Please do not compare second rate bulletin software to IPB. Its nothing like IPB, never will be. There is a large gap between paid & free.
Hit the nail right on the head. Now if your forum gets big, you may need to update to a bigger server one day, but the price that Andrew said is right for a new forum.
Yup, to rent a server - depending on the specs is as low as $69 to as high, or even higher then $339. I currently pay $115 for my server.
damn is that server thing same as hosting/domain or something? oh yea how much would i make from putting ads on my forum? cuz i cant shell out that much each month
There are plenty of very cheap hosting services that will suit a begining site fine. Its when you start getting a large amount of traffic that you should then upgrade to a higher performance plan. Begining plans start as low as 3 bucks in some places.
Depends how many members you had. If you're going to be using google adsense (which most people do) then you only get money when someone clicks an ad, which usually is a very small sum. But if you get lots of members then you could make ae reasonable sum, though it will probably never compare to the money you're having to pay out for the forum.
It all depends if your site's demographic caters to people who click ads, and if the ads are relevent to the sites content. Some people even make a living off blogging and selling ads on their site (techcrunch.com, for example).
CF and I started out TLE with a budget with of around 250 dollers. That got us, IPB forum software (around bout 70 dollers), Hosting (which vaires ALOT, depends where you get it from/amount of space you want/how fast your site to be, the domain name which is about 10 dollers and alot of GR credits (for buying resorces). My approch to it was, try and get most things for free, and only have money if you have to use it. For Example, if you needed a skin installed, you dont have to go and pay someone to do it, you could ask around your friends to see if they were good at doing it. Im saying this, but it is possible to build a site with minimal/no budget. My first site had a buget of 9 pounds (which was the domain name) and it got VERY popular, and was pretty big, untill I wanted to move on so I left and moved on to admin The Lost Element. I hope I could help, but if you need anymore advice, email me at townfan10 (at) gmail (dot) com or PM me to get my msn (i wont give it out publicly as I already ahve 100s of people on my msn that I dont know ) -David
My current site cost me around 60 $ in 2 years, i only used money for hosting and domainname, made the layout etc. myself, coded by an other crewmember I still don't know how to gain good money from ads tho
