Please feel free to answer 1 or more of the following questions for this newbie...
I am seriously considering hosting a vBulletin forum for a niche that does not have any good/active forum, but I have a few general questions...
1. Other than cost for vBulletin, are there any other significant start-up/development costs in getting the forum up and running? For example, paying someone thousands of dollars to get vBulletin up and running or is it pretty much plug-n-play?
2. Does anyone have any estimates as to what it takes to administer/manage a forum? Once set up, does it pretty much run on 'auto pilot' or does someone need to be monitoring it 24/7? (I'm not looking for another ball and chain to keep me tied to my desk!)
3. My web site is currently hosted by GoDaddy. Would this be fine? At what point would one need a dedicated server? For example, is there a standard rule of thumb that says once you have 500 users (or 1,000, or whatever) that the traffic will be such that you would need a dedicated server.
4. What are the most effective ways to monetize a forum? I'm guessing ads (which I will research more). Do most forums have premium memberships for a fee?
5. Do people run forums to actually make money or do forums typically only cover the cost of running the forum, and forum owners are running a forum simply to drive traffic to another business (online or offline) that is the one actually making money?
Thanks for the feedback.
Cheers
NordicGuy
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