Value of giant forums?

[lukeeales]

I was just wondering how much a forum with something like 50,000 members would be worth? Assuming the domain name was nothing amazing, but reasonably good, and something like PR6..... I've been looking at some Grand Theft Auto and Yu-Gi-Oh examples, and they have huge followings. I'd be interested to hear a rough value on a site like this k:

 

[MediaHound]

A site with 50,000 members that have personally opted in is a valuable asset.

Depends on the age and income of the members, and the common interest, but could be worth from as low as 5-10 cents per member to over a dollar per member.

A gaming site like you say might be worth a few thousand dollars.

 

[Sharpy]

Impossible to say without seeing what monetary value the membership ads. Any forum with 50,000 membership has great potential, but are they realizing it?

Might be that the culture of the mebership dictates that no comercial presence be on the site.

Is there an industry(s) associated with the theme/topic of the forum, that lends itself to internet commerce.

Is the forum the only or main section at the site? Or is the forum only part of it, and other revenue opportunities are realized elsewhere on the site?

What is the mebership-total/thread-count/post-count ratio? Many sites have humoungous mebership totals with very little activity.

Take DNF: A fairly active forum. Members: 7774 Threads: 52,760 Posts: 357,379
6 threads per member 46 posts per member Check that against one of the forums your looking at. Don't forget DNF incentifies it's members for posts ($DNF)

Take www.Bimmerfest.com/forum Members have lots of money presumably.
Members: 14,144 Threads: 62,785 Posts: 799,074
4.4 threads per member 56 posts per member Nice activity but they have 1 banner ad spot. And it looks like i just got stuck there. But there is revenue generation on other(non-forum) sections on the site. So which forum is worth more?

Obviously there are tonnes of other things to consider as well

 

[Steen]

That's just it though.

These free japenese anime forums (adult and mainstream) get huge, but with a very young following. How do you convert that to $?


However, a 50,000 member domain forum, your looking at $4/member +

 

[deepstar]

Kids tend to click on banners more than adults so all you need is to run some adsense and your CTR will be much higher than other sites. I have a toon forum site (basically it is what you are describing). It is unmoderated and only live to generate adsense click throughs. It does very well for having a few members, the site does receive a few hundred new visitors daily so that helps.

 

[Steen]

What kind of ads are going to pay anything to 14 year old visitors though?

Kids don't have CCs (or most don't), so I don't see how the traffic can be worth much.

 

[Mr. Deleted]

true. but you are not doing the selling, just need an adsense click to make money, and even if they don't buy, the kid can later beg the parents to buy whatever they say on the link... So what is the CTR on the site you mentioned?

 

[skylight]

What kind of ads are going to pay anything to 14 year old visitors though?

Kids don't have CCs (or most don't), so I don't see how the traffic can be worth much.

We cant under estimate young consumers. More and more of them paying online. If the merchant accepts paypal, highly possible you could earn from the youngster too. They can link their bank account to paypal.

And if the advertising is strong enough, they may even influence their parents...hehe

 

[Mr. Deleted]

BTW I have a domain, goog.org, that I was branding on a site that also has one domain that has a lot of link-ins called justlikebeingthere.com and it is doing well in the search engines. and then I checked my stats at http://www.hittracking.com/template.php?a=deleted, and found that my www.goog.org was bringing a lot of search engine hits for the "goog" keyword, and I'm thinking they want info about google IPO, whos symble is going to be goog, and so I made a page filled with google related ketwords and newsfeed, and put adsense on the page... do you think this could work for the IPO related visitors? I think that I might need to make a forum for it too... But would investors post in a forum? what about adsense related visitors?

 

[deepstar]

They pay pretty good, I have seen effective CPMs at $90+.

What kind of ads are going to pay anything to 14 year old visitors though?

Kids don't have CCs (or most don't), so I don't see how the traffic can be worth much.

true. but you are not doing the selling, just need an adsense click to make money, and even if they don't buy, the kid can later beg the parents to buy whatever they say on the link... So what is the CTR on the site you mentioned?

The CTR for last month averaged 9.2% with an effective CPM of $54.78

 

[Steen]

true. but you are not doing the selling, just need an adsense click to make money, and even if they don't buy, the kid can later beg the parents to buy whatever they say on the link... So what is the CTR on the site you mentioned?

Yes however advertisers aren't going to be there unless they can get sales. So "you just need them to click" is not relevant.

We cant under estimate young consumers. More and more of them paying online. If the merchant accepts paypal, highly possible you could earn from the youngster too. They can link their bank account to paypal.

I don't. However for online purchases, I think it's rare.

However I do get underage buyers quite often (not domain sales).

 

[Mr. Deleted]

Yes however advertisers aren't going to be there unless they can get sales. So "you just need them to click" is not relevant.

You are right about that, but still there are advertisers out there right now that pay per click, and as long as there are, the system works. If you sports-click visitors, you can make money on the site. And I know waht you are sawing, but that is not going to be a problem for some time yet.