How much money do forums make?

[$INeed$]

Hi to all.

I have a question to all forum owners here. It goes like this How much money forums earn per month, let's say. I am asking this, because I have a friend, who is damm sure that forums do not earn well. I do not think, that forums earn less than any other sites, but I do not own a forum, so I can not be 100% sure.

If there is someone having big, or even niche forun, would be great to share with me. I do not want any digits here. All I need is to tell me that there is good or bad reveniu.

Most commmunities make money by AdSense, selling ad space, affiliate programs and memberships. I think, that the best one is clthe combination of all, in a great mix, of course.

Now, let see is there someone to answer me. Hope there is.

 

[Brum]

Hey,

That's really great question. Forum owners should be active in this thread here. I do not own and run a forum, but could share some others experience. What I have red in world wide is that not well-developed, small forums losing their owners money, while big forums make a fortune - forums like Digital Point, Warrior Forum, SitePoint, Webmaster Talk, WebmasterWorld. Sorry, I can comment only webmaters forums, because I am writing in these king of boards.

Here are some stats, taken from forum owners:

I earn about 800 dlls / Month whit average of 12000 uniques per day

I just started as well, I made 2k+ in my second month, and hopefully will start making 10k+ next month.

I have 3,000+ uniquesa day, but I am usually luck to make more than $40 a month. My site is still only 3 months old though.

My community is 8,000 + members strong and I only make ~250 USD monthly (costs already deducted).

I make $1500+, its 20,000+ member forum

Digitalpoint was earning in 2005 at their vbulletin forum, $10.000 USD per month.
Now same people say they are earning $40.000 per month just from adsense, which is pretty possible. I wouldn't mind to receive that amount....

in my vb forum i have 100k unique visitors per month, 40k registered members and 8 milion hits per month (webalizer stats). Active users are more than 5.000...
From adsense i get about 4-6 usd per day, which i think its very poor... don't know how to increase click rate...

Resource: vbulletin.org

As I wrote, forum owners know best.

 

[Blinky]

Can not give your digits here, but we are not using Ad platforms, as you can see. We have CPM campaigns from time to time, literally. Rotating some of our projects, affiliate programs banners and do ads exchange with other sites and events. That's it.

If the stats above are true, and the forum is twice bigger, we will make great money, but I do now believe it. Really, I don't. For me the best strategy here is selling direct ads, DP also do it. And WF, but not sure.

 

[$INeed$]

От: How much money do forums make?

Forums can make a lot of money, if the owners know hot to grow it as a member, visits and traffic. Let,s say that you have an En finance forum with around 20K+ members. There won't be more than 5K active, but the forum has a lot of guest coming from SEs, social sites, other sites. In other words, the forum generates 30 000 visits a day, which is around 1 000 000 visits per month. Great number, right? This is maybe 10 000 000 impressions. I am counting them every one making 10 pageviews average. I think that this kind of forum could be making about $40k a month. Correct me, if my counts are not realistic. Would be great to hear more experts here.

 

[obione]

От: How much money do forums make?

I'd guesstimate that Blinky is missing on about 1k/mo. (Using alexa stats)

 

[Blinky]

How much money do forums make? Can communities make some money?

I'd guesstimate that Blinky is missing on about 1k/mo. (Using alexa stats)

Hello @obione,

In this thread - From the topic: Top Webmaster Forums List Sorted By Alexa 2013 is mentioned why the Alexa rank is so high. Our resent Alexa rank is 24 260, DigitalPoint - 613, WarriorForum - 181, BHW - 403, Webmaster-Talk - 9672 and so on. We hope that soon will be there - every day the Alexa rank is increasing with about 100-150 points (last week). Hope to continue like this.

If we move to 10 000, I will let you know. But can not tell you about the earning, we do not have ad platform. Also, it is really important to know that the traffic here is mostly from BG, which is far away from the EN, where advertisers pay more for it.

 

[$INeed$]

От: How much money do forums make?

Guys, according to this article: www.techreaders.com/2011/03/11-top-google-adsense-earners/ , DigitalPoint has earned about $500 000 / month with AdSense in 2011. Do not think that this digit is real, but anyway. One thing I am sure - the digits are 6. In 2006, DP has earned $15 000 / month. If the article is right, let's take back to 2006, where we see, that DP is not such a big forum.

See it well. The activity is not so big, and the same refers to resent visitors.

And the latest stats about this webmaster forum:

Backlinks:

7613133 Yahoo Backlinks / 4603 Alexa backlinks / 4/10 Google Pagerank

Monthly Visitors:

Unique Visitors: 380850 / Return Visitors: 4.2 times / Highest % Visitors: 27.1% from India

Pageviews: 242194319 / Compete Visits: 593000

Traffic Analysis:

Alexa Rank: 186 / Compete Rank: 7690 / Quantcast Rank: 4038

Revenue Analysis:

Per Day: $14721 / Per Month: $447000 / Per Year: $5373000

The given example is because this forum is the top AdSense earner, according to many opinions on the net. If you have other examples, please share them with us, with all the stuff, and don't forget to write the money.

 

[Brum]

We are talking about forums and earning. I like this. I will continue with some information I have been collecting with the years.

Let's take a look at another niche - porn. Yes, you red it correctly - the porno niche. According to my experience and observing, porn forums like PlanetSuzy earn around 1000$ in one single day, which is a damm good, isn't it.

Returning to the webmaster niche - a forum can earn more then 100,000 $ per month like Digital Point. But as you know, it is the biggest one in its niche, we should not forget that. Traffic is the main source of the earnings.

 

[lantranhana]

Making money is not only possible, it's most likely - once you have a big board with lots of members. But - It's most unlikely to have such a big boad

You can make money by doing this:

• use Google Adsense. You'll notice 4 figure income once you have a board with thousands of members and put your ads on right place.
• contract with online ad agencies that will give you online campaigns of larger companies (IBM, Microsoft). Notice that if you want to do that, your forum should not look like a forum. If it is a forum, most companies do not want to have their ads on your site.
• Affiliate with companies that sell products your users like and will purchase online. Biggest affiliate company out there is amazon.com