I Need Everyone's Help

My survival forum has really grown over the past year. Thank you to all of the contributors and staff who help fill the forum with great content and for helping keep spam down as much as possible. Currently we make zero dollars from the forum and I have been paying for all of the server costs, marketing, web developers, software, etc. to make this happen.

With the current rate of growth 2017 our community will grow exponentially and because of that costs are going to rise. We need a better server, some bettert anti-spam software, more efficient security and backups, marketing, etc. These costs are going to outgrow what I can afford to contribute.

What I am asking everyone in the community is for suggestions on what we should do to help the forum generate some money. I have given this a lot of thought and I will share my current thoughts with everyone.

We have thought about putting together survival kits and gear and selling them directly from the forum. I like this idea and I am very exprerienced with ecommerce. The drawback to this is that I live in the United States, about 50% of the members are in other parts of the world. It would be very expensive to ship these supplies outside of my country. I know people will pay that to help support us but I don't want to overcharge anyone for anything that they can get cheaper in their area.

We could places advertisments around the site and sell them to other companies in the survival niche. I don't really like this idea but that's what most people are doing. I think it takes away from the experience to place ads around the site. If I did this it would have to be at a minimum and may not generate enough income unless multiple ads are displayed.

We could create a special title and profile for members who donate or subscribe to the premium profile. If a member joins the paid profile they could get things like a gold border around their profile picture signifying they support the comunity or other similar perks. It won't give you anything monetary but it would boost respect for anyone who is a supporter.

We could refer people to other people's products directly, like a recomendation. I would have to be choosy and only refer people to products that I would use myself.

We could just ask for donations and leave it at that. A leaderboard or anonomouys donations could be taken and help keep us going.

I am open to any suggestions. Please understand I probably won't be able to make everyone happy and ultimately I will have to do what is best for the forum. Thank you for your support!

 

I don't think I can be of much help in this regard, I run a forum myself, & it is free. I don't see any more benefits from a payed forum than a free forum. Therefore I would suggest you switch to a free forum.
Keith.

 

I run a British forum myself and this also is free, I did belong to a forum that you paid a site donor fee once a year, it was about £5 per member but again the trouble with this is members aren't just in one country and exchange rates may be a problem.

 

I dislike advertising on prepper forums, between members is one thing but commercial advertising is something else. I would prefer to pay a small annual fee to the site upkeep.

 

I don't want to force anyone to pay anything, maybe just donations. This forum has cost me several thousand dollars so far and I plan on it being very large. That costs a lot of money and I don't have it to spend right now. I appreciate the inuputs and will have to figure something out.