If you use the internet regularly, chances are that you must have come across online forums before. This is often used to qualify a community of users that engage together to debate issues and answer questions in a particular niche.
There are many successful online forums out there, such as Warriors forum, which focuses on the internet marketing niche, Digital Point, DNForum, WebHostingTalks, and many more. And the owners of these forums are making good money from them.
If you too have been thinking of starting your own forum and earn real income from it, it is absolutely possible. You can join the league of forum owners that have been cashing out regularly from running a forum. However, you will need to prepare to put in the work and effort required to run a forum successfully. This post will show you all you need to start a forum and make money from it. So, keep reading.
Can You Make Money From A Forum?
Let’s first clear any doubts in your mind. Yes, you can make a lot of money running even a free forum. While not all forums are created with the aim of making money from them, you can provide affiliate links, sell membership, run local ads, or sell a product on yours to earn some cash.
How Much Does It Cost To Start A Forum?
Well, the answer to this depends on a couple of factors. It depends on the type of niche you want to delve into and which forum software you will be using. The bulk of the money for starting a forum goes to buying the forum software. Most of this software will cost between $20 and $500 per month. Apart from the financial implications involved, you will also need to put in a lot of time to start and successfully run a forum.
How to Start a Forum That Can Help You Earn Money
#1: Choose a profitable niche
The rule of thumb is to choose a particular niche when trying to build a forum. Don’t ever think of being a jerk of all trade; it will earn you nothing. The more focused your forum is, the more money you are likely to make from it. Concentrating on a specific niche will help you build a community of people with similar interests. It is always easier to monetize that way.
However, make sure you choose a niche you are familiar with or passionate about. It won’t be funny if you get questions from your members and cannot provide an answer to them. Choosing a niche you are familiar with will make it easier for you to manage the forum.
#2: Register a Domain
After choosing a nice niche for your forum, the next thing to do is register a domain for it. Choose a domain name that is descriptive of the forum. Make your domain name short and easy to remember. You can choose any registrar you like for this.
But it is not recommended that you register your domain with your host because you may want to move your domain from them in the future if any issues occur. It is better to register your domain elsewhere.
#3: Choose a reliable host
Your host determines a whole of things about the success of your forum. When you choose a bad host, it may hamper the growth of the forum. Choose a host that runs PHP 5 because most forum scripts or software are written in PHP. There are plenty of great hosts out there to choose from, but ensure you do your research before committing to any of them.
Ask questions around before you make your choice. You can as well look to see some suggestions on certain forums like WebhostingTalk.com.
#4: Choose a forum software
Another thing that can decide the success of your community is your choice of forum software. Fortunately, there are lots of forum scripts out there that will serve you well. While there are premium scripts, there are also some free ones. The most popular forum script presently on the market is vBulletin, and that is what most successful forums use, including all the ones we earlier mentioned in this post.
However, there are also some other scripts you can choose from. Some of them include Simple Machine Forum, Burning Board, Vanilla Forums, Flarum, XenForo, MyBB, bbPress, and many more.
If you are on a tight budget, I will recommend you start out with some free scripts like MyBB, bbPress, or Simple Machine Forum (SMF). And later on, you can switch to a more advanced, paid script.
#5: Download and Upload your file
This is installing your forum, and it is very easy and doesn’t take time. If you are running a free script like SMF, you only need to go to their site and download the latest release. In a matter of minutes, you will have your forum installed and running.
If you find it difficult to do it yourself, you can contact your host for help or talk to a professional web developer to help you out.
How to Make Money from My Forum
There are multiple ways you can monetize your forum and start making money from it. As your forum grows, you can experiment to see what works and what doesn’t. But below are some ways you can make money from your forum:
#6: Google Adsense
Google Adsense is one of the easiest ways to make money from your forum. It doesn’t require much to get started with Adsense. However, it is recommended you concentrate on generating content and building the community in order to earn huge from Adsense. It makes more sense to have at least a thousand visitors per day on your forum before thinking of making good money from your forum using Adsense.
#7: Premium CPM Advertising
This is another way to make good money from a forum. But note that most CPM advertising networks will require that you have a considerable amount of traffic before they can accept you. So, you may need to forget about using CPM advertising on your forum for now if you are yet to start getting about 100k visitors per month on the site.
Before you apply for any CPM advertising network, ensure you carefully read through their requirements to be sure they accept un-moderated content sites like forums. Not all CPM Ad networks accept forums. But if your forum is accepted, it means a really good deal for you and the forum.
#8: Premium Membership
As your forum grows, you can start a premium membership where you offer some extra stuff that people want. So, how do you find out what people really want? You can use the forum suggestion sub-forum to get an idea about what your members are really looking for. Do they want personal Blogs/Groups, Access to an exclusive private forum, or a badge as a forum supporter?
You can use that to offer a premium membership package for the members of the community. However, wait till the forum grows very well before thinking of starting a premium option.
#9: Forum/Sub-forum sponsorship
There are sometimes multiple forums on a site, with each sub-forum different from the other. If you have different sub-forums, you may offer sponsorship for such sub-forums by advertisers. Advertisers do love to sponsor specific sub-forums instead of getting a complete forum sponsorship. And they do it at premium rates.
To further increase your earnings, you can use Adsense to backfill non-sponsored forums. However, you will need to make sure advertisers get the best for their money when they sponsor your forum. That will also make them keep coming back.
Final Note
Earning money from forums is very much possible, just that it doesn’t happen so fast. You will need to first focus on building content and the community before thinking of earning from it. This can take a few months or years.
Keep your focus on things people like. If your community members love the value they get from your site, they will keep coming back, and that will attract advertisers to your forums. Of course, that means more money for you as the forum owner.
