Most stand alone forums probably don't make much (if any money) at all. Banner ads can bring in an income but it's a chicken and egg situation as you can't get paid for advertising unless you have a successful and busy forum.

They are of most use to people who have a business associated with the subject of the forum and the increase in traffic is useful for the main site and vice versa with this forum being a prime example.

As mentioned in another thread I briefly toyed with the idea of a commercial finance forum tied into my own site with the USP for me being that anyone interested in my own area of expertise would automatically come to me.  The problem was that whilst fine in theory there would be nothing to stop competitors registering and pitching in for the business too so I dropped that idea fairly quickly.

Ian

A useful article on the pros and cons of Forums can be found at http://www.sitepronews.com
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Janet Fraser

"The Risk-Free Guide to Buying a Business:How to Increase sales and Make Money" download from www.fraserconsultancy.co.uk

Most forums are a business front (shop window) for a product or service, and many business owners treat the costs of running forums as necessary marketing expenses.

There is no point setting up a forum with the idea of making money from it, unless you are willing to partner with business to generate extra revenue through referrals.

Glenn Watson Business Consultancy @ Inzvestor

Yeah this was the main idea, i'm planning to have a forum in my online music store, so it would hopefully be a good way of generating loyal visitors to the site and in turn customers.

Thanks for the advice guys

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I ran OneForum.co.uk for a while and the money I made was from Googles AdSense programme where you show google's text ads on your site. I was kicked off adsense though for discussing what I had made in forums like this, but now I've been kick off anyway there's no reason why I can't continue discussing amounts made...

In the first month I made around £100 and in the second month it was about £300 (although I did not receive this check as I was kick off by the second month).

The reason I made a good return for just showing googles ads was because one of the forums was about finance, mortgages, loans etc which pay very good rates - I think the best I did on 3 clicks one day was about £15.

If you would like the Oneforum.co.uk domain, let me know as it still has a google PR of 3

Did you set that forum up purely for Adsense? I remember you starting it up and it can't have been long ago. What went wrong?
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[quote]i'm planning to have a forum in my online music store, so it would hopefully be a good way of generating loyal visitors to the site and in turn customers.[/quote]

A forum either has to hit the ground running or else build up very quickly. It isn't as easy as it seems to build up a worthwhile forum but one way is to try and arrange a tie up with a magazine in a similar business. They advertise your forum in their magazine and in return you can become their "official forum" and promote the mag a little in return.

Ian

Another good way of populating a forum quickly is through a post exchange.  The Forum Zone have a post exchange group set up and it works really well.  You post on other peoples forums, they post on yours.  I'm sure a music forum would prove popular and you'd get plenty of activity.
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Adi - WebVideo4U.co.uk - Web Video Made Easy
Web">href="http://www.webvideo4u.co.uk/products/web_conferencing.html">Web Conferencing | Live Streaming Video | Video Email | much more..
Work with businesses? Maybe you could benefit from our affiliate scheme.