I create forums for the fun. I participate in them for the fun. Which is also why I enjoy Zetaboards. Why put loads of money into something and not have any kind of turn out really?
I rather make a free forum, if I get donations we use that towards prizes for members, or possibly development of new themes. 🙂
I have never run a forum for the money. I don't mind making it, and I do want to eventually have a successful forum. But it's never my only motivation for starting one.
I run my sites for fun and money. I look at the ads on my website as a tool to gain money to better improve the user experience. I try not to bombard people with advertisements but a few should be sufficient.
If you are loosing money with your website and you are not getting a benefit from it from another website than you are loosing. It costs money for support and the servers. If the site is there just to get traffic to an income producing site than that is fine in my point of view but getting money from your site should be a priority so you can just have a better product than others.
Definitely for fun. Income would be nice - if that were to actually happen I would immediately turn around and invest it back into the forum for hosting cost, contest prizes, etc.
Having started a second full-time forum, I realized that running forums for fun can be a lot more rewarding than desperately trying to make a quick buck. I'll never have much of a chance at competing with the giants, so I'll focus on high-quality content.
I don't even impose advertisements on anyone who visits either of my forums. I mean, I look at it from a guest's perspective, and I want to encourage them to at least lurk.
If I even make any money running my forums, they'll be purely donations from fellow friends and members. I use that money for hosting and domain name fees.
I've always ran forums just for the fun of it. Running it through a freehost I never even thought of making money. I think sometimes forums who run it just for the money, just die. There is no fun in those forums usually. 😱