Ad Supported Forum Service of a Sort?

[Jason76]

Thoughts on idea below?

No Hassle Forums With High Bandwidth

This would be like IcyBoards but would charge 50 cents or something a month (cause my reseller doesn't allow free hosting). Anyway, I'd say any kind of forum would be allowed. It would be installed by staff and have some forum links, no banners, to pay for it.

Does anyone think this might be interesting with the fall of so many forum services?

Recap:

• Ad Supported with Forum Links, No Banners
• 
  
• Choice of Forum Service Up To Buyer - assuming it's a free forum brand or they're paying for XenForo, IBP etc..
• 
  
• Small Fee of 50 cents or less.
• 
  
• Free Mod and Theme Installation.

 

[Azareal]

That's paying twice. Through ads and through cash. So, you get the downsides of both.
I pay for a zillion different benefits, most notably I can do whatever I want without anyone ever telling me otherwise.

The thing to remember is that the biggest barrier to entry is actually getting someone to pay *at all*, once they're paying, it really doesn't actually make a difference if it's 50 cents or three dollars.

So, it's actually not doing anyone any favours, if anything, it'll be better to pay more for a more reliable service. Once I'm sold on the idea of getting a paid host, I'll go for the best in my price range, that's partly why I'm on a $3/month VPS rather than a $1/month shared host.

If I had to guess, a lot of these people either don't want the hassle of yet another payment to keep track of, or are kids who are incapable of paying you, even if they wanted to.

Good luck on the venture though.