I wanted to know how a forum makes money. Do you put ads on the pages and make money with Adsense, or some other PPC program. Is it created purely for your own enjoyment, and there's no money involved? Is it used as a means of helping people, and there isn't any compensation? Do you build the members and posts to sell it to another person that wants to buy it? What is the purpose in creating a forum?
I'm no forum admin, but almost all forums have ads in it, because that's the way they can maximize the forum's existence. Since it is being visited by people, then why not monetize the traffic that they're getting right? But I do see some forums that have no ads, and they obviously do it just because they want to, like a hobby without monetary compensation.
Back in the days when I managed a forum, I first didn't want to make any money out of it, so I didn't place any ads or ad.fly links. Then, when we got to build a solid member base, I decided to open a store where me and the rest of the staff could offer different kinds of services (graphics -avatars, signatures, etc.-, coding, translation, you name it) and the money we collected would go to our "forum promotion" funds. That, however, was very unusual. You need, in the first place, a group of people in your staff that you can definitely trust, and secondly, the time to handle the requests. Eventually, for us, it did pay off.
Thank you for this post. I belong to a few forums and also build websites. I have been thinking about opening my own forum and adding ads.
