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It's fairly easy:

  * Create a website, get affiliate links setup for
    selling fishtanks etc
  * Create cool content people will stay around for
  * Setup mailing list to further monetize etc
  * Start spending money on adwords etc to get people to join
  * Start optimizing to make sure you make more money than
    you spend
That's only one way, but it's pretty sure to work if you stay on the ball.


Create cool content people will stay around for

And that's the hard part. You might as well have said "Write a best-seller," though the barrier of entry is a bit lower.


It depends. You can make money simply finding people who want stuff, and pointing them at stuff.

Having content can just be an optional extra which brings repeat sales.


And how does one find the stuff people want?

s/best-seller/better money-making algorithm/

Just like every entrepreneur. And what, 90% of them fail? Yep, it sure is easy.


Prove it by doing it and blog about it.

I don't buy it.

Those cards are dealt, that scheme might have worked 10 years ago but today it's a lot harder than that.

And make sure you log your time, so you can work out your hourly rate.


I've been making a living out of advertising income for 10 years. I think if anything it's easier now to make money out of advertising. Back in the day you didn't even have adsense/adwords etc.

It would be fun to do such an experiment, but I'm way too busy and way too lazy to be the one to do it :)


I've been earning money from advertising for a decade as well (actually, 12 years to be more precise) and the landscape has changed quite a bit.

Making money once you have your community set up is only part of the problem, getting a working community off the ground is the hard part.

When adsense/adwords did not exist CPMs were much higher than they are today and such a venture would have been easier to get to profitability then it is because of that. Some costs (notably bandwidth) have declined, but simply slapping a forum on a server and calling it a day is not going to cut it. It will take a good bit of time to get people to re-visit your niche community on a daily basis.

And there are already to many fish-tank forums that you'd be competing for a fairly small slice of the cake.




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