How Much Should A Surfer Forum Make...
 

in your opinion with :

10K members


20K members


30K members


40K members


50K members


100K members

What do you think it should earn?

Thats a good question. I think it depends on a huge number of variables. I know of forums that advertise porn but then have tons of 10 page threads with hundreds of free porn pics and movies in each.

Had a forum with 20K++ members, i made more with my 50khits tgp than that forum. They always want free shit, wont buy shit. :upsidedow

If you cant make 5k per month jump off a bridge :thumbsup

I agree with xlogger. You're looking for people who want free porn... don't be surprised when you find people who want free porn.

Your biggest problem is keeping the freeloader hotlinking password trading scum off your site. The last thing you need is a bunch of programs bringing heat on you because you 14 year old "members" are trading haxnpaz around ;-)

Alex

I hate forums. :winkwink:

+20k members. = 20 bones.

Please ignore this person, he knows nothing. And btw this is a man not "Emily"; who is on crack.

What you could do (i tried this and worked out well) is that make a section where you have big movies, good pictures. Make that section a paid section on the forum., and must be a member to get in. This way people get really corious and join in. Worked for me, try it.

i have a forum, it makes jack shit. I just ask for donations and everyone always says "I would love to but I'm broke". How fuckin' sad is it that someone uses your site for all the free shit they want, yet they can't donate $10?

bananaphone

Ours is an advertising vehicle. A place to spam at will.

I do well off mine, I donk have 10k members but combine it with a sort of tgp and it makes nearly enough to live on, on its own

Wow they make money out of forums?

OK some differing opinions but also some good nuggets of advice in there. I just wanted to basically get a feel for how well I was doing.

IMO traffic is traffic. Everyone is a potential sale, whether it involves entering credit card details or an email address, or even sending an sms text.

Thanks for the responses :thumbsup

Forums convert much better than TGP if you know how to run it.

It all depends on the niche and the type of forum, obviously.

im sure they can get just as much free porn from tgps

deserves an explanation:
More and more TGPs are CJ/blindlinking their traffic. Does the surfer like that? No, and you loose potential signups.
On the other side, a 'serious' forum, has admins/moderators that more or less take care of to keep it clean. If that is the goal of course.
Now, more and more TGP surfers realize that, so why should they surf the blindlinking sites? Think of it.... and yeah, most people are freebies but that goes for every freesite.
Forums are also more personal, and if you take advantage of this, with some creativity you can make good money. Like making paysite reviews etc. Don't make it just a linkdump and you will be doing fine :thumbsup

How do you expect people to take you seriously when you make false accusations like that?

And when, exactly did I become a "he"? When I started pimping out my sig and your buddy Jon started trolling me? little jealous are we?

Douchbag. Waste of space.

I run a reasonable successful forum, with 17,000+ members. The key to turning over coin is to make sections subscriber only.

Due to the nature of my site, the uses are as tight as they come, but by giving them an email address (no storage limits), avatar, subscriber lounge and some other options. The site makes £6 per subscriber per year or £15 per subscriber for a one off lifetime payment.

Now I know this is not much in the adult business, but in if you think about it logically the above features really cost nothing and other sites are giving them away for free.

My advice is to offer your members something that none paying don?t have and you will get people wanting those features.

Quite the masterful post for post #1 don't cha think? :1orglaugh

i got a forum on all our paysites. only members can access. its going good :thumbsup

Seems like they would be the cheapest of the cheap if they were porn surfer traffic. It would probably work best as a way to promote mainstream projects.

It may be good for mid level to low level SEO if its a decent enough forum with some news emphasis.

The amount of $$$ a surfer forum makes is based purely on how well YOU operate the community and not, as some would have you beleive, how many members the forum has.

We run several boards both webmaster and surfer, adult and mainstream and even though the amounts of members on each varies significantly, they each make around the same amount of $$$ every month.

The only reason they make so much is that we have people running and maintaining the 'community' feel of the board themselves.

