Living off forum money?

[Nuke]

You might not need to earn from your forum when it's small. If it's a bigger forum which need more resources like high-end VPS or server then it start costing loads of money.

Forcing offers on members or VIP sections / Paid membership maybe not so good for members but having couple of advertisements is not bad.

My upcoming company is ad-funded, so I naturally am fine with them, so long as they're not too intrusive!

 

[juststeven]

You can live off forums if your successful enough. You don't even need to be the size of Digital Point! If you have a few thousand active members and you have ads placed around your board there's a nice sum of money for you. Now if you then sell premium memberships with lots of premium benefits you could be getting around 50 new premium members a month. On top of this your forum could be selling services for example a paid review service. Combine this with selling merchandise like shirts, mugs etc you could really be making a decent profit. With this profit you go and buy more forums and repeat this process and you can be earning enough to live off. If anyone wants ideas then check out alternative ways of earning money from your site and if your an established community I'd suggest selling your advertisements through Buy Sell Ads (non referral link).