I'm still at My young age (16) So it's not to late but in order for me to learn how do code I need to give forums up for a while I also have school aswill
But I'm going to try to build my own PHP Site instead
Good Practice
@Spudster, If I were you, mate, I would just stick to owning a forum. Running a social network site like Facebook would require a lot of work, and no doubt that you'd have to have good time management skills on top of everything else. So I would definitely stick with forums if I were you. In fact, from my personal point of view: I have health problems in real life. I have had asthma for over a year, and more than enough stuff to worry about. As bad as my asthma can sometimes get, especially during the summer month, there are days when I'm lucky to even have enough energy to just lurk on my own forum, never mind post. On top of that, I also have a part-time job as well. So keeping all those things in mind, I definitely know I wouldn't have time for a big social networking project. Even if I had a team of developers helping me, I'd still have to log on every now and again just to make sure that things were running smoothly and being put together correctly and most importantly, making sure that every one on staff was getting along. So that's my reason for sticking to a small project like running a forum. Not so much time consuming and I can come and go as I like.
It would have to be a pretty damn good topic, expensive hosting and a great admin. You're always comparing your self and your forum to facebook or big companies. Aim a bit smaller than the worlds largest social network otherwise you will fail when you don't get hundreds of users a day 😛
Well, I'm making about $6k-$10k profit from my forums /yr. Once I start my blog and begin to promote my forums, I'm hoping to double this, or even triple this.
Mark haven't started his social network in 2011. He started in in 2004 when there is not much competition both in terms of Social network and Forums. At that time, a social network with some new features looked like an unique idea for people.
But now its 2011. There are tons of Forums and Social networks. Its really hard to get something as big as Facebook.
Just like others said, stop comparing with such huge ones. First aim to make a Forum with 10k posts (which you haven't attained till now), then go for 50k, 100k, a million and so on.
If you aim for a huge one, you will be tired of waiting for reaching that. Make milestones shorter, so that every time you cross one, you get hope to cross the other.
It doesn't do any good to compare your sites with somebody else's. This is how I used to be as well, and I learned the hard way that comparing my forum to something as big as, say, this forum, doesn't cut it. This is how you have way too high expectations of yourself, and when you don't meet those expectations as planned, then you get upset or angry and close down. It's always best to start small when working on a project. When I started trying to run a forum, I too was comparing my sites to active sites such as this, hence I ended up making high expectations out of myself, only to wind up being disappointed with my results in the end. The bottom line is it does not pay at all to set such huge expectations of yourself straight away. You'll only end up in disappointment more than anything.
Great for those who can make it work, but personally, it is not for me. Don't get me wrong, I love my forum, but I already have a job. Sometimes, my forum is an escape from that, and I enjoy the separation between the two.
My job has stress, and my forum, serves as a break from that, while providing me and other members with the same safe haven to say whatever they want on the forum that they know they'd probably be fired for at work.
I think that to get to the point where my focus shifts toward making money, rather than kicking back with the other members, would only add stress and aggravation, and take away the enjoyment I have running my forum.
I would only look to make money with a forum if I were providing a service, but not when running a community.
Yes, you can use your forum to promote affiliate products, or products you sell like E-books, Themes for websites, and digital content.
I believe A few MMOs, Web hosting, games, and Theme makers earn a lot of money from forums since people like to buy products where there is a support forum for their products.
Adsense, and private ad selling can earn you some money, but you need a nice amount of traffic to earn enough money to live off of.