You can make $500 a month off a forum with only 50 members IF you know how to push those members buttons appropriately and, more importantly, if you know how those members 'use' the forums :2 cents:

Regards,

Lee

No it isnt.

By going 'subscriber only' you actually lose a LOT of income in addition to turning away a lot of potential 'members'.

Think of it this way if you will, every 'page view' is $$$, how you make the money from those page views ill leave to your imagination ;)

Id rather have 50 guests viewing the forum daily without having to register and 50 registered members viewing the forum daily and posting than just 50 rgistered members ;)

Regards,

Lee

If you build a loyal enough member base than there will be plenty who would be willing to pay for a seperate section. Especially those who want to avoid some of the bullshit that goes along in the general section.

Most money off of forums is made in the advertising area.

That is true to some extent.

However i would say the money you can make from a forum depends on the 'type' of advertising you utilize and not the 'cost' of the advertising itself ;)

Regards,

Lee

The thing is that it is free-loader traffic.

Dont spam them with $34.95 sites

Tons of sponsors pay $20-$50 pps on free trials
Learn to use them well

he had to just stop lurking and lay down the law

Sorry dad, will stop learking from now on.

That?s not quite correct with my forums as they are 100% opt-in on the subscriber level apart from access to the subscriber lounge.

A year or two back we used to charge for pageviews in some sections of the forums, whereby you would get 250 page views free every month (this generated revenue of around £200 not much but it was a start at turning coin (and paid for the hosting costs 2x over))

Then we moved to a subscriber model where 95% of the forums is free to access (no registration required to view and free registration to post)

At the end of the day, it would be costing us the same to run the site every month regardless of if we charged for some perks or not (just in our case the perks equal a revenue stream and do not detract the none paying members from using the forums as the paying members do)

Some good info in this thread.

I started a surfer forum. After 6 days I was making $100 per day appx. Still doing that now because I need to devote more time to it. A lot of people grade traffic on it's supposed quality. IMO, traffic is traffic, you just need to work out WHAT and HOW to feed it.

Good stuff.

What type of forum do you run kristian ?

I'm currently not running a forum but I do have a few ideas for other ways to make money from forums.

Sig spots

I notice on every forum every member has his own sig space but very few if any forums have utilized this feature to implement advertising on it. Imo this is the perfect place to implement your advertising, if advertising was implemented on a forum in the users sig space it could generate a lot of money in advertising no matter how many members you have on your forum, especially if the advertising related to the thread subject.

I have noticed that on a lot of forums their advertising is at the very top top of threads, above the thread title and then people complain about low CTR. Advertising in the sig space area will result in higher CTR and make more money. I'm not familiar for VB, maybe doing something like that would require some programming. Either way it well worth doing imo if your not already

Precicely. They came for FREE PORN. If they anted PAID porn they would have stayed on Google.

Since I run a bunch of forums like CJ, theforum, I work with around alliance of forum admins; weve done case studies and we'll all tell you the same. They don't make shit...

The first mistake is assuming they're [color=red]dumb surfers.[/red] Do a quick search for "I'll never pay for porn" on GOOGLE and it will bring back millions of results from surfer forums. They are the Elite Squadron of surfers, and if you want their business, you're going to have to earn their loyaly. And right now, few of you have the capacity to think of 'surfers' as real people.

Because,

In the end, a forum can hurt you more than it helps. Posters will come to blog and interact in the community with REAL PEOPLE, treat them like your bitch and they'll blast you. Treat them with kindness and they'll thell their friends- and as we all know, word of mouth is the best advertisement.

Which is why xlogger couldn't buy a bucket with his board. He's the Worst Poster EVER. How he runs his mouth in GFY reflects his adminship. Who the fuck could take him seriously? No one. He's a dick. And that's not how you earn loyalty.

Overall, boards are not worth it, if you're in it for the money. I own/co-own (8) boards and I love my people. Everytime I open a new board, they'll follow me. Because they love me too.
My latest board Thyrium, has only been open for a couple months and we already have 1,500 users. By 2006, it will probably be ranked in the mid 20's on Big-Boards- and my sites fucking suck. Geocities > MySites, lol.

