Well, I am glad to see this forum will remain. I don't come here every day, and honestly I don't find all that many threads of interest. But for those that are of interest, and to have the newbie questions I ask answered, well, this site is just WELL worth having around. I can't think of any other place I would consider going to when I want to have a question about my Genos answered by knowledgeable and experienced people.
FYI, I run several message boards myself. Nothing at all even close to being related to the content here. I have also run a site that did poorly a long while back, but I was able to sell it for more than it was reasonably worth. I doubt that will ever happen again. Only one I currently run about of four message board sites is doing all that well, with over 160,000 registered members. But it has been around for 20 years, and that detail is important. With the explosion of popularity (infestation?) of facebook, things took a dramatic nosedive across the board. A LOT of forum sites went kaput as a result. Many, many others I frequent sometimes are just hanging on by a thin thread. One in particular (a Corvette related site) was just massive), but is just a shadow of itself now. I believe the combination of facebook (and other so-called "social media" style sites) along with the smart phone revolution in personal communications overwhelmed the older style forum/message board style sites. Many sites got drained of participation like just punching a hole in a bucket. BTW, is this site compatible with smart phone technology? If not, it is behind the eightball and that really should be changed. Seems like most people have abandoned their desktop and laptop PCs and really only access the internet via their cell phones any longer. Me, being a dinosaur, just refuse to do that. I am a touch typist, and can't stand those little keypads on phones, nor can I stand the eyestrain of trying to view the internet on those little cell phone screens. But I still had to make my sites compatible for people who were not dinosaurs like me.
I also have a dedicated server that comes with full management, so I can leave all the server details to the server guys. I just decided I didn't want to have to deal with those kind of details day in and day out. I have been through a lot of server resellers over the years, and the guys I have now have been just great to work with. I have a really good vBulletin programmer that is indispensable to me. I have to use an older version of vBulletin because of all the custom mods done to the message board software, but my programmer is nothing less than an expert with this stuff. I used to do programming myself in my younger days, but it is a talent that quickly fades when those brain muscles are not exercised frequently. Programming is not all that hard, but it is extremely tedious, and quite honestly my memory just isn't that good to where I can remember all the syntax details needed for such efforts. My programmer gets a percentage of the Google Adsense revenue so he is basically on retainer for whenever I need him. Works well for both of us that way.
As for membership contributions, well, the flame will burn hot if you ask for it, but won't burn for long. People come and go in message board systems. If you don't have a constant supply of new members, the site will slowly be dying on the vine. Of the 160,000 registered members on my main website, there are only currently 16,500 ACTIVE members. Which has been dropping steadily for a while now. Used to be I would get 50 new registrations per day. Now it is only about 15 or so per day. It is like filling a bucket with water that has a hole in the bottom. Unless the amount of water being added is more than the leak, eventually the bucket will just be wet on the bottom, without enough to bother keeping the bucket around.
Out of those 16,500 active members, I have 240 contributing members of various levels. I also have paid banner and text based advertising that members pay for. And on top of that I have third party advertising via Google Adsense and InfoLinks. Together they all help to keep my site(s) running in the black and honestly provide enough income to supplement my retirement income to make it worthwhile spending my time battling the constant barrage of spammer registrations and other headaches that are inherent in this sort of effort. Yeah, it is fun and it feels worthwhile running a member based message board system, but sooner or later you start thinking about what your time is worth. Especially when you see membership participation dying on the vine, you start to wonder why even bother with it? If your members don't appreciate it enough to participate, then why exactly should you care enough to keep it running? Been there and done that myself with the other sites I run that are basically dead. But the main site pays the bills for my server, and it really doesn't cost me much beyond the domain name leasing for the dead sites, so I keep them around. Of course there are other hidden benefits of running a forum based business in the form of business deductions you can take. So, don't underestimate the value of this!
Honestly, in your shoes, I would seriously look into third party advertising services. Google Adsense is based on actual clicks of the ads to generate revenue, and InfoLinks is based on just raw views of the ads they provide. They seem to compliment each other well Of course the more traffic you have, the better the revenue will be, but heck if you could just earn $10 per day with that advertising, you would be operating in the black here. Anything more than that would just be gravy. Are such ads a minor pain in the butt for viewers? Sure. But if presented with the choice of either putting up with the ads or the site goes kaput, I think most will gladly put up with the ads.
Every message board is different, and attracts a different type of clientele. The primary criteria you need to consider is "what does your site offer that people want, and is there anything unique about it that makes it stand above every other similar competing site?" Everyone has a limited amount of time to spend on the internet. Facebook and text messaging on the cell phone with the constant barrage of notices of new messages, sucks up a lot of time from a lot of people. This will be extremely difficult to overcome. Maybe not even possible to do so. You have good intentions with starting up and running this site. But perhaps thinking about making this where it is helping YOU financially is justified for your long term satisfaction for what you are doing. Seems the older I get, the more I consider my time as being EXTREMELY valuable to me. After all, having an income can be considered as just another measure of just how valuable people believe in what you are doing for them. It is NOT dirty to make money off of your efforts. Matter of fact, many years ago someone said something to me that had a huge impact on my life. He said "Rich, figure out something that you really like to do, and are going to do it anyway, and make a business out of it." IMHO, that advice was just pure gold to me.
Anyway, just my opinions. I read this thread a couple of days ago, but have been waiting for a rainy day to spend the time to put in my two cents. If you need any opinion based advice from me, ask away. I sure as heck don't know everything about this stuff, but I have tried every method I could think of to make my sites as successful as possible and still stay within the specs of ME being happy with what I was doing with the site and for the people they are targeted to attract. If you want to have a private conversation, then that is OK with me. Just don't expect, or even hope, that I will have all the correct answers, or even most of them. At the very least you will get what you paid for from my suggestions.
