How much money can you make from discourse forum?

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Hi
Can you make a good income from a discourse forum?

I know it depends on your niche but I like to know if it is possible?

Many thanks

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The tool you use isnā€™t the deciding factor on income for any forum or community.

So yea, itā€™s totally possible - but the software itself isnā€™t a major factor in general.

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All of it. Also, how long is a piece of string?

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Iā€™m just wondering can it earn enough to pay the hosting cost through ad senes?

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The answer, as already pointed out, has nothing at all to do with the software itself.

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Thanks Iā€™ll just have to try it and see what happens

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I think profit from forum comes down to a few things now

  1. Community size
  2. Affiliates. You canā€™t really make a living from adsense money is to low
  3. Time you spend on community forum management

This is the best formula I could think of so far

Community Size divide by 2% conversion rate X Affiliates Commission divide by the time spent working on the forum = Profit - Hosting Fee = Profit Margin

If you weā€™re making money from adsense for example at the moment for every 1,202 adsense views I get I make Ā£1.95. If 10,000 people visit my forum a day. I make Ā£16.22 x 30 days = Ā£486.68 per month

If you have 10,000 people visiting forum a day. How much management time would
that require? I donā€™t know?

I donā€™t think there be many people making a full time living from their discourse forum.
Apart from hosting companies or web companies.

But if discourse makes a very good self automated community with very little community management time to maintain the forum. then that would be really good!

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I guess Iā€™ll bite here. But please know I have limited knowledge on this.

Why would someone open a forum for profit? I am trying to figure this out; I canā€™t wrap my head around it but I know itā€™s probably just me. I am guessing thatā€™s because all web projects I get involved in are for love of the subject. Any money I make from amazon links or donations go right to hosting. I use zero ads so the end experience makes members want to come back. I give the option for members to treat me with something from my wish list, but completely optional. I can understand eventually doing it with profit in mind if it becomes a full-time job and you need to pay bills and living expenses.

I hope Iā€™m not deviating from the topic. But I agree with those above. Itā€™s not the tools themselves, but how you use them. Any forum software used in a creative way will do what you want. Macguyver was onto something!

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I donā€™t know if profit is always the goal; sometimes they just want to cover the hosting fees, such as $20/month or what have you. Iā€™m sure anything extra is nice as well.

Ad hosted has not been a priority for us, or our customers, to date ā€“ but as we push into lower price points over time (and what if there was a ā€œfreeā€ option) it might be.

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One forums I know is having to do a car boot sell to pay for their hosting costs because
their forums traffic keepā€™s on growing and growing.

But their not a product based niche.

It would be really nice if you loved community youā€™ve built and be able to work on your community full time because it can pay for your living costs too! :blush:

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Whether a forum is for profit or simply for sustenance, ad placement is an important question. Iā€™m someone very familiar with running Vbulletin forums, and I get how those work with ad placement be it sold ads, adsense or even sponsored forums for companies who want to support/focus on specific forum sections, etc. What Iā€™m looking for now are some sites that implement various ad models or someone who might have some experience with that in order to understand options of utilizing to this platform.

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Great idea to use excess material and convert / exchange it into cash / hosting fees (which community if you can say, please?)

I am currently living my life close to these principles by not accepting ANY activities I donā€™t like - I may have started privileged / well off and just riding it out whilst adding back what perhaps money is rather quick / excellent at taking awayā€¦

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I hope this doesā€™t happen.

One of the main reasons we did not use IPB back in the day is because they had a free hosted version. When we choose a forum platform we want it to be a premium product, something that differentiates us from those who may not be as serious, professional or experienced - usually the type of people who opt for ā€˜free hostedā€™ versions.

Break away forums can be a problem - disgruntled or opportunistic members (and sometimes mods) who PM your members telling them about their ā€˜newā€™ forum promising them the world (modship) and before you know it a bulk of your regular members have gone. This happens - I have seen it mentioned lots of times in the private areas on admin forums. Breakaways being able to use the same platform for ā€˜freeā€™ just makes the problem worse.

This is also one of the reasons why I think allowing mods to see emails is a bad idea.

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Since this got bumped by spammers I will mention our ad plugin support is quite mature now and we have a number of paid hosting customers using it.

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