We all agree that developing and maintaining a website or forum can often require a significant financial investment. From securing the essentials to enhancing the user experience. So I’m interested to hear about the experiences of others in the community - how much have you invested in your website or forum, and what were the primary areas of spending?

 

Don't forget about:

• Domain Registration and Renewal: Have you opted for a standard registration, or invested in a premium domain?
  
• Hosting Services: A reliable host is the foundation of any website. Have you chosen shared hosting, VPS, or even dedicated servers? Have you found a provider that’s proven worth the investment? Feel free to share.
  
• Licenses: For those using paid forum software or CMS, licensing fees can be substantial. Have you invested in licenses such as XenForo, Invision Community, vBulletin, or other platforms?
  
• Add-ons or Plugins: Plugins and add-ons can greatly increase our experience. What "extensions" have you found valuable, and what have they cost over time?
  
• Design and Customization: A visually distinct and well-branded site can set a community apart. Have you worked with designers, invested in custom themes, or commissioned graphics?
  
• Marketing and Advertising: Expanding reach often requires paid promotion. Have you invested in ads, social media campaigns, or sponsored posts?
  

For those willing to share, what has your total investment been, and do you feel these expenses were justified? Are there any areas where you would have approached things differently?

 

Your insights might be invaluable for others planning their next steps in building a successful site or forum.

I’m that guy who bought licences for IPB, vB and XF not to actually use them but as market research for what they have to offer, so, uh, yeah.

 

I tend to build my own stuff rather than getting plugins and themes, so the most expensive part for me tends to be the hosting in practice.

I haven't kept track which I know I should do but, let's say that it's a lot.

In all of my websites and forums, probably around $3,000 a year. I earn about $15K-$20K a year from online stuff. I'm ahead :)

I've spent less than $50 in the past 5+ years considering the only thing I pay for is a custom domain.

Thankfully I'm just a co-founder and when I got to the forum pretty much everything was already set up as far as payments go. Currently I have spent $0 on the forum, though if the founder wanted some help with some payments I would step up and help. At this time, I don't see us needing to pay for anything else on the forum though.

 

In the past I had paid about $100 to set up my forum. But that's including hosting, domain, getting my logo made for me etc. I was really lucky and didn't have to put in a lot of money.

I spent about $200-$300 from my poker winnings in contests, freerolls, and buying content for my forums.

I have a hosting package that allows me to host multiple websites, so when I create a forum, I do not have to spend money on hosting separately, I use open source and free themes and addons so I do not spend money in software subscription. I spend around $13 per year for domain renewal. My major cost is related to content development, I hire paid posters for my forums. I have not calculated exactly how much I spend but I believe I am spending around $300 per year on each of my forum.

I almost tried using Google AdWords/Google Ads once, but it said my campaign was disapproved due to having malicious software on my board, which I didn't. After thinking about it briefly, I gave up on that idea.

I have a few different websites across different hosts. I should condense some so I don't have to worry about spending a fee every year, but I know on Ionos I'm spending too much with their fees on SSL certificates (seriously it's dumb they make you pay for those), and then they charged me for a year not to mention the webmail fees too which Hostinger provides both SSL certificates and webmail for free. I've probably spent at least $600 on my websites that are still active, I could definitely save if I took the time to move Thee Zone over to my Hostinger account because Hostinger is much better in terms of price compared to Ionos. Come my next weekend, I'm going to move Thee Zone finally and any other site that's hosted there. I have a feeling they have cancelation fees too...

I have mentioned elsewhere that I had a great experience using Google Ads many years ago when growing my biggest forum. I saw a 300% return on my investment that I was able to track was purely through users gained through the advertising campaign over the course of just over a year, which I was very happy with.

 

At times with my biggest forum, our costs amounted to in excess of $2,000 a month. That being said, our income always exceeded this, and on occasions exceeded it significantly, so it was a worthwhile spend.

 

In terms of a potential new project I'm thinking of, my budget would be limited by what I thought offered value for money. I mean, sure I don't have $10,000 to put in at once, but if the project was right and I truly believed in it, I'd be willing to invest $1,000+ over the course of some months if I was building a viable business opportunity.

At times with my biggest forum, our costs amounted to in excess of $2,000 a month. That being said, our income always exceeded this, and on occasions exceeded it significantly, so it was a worthwhile spend.

That's pretty expensive, but great that your income exceeded it.

 

I'm paying around $200 a month for my VPS but my blogs are paying for it and also giving me profit.

 

Your strategy is best, if you can earn more than you're paying to be online, you're on the right strategy.

I have mentioned elsewhere that I had a great experience using Google Ads many years ago when growing my biggest forum. I saw a 300% return on my investment that I was able to track was purely through users gained through the advertising campaign over the course of just over a year, which I was very happy with.

 

At times with my biggest forum, our costs amounted to in excess of $2,000 a month. That being said, our income always exceeded this, and on occasions exceeded it significantly, so it was a worthwhile spend.

 

In terms of a potential new project I'm thinking of, my budget would be limited by what I thought offered value for money. I mean, sure I don't have $10,000 to put in at once, but if the project was right and I truly believed in it, I'd be willing to invest $1,000+ over the course of some months if I was building a viable business opportunity.

