Cost and Revenue, Part 4 of the forums guide

[Rev 0.1, Requires Revision, please excuse any language mistakes]
Sure you started to wonder what are the sources of revenue, is it worth it, will you have any return on your investment, should you exert the effort and go for it?
First let’s discuss the Cost then potential sources of revenue.
9-Cost
This is measured in time, money and personnel units.
How long will planning for the forums take of your time and others, what expenses will the hosting, chosen forum software, additional modules, skins, advertisements and bulk mail advertising campaigns cost you as well as the number you need to volunteer or recruit in your team.
You need to have a very clear vision and rigit figures reflecting your monthly and yearly expenses and how it will grow with the growth of content provided, user base, services and backups.
There are primary and preliminary costs that are paid one time to start the service, then there are recurring costs that you will keep on paying as long as the service is running and growing.
Try to look for the best package provided where you balance between storage space, available technology(database,web server), backup, support, speed of server, network throughput, available monthly bandwidth, host administrative control panels, mail relay, ftp, ssh and all other hosting related criteria.
10-Revenue and Profit
Try to have the following as optional sources of revenue and profit, choose as it suits your content and users nature:
1-Donations and Sponsorship
If your content serves a certain cause, you can ask your users to donate to keep the service running. If certain businesses are interested in what you are providing or interested in your audience, they can be your sponsors covering your expenses and more.
2-Online Sensitive Ads
You can subscribe to online sensitive ads providers like google adsense and others. Plan where to place your ads wisely, not annoying your users whilst having high expectancy of being clicked, due to relevance with nearby content and style.
3-Service packages
You can provide special service packages for monthly or yearly subscriptions offering more services to your members.
Those services could be exclusive to paid members or an upgrade to an existing free service.
Examples like storage space for file storage, photos album, email address, mobile notifications, blog space, match making, special instant messaging programs, access to early beta versions of your forum software, special skins,…etc.
4-Souvenirs
Nice decent sweet items that reflects the identity of your forum and service. Those items could be mugs, T-shirts, paper, backgrounds, themes, desktop programs, pens, special tickets to conferences..etc
5-Contests
Make contests related to the content you serve, you could raise funds and give awards to winners, you could donate part of it for charity as well.
6-Partnerships
You could partner with certain ISP or mobile provider or Carrier or Shop, providing cheaper services or coupons to your members if they buy or use their service using your referal code.
7-Exclusive Stuff
You could provide tickets to certain concerts, software licenses, online services like broadcasting matches, shows or any other stuff totally exclusive and not provided through other providers.
As you can see, It is all a matter of partnerships, relations you build with providers, competitors, sponsors and ofcourse your members.
A profit can easily come if you plan wisely what to provide, when and how.

Time to complete your plan, wait for the next part of the guide ;)