Thread: Some Advice

Hi,

I have been running a site for about 18 months now,its a simple vBulletin forum and I am very happy with the progress.I am running it as a hobby and I enjoy it so I am happy to cover the cost of running the site.The costs at the moment are minimum,I have paid for my vBulletin license so its basically just hosting which is about 13 euro a month.

Now one thing concerns me,the site is really taken off and while I am happy to cover the costs for the moment I wounder how far away I am from these costs increasing and me having to revaluation the situation.I have never had adds or anything like that on the site but I may have to look at this again.

What has me concerned is the year on year growth is very good,I no this is a good problem to have but I would like to have a plan in place encase the worst happens and I have to start making some cash from the site.

If anybody has any suggestions for me I would be very grateful as this is just a hobby for me,I am no techie and have learned this stuff as I go.



Here are some stats from the site (these firures are from Setp so have gone up a bit since)..


In Sept I had over 8,000 Unique visitors,in Sep 07 this was 2068.This is a increase of over 300% year on year.

The Bandwidth used up in Sept 08 was 12.29 GB and in Sept 07 it was only 2.83 GB.

4,031701 hits in Sept 08 and only 861187 12 months ago.

Average of 720 visits per day,12 months ago this was 172.This was also a massive increase of 318% year on year

Most users ever online was 182

The site has over 2,000 members with just over 100,000 posts.

So you want to recoup your costs ? Some ideas::

• Why not have some premium memberships (vbulletin offers a subscription engine)
• Do you have any ads on it ? AdSense might bring in a few $$'s
• Run a donation campaign via paypal or something

Can you share the URL or niche ?

I don't necessarily want to recoup my costs as I am happy enough as its not costing me much to run at the moment,but I can see a time if the current growth continues I may have to invest some more cash into the site.Ideally I could raise this cash from the site.

The site is Irishkop.com

Adsense would be the obvious thing to look at first

If you check out vBulletin.org Forum - The Official vBulletin Resource! (and threads on the forum section here as well) you should find plenty of mod / expansions that can help you to get adsense integrated with the site.

How many "core" members do you have?

There should be plenty of affiliate options open to you as well... even spreadshirt tshirts might be an option (though I'm not sure how licensing would work with a premier league team....)

Originally Posted by blacknight

How many "core" members do you have?

I would say about 500/600 core members,I clear all inactive accounts after a while.I have just got some Polo shirts done up and it was such a success I am putting in another order for more Polos and Hoodies/fleece tops.I do these for cost price as its good advertisement for the site.

I have read up a bit on things like Adsense etc but they seem like a lot of effort for very little return,I don't want to do anything that would turn people off the site.

Originally Posted by Mr T

I have read up a bit on things like Adsense etc but they seem like a lot of effort for very little return,I don't want to do anything that would turn people off the site.

Some people are comfortably making several thousand dollars a month from Adsense

Originally Posted by blacknight

Some people are comfortably making several thousand dollars a month from Adsense

I have a colleague in the UK who makes £250.00 per day from adsense with a small health-related site

Originally Posted by blacknight

Some people are comfortably making several thousand dollars a month from Adsense

I suppose its something I may have to re think.I am sure my stats are nowhere near that level,on a side note what are Stats like the ones I have posted above like for a site going 18 months..?

Originally Posted by link8r

I have a colleague in the UK who makes £250.00 per day from adsense with a small health-related site

I can well imagine

Health related ads would have a very high rate, so if the integration was good then you could get a nice tidy return (note to self - do a health related website)

Originally Posted by Mr T

I suppose its something I may have to re think.I am sure my stats are nowhere near that level,on a side note what are Stats like the ones I have posted above like for a site going 18 months..?

The level of traffic isn't the only factor when it comes to the likes of adsense.

It's the "type" of traffic that makes all the difference

If you just want to dip your toes, as it were, then you can easily setup adsense in your vbulletin archives (though it won't give you much indication of overall potential earnings)