Curious what was on your expense list every month. It's great that you saw a profit, but I can't imagine what's costing you 2k a month.

That's pretty expensive, but great that your income exceeded it.

 

I'm paying around $200 a month for my VPS but my blogs are paying for it and also giving me profit.

 

Your strategy is best, if you can earn more than you're paying to be online, you're on the right strategy.

 

Yeah, our expenses weren't always that high, but once we'd rolled out a lot of features on our site and our traffic was growing on a monthly basis, the costs soon added up.

 

Curious what was on your expense list every month. It's great that you saw a profit, but I can't imagine what's costing you 2k a month.

 

Well, it was around 10 years ago so I can't remember exact lists of individual costs, but I know the total was somewhere in that range most months. Staffing costs/contributions cost us upto $500 a month, which might include some ad hoc small payments made to developers working on plugins or additional features for us, or graphics we were using in advertising. Our advertising budget was a minimum of $500 a month, but sometimes went as high as $1,000/month, depending on the time of the year (period in the football season) when it was most efficient for us to advertise.

 

In addition to this, we had hosting costs of around $300/month as we had grown so large we needed to be hosted at the time on a dedicated server that had a 24/7 response time of 30 minutes to any technical issues on the hosting side of things. Then we had monthly bills to a couple of API providers, who provided us with data feeds to run things like an interactive betting service on our forum, using forum currency, and a live commentary service that provided direct on-site feed to a forum thread with live text commentary of Premier League football games, updated roughly every 7-8 minutes, which back in 2012 or so, was quite a feat, something only really done by major media providers.

 

All of this made our bills in the region of $1,500-$2,500 a month, with some fluctuations, but as I said previously, I don't recall a month where our income didn't cover our costs, and of course, when we first started out, our costs were in the region of $50/year for the hosting + domain name only, these costs only developed as we grew into a huge community.

That's cool though. It does add up quickly when running a forum. And this is something many community owners oversee. They're often not equipped for the growth. Every website has the potential to become a successful and nice income generating one, but only if you're able to pour something in first. Of course it has changed a lot since 10-15 years ago, and it's much harder to do today, but it's still possible.

 

If you're able to spend 500USD a month on advertising for a year or so, imagine the growth you'll see in a year.

That's exactly right. We were only able to make that kind of investment through slow initial growth and then a small upfront investment from me once I understood that the site had potential to reach the next level.

 

If I recall correctly, my total spend on the site before it started to generate an income was in the region of $500 - which was a lot of money for me as a teenager back then - but this spend was done over the course of close to a year, while the forum was growing and I was still learning a lot about becoming an administrator.

 

I was very fortunate that around 18 months after starting the forum, during our first phase of what I call "sustained activity", where we had 50 or so members posting a total of around 500 posts a day (double at the weekends), we had two people join the forum who each donated $150 to the site when we floated our idea of providing a betting service using the forum currency. Coupled with an additional $200 investment from myself, this enabled me to pay a developer to build the plugin and pay for the integration with the API provider, which is what I believe led to our first big explosion in activity. When the feature was released, over the course of the next month, our daily active users went from 50 > 250, and we sold $1,000 worth of forum currency/upgraded member subscriptions that month.

 

It was this initial spark that ultimately was what enabled the community to grow into what it eventually became. I took $100 of that money, bought myself and my family a lovely takeaway and went to the cinema, and put the other $900 straight back into advertising for the forum. Within another six months we were getting 3-4,000 posts a day and our member count was in the tens of thousands, and over the coming months our site grew to become what was essentially a small business run from my bedroom that for just over 2 years earned me between $1,000-$3,000 a month.

That's exactly right. We were only able to make that kind of investment through slow initial growth and then a small upfront investment from me once I understood that the site had potential to reach the next level.

 

If I recall correctly, my total spend on the site before it started to generate an income was in the region of $500 - which was a lot of money for me as a teenager back then - but this spend was done over the course of close to a year, while the forum was growing and I was still learning a lot about becoming an administrator.

 

I was very fortunate that around 18 months after starting the forum, during our first phase of what I call "sustained activity", where we had 50 or so members posting a total of around 500 posts a day (double at the weekends), we had two people join the forum who each donated $150 to the site when we floated our idea of providing a betting service using the forum currency. Coupled with an additional $200 investment from myself, this enabled me to pay a developer to build the plugin and pay for the integration with the API provider, which is what I believe led to our first big explosion in activity. When the feature was released, over the course of the next month, our daily active users went from 50 > 250, and we sold $1,000 worth of forum currency/upgraded member subscriptions that month.

 

It was this initial spark that ultimately was what enabled the community to grow into what it eventually became. I took $100 of that money, bought myself and my family a lovely takeaway and went to the cinema, and put the other $900 straight back into advertising for the forum. Within another six months we were getting 3-4,000 posts a day and our member count was in the tens of thousands, and over the coming months our site grew to become what was essentially a small business run from my bedroom that for just over 2 years earned me between $1,000-$3,000 a month.

I love how you said you took $100 for yourself and spent the rest back to the community. :P Cool read though, nice case study!