Advertising income with your forum - Anyone making over $100K per year ?

[woodysfj40]

When you run a large board what kind of work goes into it? Don't they sustain themselves at a certain point? Are you talking upgrades, backups and moderation?

You'd be surprised at the amount of work...I have weeks where it's only 20 hours, and weeks where it's 60+...server upgrades, software upgrades, team management, participation in the site, tracking your competition...all take time...I'm VERY hands on with my site and keep the pressure off my moderators when it comes down to some decisions regarding users....managing 20,000+ posts a week takes time tho...

My site's been around in one form or another since 1996...I took yearly 'paper' losses of over $25,000 for a few years, but the site has maintained a steady growth and a consistent userbase...if this year goes as planned, gross will be close to $100k...then you start pulling hosting expenses (mine recently increased $1000 a month due to bandwidth), hardware costs (just installed another new $5k+ server this week), plus other marketing/promotion and business related expenses and my 'net' will drop quickly....

I reached the point about a year ago where I no longer had time for a 'day' job...the contract I'm doing now provides me great cross-marketing with the site and allows me enough time to sufficiently keep up with things - occasionally, it gets a bit crazy tho

[Sergio68]

For privacy reasons I obviously can't share who, but I am helping as webmaster on two vB powered sites that both make over 300K a year. Note: I do not know if this is incl or excl. server costs, hiring staff, etc. It's not impossible to have your business around your community, and have your traffic result in a lot of money on a daily/monthly basis. To get VC funding and/or get purchased by bigger companies like Google, etc. There are a lot of expansive and growing forums who are 'lucky' to get that big - and then there the success ones who had a business plan and a good idea about their short term and long term plans on how to grow and monetize their traffic.

My site makes over $100,000, but its tough. Pretty much a fulltime job at this point, both my wife and I work to keep the site up.

I think lee dodd was supposedly making around 100k per month from sprintusers.com at one point.

Pardon me, are you talking about ADVERTISING or SELLING ?

[T.S.]

Just out of curiosity, how do you know ?

He used to be quite open about his earnings on his blog and elsewhere.

[Mixlogy]

okay

[Dilly]

Well done. You really did a good job of disguising this thread...


;-)

[D. Thomas]

I think lee dodd was supposedly making around 100k per month from sprintusers.com at one point.

Just out of curiosity, how do you know ?

[D. Thomas]

At the end of the day I end up about even for my forum, But I am putting in around $1000 a month. I had some real good ideas how to increase that, however just became to busy to follow through with my plans.

Yeah I'm in similar situation, where I have a regular (not web based) business that is more fun and way more profitable, so I never seem to get around to making the additions to my site that I want to. Thus the magazine partnership, where I don't get nearly as much personal income from the site as I might, but OTOH I don't have to lift a finger except to deposit their monthy check.

But at some point I will retire and concentrate more on running the forum site and perhaps take over the ad sales then, unless a magazine partnership offers a higher percentage.

But if I knew it was at least possible to generate even more than $100K a year with a site like mine it would be tempting to hire an employee to deal with the ads, and/or retire early, thus my continued curiosity about these things.

[hornstar6969]

At the end of the day I end up about even for my forum, But I am putting in around $1000 a month. I had some real good ideas how to increase that, however just became to busy to follow through with my plans.

[l SKN l CHRIS]

I think webhostingtalk.com makes millions of dollars a year.

[D. Thomas]

Since I started this thread I guess I should come clean with the fact that my site www.practicalmachinist.com is generating about $100,000 per year, but I (the owner) personally am only getting a small percentage of that. Reason being I'm in partnership with a magazine and they handle all the ad sales, billing, and everything in connection with the ads.

Just thought I'd mention the magazine partnership idea as a possibility some might consider for their sites.

But getting back to other forums, I'd be very curious to know how much sites like www.corvetteforum.com that have way more activity and ads than my site, are making per year. They might be making way more than $100K per year or they might be making less, in spite of more activity and ad numbers because perhaps they can't get away with charging as much per ad as the more specialized audience sites like mine ? But I really don't know, so am curious.

[dpunkz]

I got a site comming soon..... $50,000 scripted page and the money we will be making will grow each day!

[T.S.]

I think lee dodd was supposedly making around 100k per month from sprintusers.com at one point.

[Redseal]

That would not be me, but the owners of those boards (usually some sort of company or media company) to answer. I've poked them to this thread, but I doubt they will bother posting. Seeing how busy they are working on their forum as a full time day job. One board actually set up a small office in San Diego last year from where they have a dedicated tech staff member, and an forum and site administrator (from what I heard).

Cool, thanks floris!

[Vtec44]

I definitely appreciate the offer FLoris. I'll take you up on it one of these days

[Floris]

We can talk live if you want - without me disclosing anything - about this if you want .. irc.vbirc.com channel #chat for public and #private for private chat.