Should you crowd funding for your forum?

[Beverly]

Would you use a site like GoFundMe to crowd fund your forum? Or, are you relying on private advertisers, Adsense or self funding to pay the forum bills?

 

[Alexis]

I would start a fund raising campaign to start a business, either a forum business, but i don't count on it; it works when you faced a disaster. I prefer advertising which does not add cost to my users to get money to pay bills instead of relying on uncertain fund from people.

 

[lludawg]

It could also depend on your fan-base. If you provide something for users to come back to every week then I find that these users are more likely to donate. For example, I know a forum that does weekly news episodes and stuff like that. At first, the overall idea of the videos were great but the camera had horrible visual quality. The fans of this site quickly donated without hesitation so that the site could get a new camera and editing program.

 

[Shortie]

It would really depend on the kind of forum you were looking to run and how many people would be interested in seeing this forum created and actually work. If it was something that you could get a lot of backing for, then by all means go for it and see how well crowd funding will benefit you. With a forum such as the one I run right now, crowdfunding would be useless as there are too many forums similar to mine and I do not have anything really unique that anyone would be willing to fund.

 

[iPhonefreak]

I always rely on adsense to generate me money! Oh, and I do have a forum shop, but that has never made me a dime in the past 3 years.

 

[Alexis]

Yeah! It is better to count on adsense, fan or advertisers. But, you fans also will not give you money out. You need to start a business to make money; more then they own; will you remember them when you reach success? The fact is that you should work online to get your initial investment and build your forum business on it!

 

[Goat of Departure]

It would depend on how big your forum is. You can do crowd funding but the thing with them is that people always expect something in return. The reason why most crowd funding campaigns are successful is because people will eventually get something for their contribution and in terms of a forum, you can't really offer that much unless you're planning on something.

Also, if by some chance the campaign failed you have to do some compromise and possibly refund so you really have to deliver. I would suggest just stick with the tried and tested although slow method of ads. You can maybe try out having a donation system for those loyal members, at least you have no obligation when things go bad.

 

[proxynvpn]

Crowd funding could work but it really would depend on the forum you wanted to crowd fund for, A simple gaming or general chat forum would not be something I would feel that you could use crowd funding for however something such a a website for the area you live in that gives locals who live there somewhere to go for information, news and such could use crowd funding.