Is there any money to be made in starting a forum?

Consider one the size of SEN, and then one significantly smaller?

Any ideas guys?

No.

Not at all, unless you have a company like the Curse Network behind you, and even then (as seen from recent confrontation at SC2Mapster) that doesn't garner much in terms of profit - especially for anyone other than the sponsor. You could also put ads on a forum to try to make money from it, but I assume that will send more people away.

From what I've heard, we overpay for SEN's VPS, but basically I pay $30 a month to keep SEN up with 0 profit. And I pay that because I like this community and I like having it available for people to use, despite the money sink. If you're looking to start a forum to make money, then you're in it for the wrong reasons and you'll be sorely disappointed.

Yes:
Find a cheap host or a premade forum that allows you to add ads (if there is such a thing).
Make it about something most people care.
Copy free content from the Internet so you have something to begin with and attract people.
Advertise your forum that you get a userbase quickly.

This is how I would go about it. But don't know if it would actually work.

In theory it'd work, but if its "free content from the internet" (I'm assuming information not copyrighted) then there will be a lot of other websites with the exact same information. It'll be hard to rank higher than the sites that have the information already. Advertising works too, but if you go to a bunch of websites and advertise it (ie post threads on blizz' website and here asking people to come) it'll come across as spam.

What exactly are you trying to do? People are usually more attracted to original content, but it really depends on what you're trying to do. The quickest way to make money is as Nude said find a service that'll let you put google adwords up, but it only works if you have traffic.

If you tell me more maybe I can help more.

If he needs SEO I can help with that

Is there a polite way to say "I sincerely doubt it"

Given that you're asking if it's profitable to run a forum, I can reasonably assume that you're looking for easy ways to make money. And since you're asking about a forum, it's also reasonable to assume you don't have any skills in web design (or you would be doing freelance web design and earning the bucks that way).

Third, you're asking a forum if running a forum is a worthy business investment, despite the rest of the internet at your fingertips full of people more qualified who have already answered this question quite thoroughly. This leads me to conclude you're not particularly resourceful.

All in all, I think it's safe to say you're looking to earn a quick buck on the side.

No, I do not believe you have the skills or ability necessary to earn profit from a forum business venture. Go get a job.

I would say theres money in it if you start the right type of website/forum.

Tdotwire.com is one my friend bought out that was at one point a local internet hookup website which was well known in my city and still is. He gains money from his advertisement slots ($100 a slot for a weeks worth of advertising) It's mostly clubs who grab those slots, last i saw about 7 or 8 years ago there were about 5 slots and they were always full.

Ouch, mean.

But probably accurate.

Overall, your comment was abrasive, cynical, and most importantly not helpful. i want to get SENs opinion because i know this forum is full of sharp minded individuals who can give some good perspective. So thanks to everyone who is weighing in on this seriously.

To everyone: I was thinking of doing it using vBulletin. thoughts?

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Dec 10 2012, 12:39 am by Roy. Reason: Removing advertisement

What do you mean? Doubt what?

do you have resources to make stuffs more readily appear through search engines or something?

vBulletin is great, if you don't mind paying for forum software. The issue is how you'd plan to make that (or any) money back on it.

To make things appear more on Google or other search engines, you can pay for advertising, or just link traffic to your forum. That's pretty much it.

Not sure what your definition of "passive income" is. If you want to make serious money from a website, then it takes serious work. Generally, making serious money from anything in life takes serious work, or luck (which you can't really plan for).

Also just asking a generic question like "can I make money from a forum" is on the face of it fairly pointless. You can "make money" from lots of things on the internet; the question is how much money you're talking about and how much effort you want to put in. You also need to be aiming your venture at something that has a large potential market, or a small market that are willing to spend money.

Probably the easiest internet venture to make money off is porn.

Passive income = A source of income that I can put in a lot of work towards for a year or two, and then collect money without doing much. Similar to real estate renting. Once the forum gets going and gains a community, the regular traffic should sustain itself.

I mean, do you that it's conceivable to profit in the hundreds over a forum after some years?

Anyother good free platforms besides vb that you guys like?
also thank you devlin

Hundreds per year? Per month? Per day? Which are you asking about? You also have to consider that you only make profit on having ads on your site if people click the ads. If you have thousands of active members and have puts ads all over your forum, you wont make any money without anyone clicking them. I'm not sure what demographic you're aiming for, but chances are most people will ignore the ads or get one of the many extensions that block ads. So you probably wouldn't make much, or just make enough to cover the overhead.

The only way to really make a profit from it is to offer some service or product with a cost. But that wont be passive income. As others have bluntly put it, you have to put more work into it than you might think and the concept of "passive income" will come way down the line if you have something popular enough that makes money, and even then the income at that point may just cover the cost of running the site for years prior. Money doesn't just come easy.

The only free platform I can recommend is phpBB. It's easy to use and easy to set up.

Most forums that make money also have shirts and podcasts and an actual product. I just don't foresee how you'll be able to generate the traffic you need without a thing to sell.

There are various bloggers who make a lot of money off the internet, as well as youtubers. However blogging/youtubing is their full-time job.

You could do a webcomic. Earlier this year, Order of the Stick's artist did a kickstarter aiming for about $50k, he ended up earning $1.2 million more than that. If you look at something like VG Cats, that makes a lot of money with relatively no upkeep, since the artist only updates a few times a year.

Of course, this assumes you have some artistic talent, however you could always find someone to do the drawings for you and give them a percentage of the profits, resulting in nearly no work on your part.

I think that relationship would be the other way around, since setting up a website doesn't take much in the way of talent at all.