forum earnings

[Westech]

Is anyone here making positive ROI from a large, high traffic forum? I'd love to see some examples. I'd also love to hear your experience on what kinds of advertising programs besides Adsense work well to monetize your forums.

[Chris]

A positive ROI? Yes... huge money, no. But I don't try overtly to monetize any of my forums.

[Westech]

Is it still a postive ROI after you factor in the time you spend running them? It just seems to me that after you factor in the need to constantly moderate, the extra server resources needed for a forum, and the fact that most ad networks won't let you run their ads on a forum they would yield much less than standard content sites, at least until you get to a point where individial direct advertisers start beating down your door.

[fatnewt]

It just seems to me that after you factor in the need to constantly moderate, the extra server resources needed for a forum, and the fact that most ad networks won't let you run their ads on a forum they would yield much less than standard content sites

True, but if you run a community or a forum that's a part of your content site, you can use the forum to drive more traffic to the content. You get more return traffic. You can promote parts of the content to the forum visitors themselves. Forum users might link to your forum from elsewhere, which brings in new people and helps to add more PR/link power to the rest of your site.

They're high-maintenance, but a successful forum can help a content site grow.

[Cutter]

Time wise I don't think I'm at a positive ROI right now for my big forum (long story, but officially it started in January.) As for $ investment, definately.

[Emancipator]

im using my forum on a new site to drive traffic to my content using some keyword linking software I wrote up. Westech catch me on MSN I will show you what I mean and give you the code if you think its something you might want.

[Chris]

Forums are also like insurance against downturns in site popularity. With a popular forum you can always be assured of growth.