Hosting forums for others??

I've seen couple sites that allow you to create your own forum and get your own www.domain.com/YOURNAME url. I guess they make their money by putting ads on all the free public forums that people create on their servers. Has anyone done this here? Is it worth it? I found a script that can do all the work and I'm thinking about giving it a try.

 

Give it a try! Worst comes to worst the biggest expense would be for your hosting.

 

You *might* make it work. I made a load of scripts that did this, i don't own the site now but they're on http://www.gmtt.co.uk, free phpbb and smf host.

To be honest when i tried it, i didn't make that much, but then i didn't promote it at all so...

 

you will waste lot of time in management, i wont recommend it.

 

I wouldn't recommend it either. If you decide you want to expand your forum with articles, news or other content, you will need your own domain.

 

I recommend it, if you have the proper marketing skills.

You best bet would be to find people (read newbies) looking for setting up their own forums on site like phpbb.com and other forum software support sites. Don't Spam, just write a friendly PM offering them something.

Now comes the second part, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Diversify.

Prepare a serious business model, which includes a network. Say Forum Hosting, Image Hosting, Free Website Hosting, A General Portal and say Hosting for Posting Services.

Get different domains for all of these and set them up on the same server and connect

Now instead of displaying ads on these forums, display links on them to different sites. Like maybe a portal or some place where people are required to sign up. Make money out of this.

The trick is not on sole adverts, forced-ad advertising is a talk of old days, it is a huge turn off. Instead get permission to show links on maybe above the forums. Sell these links to someone here and make money out of it.

I hope you get what am saying. Monetizing is an art, it depends on how good you're at it.

Abhishek

 

Forums hacking attempts are common, you'll have to make sure you can face the challenge,
and it can hit you anytime if you extend the service, especially if it is free to sign up for.