How to earn money through a forum I own?

[Jani]

As you all know I recently launched my own small forum, I want to know what are the ways for the forum owners to make money?

I have seen banner and text ads on the forums, so is it the only way?

Would you like to please guide me about this?

Thanks

[Purple Rain]

In my experience forums earn money through Displaying adverts or via donations from members. Some forums also offer premium/vip accounts for a small charge for extra features and benefits on the forum.

In my experience though unless you run a very busy forum, you are not gonna make a great deal from it.

[Menthol]

In my experience forums earn money through Displaying adverts or via donations from members. Some forums also offer premium/vip accounts for a small charge for extra features and benefits on the forum.

In my experience though unless you run a very busy forum, you are not gonna make a great deal from it.

Lots of people say that but assuming you do a reasonable amount of promotion on a forum and say after about a year when you have a few members would it at least break even and cover the hosting costs etc?

[sfifabian]

I have a forum and I make money by selling banners

[Purple Rain]

I have a forum and I make money by selling banners

Oh yeah you can do that, but say for example it got as big as this forum or DP for that matter. You would need a hell of a lot of banners to make money. The busier your forum gets the more money you need to spend on servers. I mean take DP for instance. I dunno what their server running cost is, but whatever it is it is not enough. That forum runs like a pile of crap most of the time.

[Jani]

Oh yeah you can do that, but say for example it got as big as this forum or DP for that matter. You would need a hell of a lot of banners to make money. The busier your forum gets the more money you need to spend on servers. I mean take DP for instance. I dunno what their server running cost is, but whatever it is it is not enough. That forum runs like a pile of crap most of the time.

I agree with you, you have a valid point. Me too sometime get worried that when my forum will be big and my current hosting will not be able to run my forum then I will have to buy VPS or Dedicated server and they are very costly

We can start charging more money when our forum get bigger but it is not the only solution,

We should start saving money for it from the beginning.

Edit: My current hosting company has told me that not to worry about the servers, I can host a forum as big as this WTF.

[benjaminp]

Edit: My current hosting company has told me that not to worry about the servers, I can host a forum as big as this WTF.

I doubt it. Did they promise you the moon and the stars too?

In all honesty they are probably just saying what you want to here. Running a forum as big as WTF in a shared environment seems totally absurd

[fredg61]

I have a forum and I make money by selling banners

Can I ask how much you generally charge for banners?

[Tazfan]

i find apart form your own banners Contextual ads like Kontera or other companys that dose ads of this kind seem to work well on fourms as it pick keywords in the text to put ads on they seem to do well on fourms for some reaon

[010081]

Paid membership.
Forum sponsors ( sticky threads,links banner)
adsense and other publisers
selling weekly emails with paid links on it.

[briguy]

Maybe a revenue sharing forum?