How did you fund your community?

My community was actually sponsored by Aywas, they got our vBulletin license for us back in 2011, then one of our staff members, Gabby purchased our Xenforo license for us a few months ago. Things have been looking up. Other than that, I also paid for the server out of my own pocket and now donations/ads help cover the server costs.

How about you though? How did you fund the start up of your community?

 

Bought small communities and build-ed upon that later when Google Ad sense came it was easier to get enough cash to do stuff. After a while when i thought the price of the community was 75% up when i bought it then resell it etc etc. But after 2004 it became harder and harder to do just that with 2010 i stopped with it and continued with normal forums only but with vBulletin they never came from the ground. Now waiting on IPB 4.0 and going to do a new attempt when that fails i quit with websites if it succeeds i continue with only that forum.

 

All paid for myself at the moment, just do it as a hobby

 

At times I am lucky enough to earn quite a bit to pay several months of hosting through advertising and what not.

However, most of my bills are paid out of pocket. I pay over $100 a month for my dedicated server but I can afford it! Don't bite off more than you can chew when it comes to online projects. If you can afford it, do it - if not, don't do it.

 

I've been working a part time job to invest funds into my community, and any income my site generates will be invested right back into the community.

 

I filled the need myself.

I was heavy into StarCraft money maps at the time, and there was a dominant community in the game itself, but there was no external place for them. We put together a league and a forum which ran for 9 years.

The hard costs were covered by donation, and I did the software development, which we were also able to raise some donations for later on for large updates.

 

I purchased my IPB license out of my own pocket 4 years ago. This license has been through a few projects of mine until finding a permanent home with my current forum. The hosting and domain have come out of my pocket too.

I do offer a premium membership on my forum which goes into an account to go towards future plans for the forum. I've also had a staff member who has been generous enough to make a few donations to me as well.

 

At first it was all out of pocket mostly on credit cards. A few people sent donations early on which made me feel awesome about all the work I was doing. Once in a while a member will ask where they can donate I usually refuse saying advertisers support everything. I appreciate the sediment and a little extra money never hurt anyone but the donation would wind up in my Dunkin fund vs. actually doing something for the site.

Currently, we're all advertiser supported but that's winding down. One advertiser pulled out last year. Another pulled this year. I suspect this is mostly due to the lack of activity. I'm confident we can cover basic hosting costs by showing Adsense to guests with @digitalpoint's Add-on which has been great to us so far.

 

Self-funded for 10 years, then when traffic on the site went crazy, we had to open a forum to support the users we already had.

Donations paid for most of the cost of our load balancers and blade servers back in 2005: https://tools.digitalpoint.com/donors

That equipment is retired now and sitting in my basement.

That stuff was replaced last year out of pocket: https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/new-server-hardware-for-the-geeks.2654797/

Our colocation costs have always been self-funded.

 

I funded my forum myself and I still need to put another $200 into it to get everything that I want for the website. But I am on a fixed income so I can only tackle one thing at a time. The next upgrade for the website is going to be a new skin for the forum. I am using a free skin for now until I can upgrade.

Greg

 

I have been lucky so far, all game servers and the forum software and hosting comes through donations and I pay for some of the addons we use.

 

I used to own a gaming site that used to collect well over £200 pm from donations, we had well over 250,000 posts when I sold it .. Not long after I sold it they got hacked and the forum was wiped clean, but it is good to see that they are still going and the donations are still coming in ..

My current site is doing well on ads, which covers my monthly VPS costs

 

Basically used my own money and then fixed everything up with the revenue of the site and not its sustainable.

 

I'm going down the self funding route, I don't want ads cluttering up the site, neither do I want people donating

 

That's a good option there.

 

I just noticed that when I've been on forums with "premium" memberships, those that have donated feel they are superior to other members, they also tend to be the ones who bend the rules the most.

 

We have donations but all you get in return is a thank you post and a donating members group no "premium".