Is monetising a website an achievable goal?

[Jack01]

Is monetising a website an achievable goal, or a distant dream?

Interested to hear peoples input in this.

Say you've got a fairly high traffic website and forum going. You regularly post content and your forum is very active. Do you have a chance of monetising it or will you continue to run at a loss?

I'm really not sure if it's achievable anymore, I see people in the hundreds stating that they have high traffic sites or active forums yet struggle to make $50 a week. But surely, these big sites arent just playing around for the hell of it, they must be bringing in some sort of revenue.

Anyway, do you think that if you put the hard work in and draw a large amount of traffic that a website can be profitable?

 

[Ziveeman]

Yes, it certainly can. It obviously depends on the industry your forum is in, how much traffic, etc. but you can make money off your site. The main problem is that many forum owners pick subjects that don't monetize well - for example, I don't believe that a resource forum for other forums (a forum that provides services and skins and emoticons, etc) can monetize as efficiently as a forum about say, dog care and dog owner discussion. Why? Well the dog care forum has a lot more potential overall - affiliate marketing, private advertising from physical stores or online stores, while the resource forum has to probably just rely on Google Adsense (and resource forum members probably don't click on ads anyway).

Also, I doubt that you've seen hundreds of people that can't make money off their site and zero people who have made money off their site.

 

[Jack01]

Yes, it certainly can. It obviously depends on the industry your forum is in, how much traffic, etc. but you can make money off your site. The main problem is that many forum owners pick subjects that don't monetize well - for example, I don't believe that a resource forum for other forums (a forum that provides services and skins and emoticons, etc) can monetize as efficiently as a forum about say, dog care and dog owner discussion. Why? Well the dog care forum has a lot more potential overall - affiliate marketing, private advertising from physical stores or online stores, while the resource forum has to probably just rely on Google Adsense (and resource forum members probably don't click on ads anyway).

Also, I doubt that you've seen hundreds of people that can't make money off their site and zero people who have made money off their site.

Actually that's exactly what I have seen. Between people I keep in contact with and the general talk on sites like this. Obviously I'm not in contact with owners or larger and targetable sites or I would see more people making money I guess.

Thanks for your input and it makes me glad Im in the niche I am, although I chose it because I have a passion for it. Still looking forward to more opinions on the matter 🙂

 

[froggyboy604]

I manage to make an average of $1-6 dollars per day with Adsense and Amazon Affiliate ads, so I'm not losing money on hosting and domain registration fees, but most of my money comes from static websites and blogs.

If you have a lot of members who post useful and unique content about a consumer product or service like Cell phones, Electronics, computers,natural medicine, shoes, etc you can make more cash since you get more traffic from search engines, and people interested in buying stuff from your affiliate links.

 

[Ziveeman]

Yes, it certainly can. It obviously depends on the industry your forum is in, how much traffic, etc. but you can make money off your site. The main problem is that many forum owners pick subjects that don't monetize well - for example, I don't believe that a resource forum for other forums (a forum that provides services and skins and emoticons, etc) can monetize as efficiently as a forum about say, dog care and dog owner discussion. Why? Well the dog care forum has a lot more potential overall - affiliate marketing, private advertising from physical stores or online stores, while the resource forum has to probably just rely on Google Adsense (and resource forum members probably don't click on ads anyway).

Also, I doubt that you've seen hundreds of people that can't make money off their site and zero people who have made money off their site.

Actually that's exactly what I have seen. Between people I keep in contact with and the general talk on sites like this. Obviously I'm not in contact with owners or larger and targetable sites or I would see more people making money I guess.

Thanks for your input and it makes me glad Im in the niche I am, although I chose it because I have a passion for it. Still looking forward to more opinions on the matter 🙂

I wouldn't exactly count the people in this forum as people who have "failed" at monetizing their website. They haven't reached the point where they can fail at it yet - they're all still learning (me included). Not to bash on the people here at Forum Promotion, but it takes work - a lot of it. Many people don't realize it. While this is online and it seems easy to make money from home, it doesn't make it different than any other job in real life. It's not just something you can make, slap Adsense on, and then call it a day. It takes constant promotion and talking with a lot of different people.

I've made money on my website. It's nothing to write home about, but it covers the cost at least (which is all I really need anyway).

 

[katy perry is hot]

When I owned my old forum I made anywhere from 50 cents to upwards of 4 dollars a day. Mostly stayed in the middle of that... it covered the software costs and the monthly hosting fee. I never got any money on the side at all though.

 

[froggyboy604]

[youtube]MEI4XGxsWQk[/youtube]

http://blog.affiliatetip.com/archives/a ... g-is-hard/

This video is a a pretty good video by Shawn Collin's says Affiliate Marketing is not easy, but if you try hard and feel passionate about affiliate marketing you'll have a better chance of succeeding at it. He also talks about how his fathers work for the Federal Government at a 9-5 job, and his father did not like his job, and ended up dieing 7 months before retiring. His father also spent most of his life regretting not getting into advertising which was his father's passion.

At the end of the video a Baseball player who is Mr. Bouton made a short speech about success.

I stumbled on to the secret of success, and that is persistence.

I just kept going out for the team anyway, even though I wasn’t successful.

Every summer out there playing ball. Persistence… persistence was the key.

You don’t have to be educated, you don’t have to be talented, you don’t have to be rich, you don’t have to be lucky – it’s available to anyone.

I’m convinced most people don’t fail, they simply stop trying.

 

[Fergal]

That's a great video and a great quote froggyboy604, thanks for sharing it with us.

 

[Cloverfield]

You can absolutely make money from a forum getting lots of visitors. Hosting for my forum costs $50 a month because I am on a VPS server. I always make this money back and more through advertising. I think this month I made about $300 through the forum so you take away the $50 and you're looking at a $250 profit. Of course, that's only on my forum where the traffic is moderate (20k uniques a month). If you are getting many more uniques then you could earn even more 🙂