What are popular forums worth?

[Marcoose]

As a few of you may know I own footballforums.co.uk, a project that up until now has pretty much been on the backburner. I am in 2 minds at the moment whether to put my efforts into developing it, or maybe I should just sell.

My question is, how much is a developed forum worth. Just say I got to the stage where I had 1000 regular users, how much would the site be worth/how much would earnings potentially be. I don't mind putting money into it now if it pays off.

I know it's hard to answer but if you have experience in running a popular community, it would be great to know how much you earn!

[jimm]

The figure often banded around is 24 months rev.
Reality is its worth what people will pay.
I have bought forums for many many times their monthly rev, to then increase the rev significantly bringing the multiplier a lot more into my favor.

[Marcoose]

Originally Posted by jimm

The figure often banded around is 24 months rev.
Reality is its worth what people will pay.
I have bought forums for many many times their monthly rev, to then increase the rev significantly bringing the multiplier a lot more into my favor.

OK, and what would you say a forum will roughly earned in adsense on a monthly basis if it has 1000 regulars? I know it's tough to say cos it depends on niche, but very roughly.

[jimm]

Anywhere between nothing and not much (maybe £25). Adsense is not the way to earn money on forums.

[Marcoose]

OK, would you say it's more about finding relevant websites that want to advertise? Or do you think affiliate stuff?

[jimm]

Do you want my catching code too?
Selling advertising > Affiliate > Adsense

[Marcoose]

Originally Posted by jimm

Do you want my catching code too?
Selling advertising > Affiliate > Adsense

Great minds, eh!

I think basically I'm looking for people's opinions on whether I should develop. I suppose I could invest relatively insignificant sums of money to develop, but are the rewards there to be made?

[jimm]

Football isnt my bag so i dont know the market but a sucessfull forum can certainly pay well. I cant answer whether it will be worth it.
You need to work out how many visitors you could actually get, how much it will take to get them and how much rev you can get.

[peter_w]

I built up PESGaming.com to over 100,000 members (since sold it), a couple thousand posts a day etc. Reality is it didn't make a fortune even at that level. Made some money selling copies of PES every year, but that was more from the front-end blog than the forum it's self.

On a good day $50 from adsense on the forum. Typically more like $10 to $20. This was 2 years ago, though. CPM banners are awful - to the point most companies won't even touch you.

[wb]

Difficult to say how much it will earn without making proper estimates based on figures, but I think with it being football then you should be able to monetise it quite well through gambling affiliates. If you build up a nice member base then I'm sure you'll be able to negotiate some decent free bet offers to mail out to members when their team/nation is playing (perhaps ask them who they support etc upon sign up if you don't already).

Obviously you can't compare like for like as you don't know the revenue or statistics (other than it says there were 10,000 members at time of sale) however UK Business Forums apparently sold for £250,000 to give you some inspiration!