I think it’s harder for forums to make money compared to other types of sites, mainly because they don’t generate a lot of traffic unless they’re already a large, established community.
Do you ever get discouraged if your forum isn’t making money?
Not really, I've created forums for years and maybe made money for 1 of them (not even a crazy amount, probably enough to buy dinner). I think forums are a hobby, it's something you do to past time, something you enjoy and have fun with. If it makes you money than great, but I've always been an admin or joined forums for the fun.
I don't look at it as making money, just a hobby 🙂 You start looking at earning when you see that you ahve high amount of traffic and you know it will make your earnings going up
I can't say that I ever get discouraged if my forum does not generate revenue. The only time I have become discouraged with a forum is if I have implemented things such as what I did with CA when I opened it just in late 2025.
If I make a little from my forum, that is great, and it goes towards the development of the forum; if not, then it's no biggie.
I've actually gone away with revenue generating. LP is a passion project and I do not want to make any money from it tbh. I just want people to enjoy it, and profiting takes your focus away from the site itself for me 😀
Nope I don't get discouraged since my forums are just for a hobby, I don't expect to earn money from them especially since it's hard to earn money from forums these days IMO.
I don’t really look to my forums to generate revenue either. It would be a nice perk if it happened, but it’s never been the goal, so I guess I kind of “cheat” on this topic because my expectation for forum income is basically zero. For me, the community side is something I run because I enjoy it, not because I expect it to pay for itself.
Now, the content side of my sites is a bit different. That’s where I actually think about revenue, traffic, and long‑term sustainability. Articles, guides, and resources have a clearer path to monetization, and they’re easier to scale compared to a forum that depends heavily on member activity. So I do treat those areas with a different mindset.
But when it comes to the forums themselves, I’m in the same boat as many of you; if they make a little money, great, it goes back into hosting or improvements. If not, it doesn’t discourage me because that was never the purpose in the first place.
Not really discouraged. If a forum isn’t generating revenue, it just means something needs to be improved—traffic, engagement, or monetization. I’d rather analyze and adjust instead of overthinking it.
