gun forums and their bills

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prism

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How hard is it for gun forums to bring in enough money to pay their bills?

I know, some are run with no ads at all, by choice. ;)


how busy does a forum need to be before companies will pay for banner ads?


Lately I've noticed some major gun forums using "paid memberships" to raise funds. But those same major forums have substantial traffic, and lots of ads on their pages.

Also, there is a gun forum (falfiles) that limits viewing to registered members, but it has ads on its pages.


I thought more traffic was better, when a site had advertisements.

Is there some point of diminishing returns, where more traffic isn't "worth it" ?
 
I used to run a bicycling message board. On the system we used, the more traffic we had, the more we were charged. Bandwidth ain't free. So, a very popular board would incur greater charges. If those costs aren't covered by ad revenue, then membership fees are the next most likely source.
 
uhhh........., ok, I don't see any ads there. how could you cover the expenses?

care to say what you spend money on?

are webhosting or servers usually the biggest expenses?


thanks
 
It depends on the site, the advertisers, the click through rate of your demographic, etc. Big sites can eat through the bandwidth, there are several very small forums that are always having donation drives and paid membership. As a guy that sells bandwidth, the first group probably needs the money, the owner of the smaller forums usually just want some cash for his time. Neither applies 100% of the time, ymmv, no refunds.
 
I run www.gunandgame.com and well..it's not cheap.

I did run google ads on it...but they got anti-gun on us. I allow for memberships to be upgraded to a premium forum where other non-gun things can be discussed. It's certainly helped and I appreciate it because bandwith isn't cheap at all.

finding advertisers isn't exactly easy to do either. I'm toying with the idea, and seeing how to offer non-obtrusive ads on the site currently.

Good luck to anyone who runs one.
 
I know that at http://thegunsmiths.com/phpBB2/ the gunsmiths TV show forum everything is paid for by the producers of the Gunsmith TV show , I'm not sure how much it costs but as far as I know their are no plans to charge anything and I know it is advertisement free. But also their is a small number of members, the vast majority being professional gunsmiths and it is mainly set up to support the gunsmith trade, so I don't think they use much bandwidth.
 
I did run google ads on it...but they got anti-gun on us.
Click to expand...

Hmm I run google ads on my blog, my blog is less than a month old maybe they haven't caught it yet.

Just out of curiosity do any of you admins know how much bandwidth THR uses in a month?
 
It's not specifically a gun forum, but I've been running annoyedman.com (a political and social commentary forum, which does have some gun topics) since 2003, and I just got my first donations this past month. On the other hand, I have never solicited donations, and I finally put up the "donate to" link after repeated suggestions/requests from some of my members. The donations I have received have been VERY much appreciated.

Incidentally, if you want to donate to the support of THR, CLICK HERE.
 
I run Michigancpl.net and it is not cheap. It is fairy new so not that busy. Bandwidth does cost so I have created a pay section of the forum. Most people do not want to pay so I am now looking in to sponsors. It also takes a huge commitment of time on the owners part. But it is fun.. :)
 
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