sites I am familiar with you could tell that the owner was putting the time in as they were creating regular content.

Even with hard work and time it does not necessarily equate to a site being successful.
Some of the longer lived "new" sites that I've seen are those hobby ones that the site admin/owner run them for their benefit/joy and the public has the use of them also. But those sites are usually also not worried about "making money" as their owners look at them as a hobby/labor of love/resource for the community.

Can bringing a new forum online be done and it eventually generate noticeable income? Yep. The thing is that those "winners" are few and far in between. And anyone looking at bringing a forum online needs to realize that like ANY business... even if you work your tail off and put lots of money into it, it's liable to fail.

 

[Nomad]

No data to back it up, but I have a feeling that usually within 12-18 months

I think most people run forums just for one year. You will need a lot of money to renew domain, hosting, software and add ons. If your community fails to earn in one year and if you cannot fund it through your pockets, you end up shutting it down in the first year.

 

[Tracy]

I think most people run forums just for one year. You will need a lot of money to renew domain, hosting, software and add ons. If your community fails to earn in one year and if you cannot fund it through your pockets, you end up shutting it down in the first year.

And that's my point. Most will only give the first year of "hosting" into it... when it starts costing additional monies and they aren't seeing any forward movement that they think they should they simply let it wither on the vine.
My site gets very few posts after several years of being in existence. But it DOES get a lot of traffic for the content that I have been creating. And that, for me, is the main thing. I honestly started it because it gave me a place to post my stuff in a format I was comfortable with and to make it available for free to others. It also allows others, if they so desire, to participate.
And no, it's not cheap with the number of 3rd party add-ons (which several are needed because of the limitations in the script itself), the script and 1st party add-ons and then add on top of that the hosting (in my specific case)... it is not cheap. But I do it because it is an enjoyable hobby for myself and I don't really pay much attention to the childish antics of the developers of the script I use.
The sad thing is that even though my chosen script for my main site is now at a x.x.3 release version, I still can't run it because the 3rd party add-ons that I am dependent upon (because they developers can't see fit to extend their offerings to what many have asked for) have not been updated to run with it. And the sad thing is... time IS money.... the longer it takes, the more I then have to invest into updates of the other add-ons/styles/core script to maybe eventually have a somewhat stable site.
That should be very telling to anyone looking at it (XenForo) that after what amounts to 7 months after the initial BETA release of it, there are several important (and paid) add-ons that STILL have not been updated to work with it. You have to stop and think ... why after 7 months of the base code being available that so many add-ons have not yet been updated to be compatible. Are those developers reading tea leaves that reflect the future arc of XenForo? Are they waiting on the 3.x release that has been "promised" for a few years and still not seen because they can't get the bugs fixed in 2.3 so that it is even a somewhat stable release? Their most recent release "fixed" what amounts to 42 bugs..... never mind that there are STILL several more outstanding (some as old as 10 years) that have not been acted upon if their bug fix reports area are to be believed, as well as several new bugs in their most recent release cycle that have been detailed (and some that should probably have been caught by QC of the code).
And I realize that the XF developers can't realistically deal with the "butt-hurt" aspect of being called out when their philosophy of efficiency is called into question, and they tend to lash out when called on the carpet about it.
So much for the "clarity and efficiency" of being dependent upon 3rd party add-ons for a script to some of what it should have in the first place.
In many ways, IC crushes XenForo for overall website inclusion. The only bad thing is that IC tends to concentrate more on the commercial market than the hobby market and from past statements (and historical actions) you have to take everything they say with a VERY large grain of salt. Otherwise, I would be running their script on at least one of my sites.

I honestly would not recommend anyone to start a forum in todays environment. There are better (and cheaper) options out there to pursue if you are ultimately after making a profit. A forum is NOT going to be (in most cases) where it is at.

And before the XF cult members get overly butt-hurt... I love XF.. I simply dislike the current attitude of the developers and their choices on the path they have chosen... I think they are shooting themselves in the big head because their little head has taken control and they refuse to acknowledge that maybe their license holders know what they want/need better than they do. I was vocal enough in my stance that I ended up getting banned from their site because I kept calling Chris and company out (repeatedly) over their (what were to me) BS statements. Yes, it made the cult members (and their leaders) mad... but strangely enough.. many of my statements have come to be reality.
The sad thing is... there are a few over on the XenForo site that can't stand to be called out.

If someone is wanting to start a basic (VERY basic) forum.. I will still recommend XenForo... but if you want to do much more than posts and a VERY basic gallery and resource manager, I would recommend one look elsewhere. XenForo (without the dependence on 3rd party add-ons) simply does not have the ability to compete for a full function/offering website.

 

[Nomad]

I think the best option is to use open source forum software. It will cost less than $50 (domain and hosting) to run a forum for the entire year if you use phpBB or MyBB. The software does not make the forum great, it is the content and activity.

 

[Tracy]

I think the best option is to use open source forum software. It will cost less than $50 (domain and hosting) to run a forum for the entire year if you use phpBB or MyBB. The software does not make the forum great, it is the content and activity.

If doing this, you need to make sure that there is a valid upgrade path into other packages in case later you do decide you want to move forward.
As for the software not making a forum great?
Agreed in general... but posting content in some software packages (the free ones) is not as clean as with most of the paid options. Users have gotten used to a WYSIWYG editor, and many of the free scripts do not have such, with the BB code actually displayed in the editor itself when creating or editing a message. For the younger generations, this can be somewhat aggravating.
The nice thing is there are other options out there than SMF, phpBB and myBB. Yes, some of them take a special environment to run so you may have to obtain a VPS to do so. But that's also easy enough and if you are somewhat familiar with Linux using CentMin Mod makes it easy-peasy.
The sad fact is, many users now look for more than just posting functions/content for a site they want to spend time at, and the majority are consumers and not content creators. I know that the articles, reviews, resources and gallery get a lot more traffic tracked by GA than the forums themself do on my site. In fact, most of the visitors are hitting the resources, which are quick downloads with very little time spent on the site.

(past 7 day period top 10 landing pages)

Yes, I could modify my site permissions and make move those downloads from free to all to requiring you join and/or then post a certain amount of content before you get promoted into a group that allows downloads. And if I was concerned with making money on the site, that would probably be one of the ways I would go. But for me, it's all about the free access of the content for users.