Average forum startup costs?

Well, I started a forum with ZERO money and then put some more investment in it. Not all people can throw 1000 USD for a forum to be started that;s for sure.

I had a free host for 6 months and then got to a domain and paid hosting. I think I should have started on the domain from the first moment, but that's long gone.

used phpBB with a very modded skin and I got a VB license for free after helping a friend from the states with a forum she has. After doing some web design she wanted to pay me: I asked for a VB owned license to be bought for my main forum and here I am.

All the branding is mine and theme modding. I pay 30 USD a month for Adwords, but I think I'm gonna leave this out and focus on content and members instead of paying for this traffic. Already have tripled my traffic, so I am OK.

so .. I think I have some smaller prices in the end. anyway ... couldn't afford more. I don't even earn 1000 USD a month (I need 3 months to have this money and I also need to pay some bills).

anyway ... good resources

That's great if you can design / code, but for us, un-talented lot we need to invest a bit more money into designing and coding.

I'm setting up a forum at the moment and here is how i plan on spending my setup costs budget.

Forum design - $550
Forum coding - $200
Vbulletin - $80
Custom hacks / mods - $300
Domain name - $8.88
Custom banners - $50
Advertising - $500 for the first month, then ideally... if the forum is growing well, nothing after that.

Off the top of my head i think that's everything. So yeah, i'm looking at spending at least $1k. If however i could design / code to a standard that i was happy with then it would cost me next to nothing.

Just noticed jon, you're from bmouth. I live very near to bmouth, about 8 miles away.

Anyhow, ontopic.

A forum can be set up for $0.
But a succesful forum can't. (Not normally anyway.)
Though some of you are talking $1000+ on a design? What's going on there? People will code a vB skin for $100 easy, and designing it yourself is easy enough.. Though for $300 you could probally get a dandy design custom.

I reckon for a good $600-700 you could have a pretty well established forum set up. Mind you, I have no experience in setting up a real forum, so i'm only basing my judgements on what i've seen.

Anyhow, good luck Robson on the forum. Havn't ever seen a sucessful poker forum myself yet (but I don't look for them, so that could be why!) Best of luck, i'm sure you can pull it off.

~NMX

Can You tell me how forum makes money ? Just from advertisings on forum (banners etc.) ? I'm intrested for myspace too. Myspace makes money form banners too ?
Thank You

Plus can someone explain me Vbulletin License (what is it sorry maybe someone will on that but i'm new bie in this world). Ways for advertising own forum.
Thank You

Please leave the forum.


















Na, only kidding - we were all new to this at one point (but we probably still knew about vb, etc lol)

vbulletin.org

Forums make money just as normal sites make money.

I'm starting up http://designercore.com I made the design myself so i didn't pay for that.

hosting = 15$ for 3 months from brius.
Skin Coding = 40$
IPB licence = 70$

Design: $200 - $400
Coding: $100 - $200
VBulletin: $160
Hosting: Ranges....around $5 a month or so
Misc. (advertising, ad banners, etc): $200 (really ranges)

It all depends on your skills. If you can design/code, you just knocked off hundreds of dollars.

For advertising i got it easy, theres a million design sites so i just register at them all make some posts then advertise.