My my sites don't make my community. And world take over is next.

Precicely. They came for FREE PORN. If they anted PAID porn they would have stayed on Google.

Since I run a bunch of forums like CJ, theforum, I work with around alliance of forum admins; weve done case studies and we'll all tell you the same. They don't make shit...

The first mistake is assuming they're dumb surfers. Do a quick search for "I'll never pay for porn" on GOOGLE and it will bring back millions of results from surfer forums. They are the Elite Squadron of surfers, and if you want their business, you're going to have to earn their loyaly. And right now, few of you have the capacity to think of 'surfers' as real people.

Because,

In the end, a forum can hurt you more than it helps. Posters will come to blog and interact in the community with REAL PEOPLE, treat them like your bitch and they'll blast you. Treat them with kindness and they'll thell their friends- and as we all know, word of mouth is the best advertisement.

Which is why xlogger couldn't buy a bucket with his board. He's the Worst Poster EVER. How he runs his mouth in GFY reflects his adminship. Who the fuck could take him seriously? No one. He's a dick. And that's not how you earn loyalty.

Overall, boards are not worth it, if you're in it for the money. I own/co-own (8) boards and I love my people. Everytime I open a new board, they'll follow me. Because they love me too.
My latest board Thyrium, has only been open for a couple months and we already have 1,500 users. By 2006, it will probably be ranked in the mid 20's on Big-Boards- and my sites fucking suck. Geocities > MySites, lol.

My my sites don't make my community. And world take over is next.

How anyone can say any form of traffic (within reason) is unprofitable is beyond me. I think because we deal with such huge traffic-volumes in this industry we can lose perspective - or even the ability to "make the sale".

I came out of University and ran my own double-glazing firm. Average order value was £2500 appx (about $5K). I had 2 dozen teams of 4 go out in cars each day canvassing prop. A typical car would generate about £20K per week. My top car generated £63K one week in december. On average, 1 canvasser would speak to 150 people a day. 150 x 4 = 600. 600 x 6 days = 3600 people per week = $40K in revenue. Since my family own the uPVC system for the products i had (connies, windows, doors, facias, guttering etc) my profit margins were excellent.

I've never actually been so forthcoming about all this. It just strikes me that we think in such huge numbers we lose sight of how to make the sale.

If you can get your message to even 1000 people (not surfers, people) a day, you can't fail but make money. And you dont have to go out into the cold and get your knuckles bruised knocking doors.

Are you kidding, have you seen your post on this forum? You started bitching at me because i asked a simple question on another thread in the nicest way possible. By the way i dont WANT to make $ of my forum what so ever. Its a techno/trace forum. This is how i support artist that i like, give them more exposure. Its never about the $.

Just had to quote that because it is so damn true.

Most webmasters forget they are in the marketing / sales industry and not in the 'entertainment' business.

Mind you saying that, most webmasters these days wouldnt have a clue how to market or sell something is their lives depended on it.

Regards,

Lee

I like to upsell, cross sell and down sell as much as I can, and forums are a great place to do that.

Three out of ten people will take an add-on product or service if it?s properly presented. Just a quick example Mc Donald?s ask a simple question ?would you like fries with that or would you like that super sized?

The automatic answer to this is ?Why Not?. This is a simple cross sell that worked for Mc Donald?s, and will also work for forums and the adult industry as a whole. Just as Lee says not may webmasters know about marketing.

For those who don?t know what the above means (as truth be told some webmasters don?t):

Upsell = Medium coke upgraded to large coke for a few pennies
Cross sell = Order a burger and they sell you fries with that
Down sell = Mc Premier Sells for £2.99 customer can?t afford that sell them a happy meal for £2.00

great info in this thread, thanks for sharing! :thumbsup

I`m just here to help out others where I can :)

foums make good money

If you have a forum contact me. I'll pay you for something.

what goes on on a 'surfer forum' ? Know its an ignorant question, thats why I'm asking.

so many variables make it hard to tell