When a website goes up for sale at auction sites like Flippa, they usually sell for anywhere between 8 to 12 months of that past years profits. However, very popular free forums, which are rarely put up for sale, can sell for anywhere between 24 to 48 months of the past years profits. These forums are able to command a premium price for many reasons, and you will find a few of them below.

First, most investors want to be sure that they are going to be able to recoup their initial investment, and later capitalize on it. By the time a forum becomes extremely popular, they are no longer dependent on the search engines for the vast majority of their traffic.

They have become a destination website, where they are guaranteed to get a certain amount of traffic each and every day. Next, they do not need the search engines to grow either, because their popularity is now spread by \”word of mouth\”, the most powerful form of advertising.

In other words, if a person asked a knowledgeable friend about a subject they do not know anything about, that friend will often refer them to a forum as a learning or information tool. So, a big forum with a ton of members will almost certainly continue to grow as long as the new owner maintains the site properly.

Second, potential investors really appreciate passive income. Passive income by definition means, they do not have to do too much work, if any at all to reap the rewards of their purchase. Most large, highly successful free forums will already have volunteer moderators that do most of the work that keeps it functioning properly.

All the buyer will need to do to start making money; is to switch the affiliate codes around for whatever type of promotion the forum is using that generates the profits. The content of forums is produced by the visitors to the site themselves.

So, if a person is considering purchasing a powerful profitable forum, they really will not have to understand too much about the World Wide Web itself, about SEO, or even about internet marketing. They already have guaranteed traffic flow, they almost assuredly are going to increase visitors count and cash flow as the time passes, and they do not have any real expenses to operate it.

If it all seems too good to be true, that is the precise reason that large highly profitable forums are rarely put up for sale, and when they are, they are able to command a premium price.

After reading all of the above, you might have come to the conclusion; I need to start a forum. If so, it would be a great move on your part. However, getting one off the ground up to the point where it is profitable is going to take a tremendous amount of time and effort on your part. If you are willing to suffer the \”pain\” to get it done, sometime in the future you will almost assuredly be able to harvest the \”gain\” for all of your hard work.

Author Bio: Jason Bacot – Thinking about making some extra cash from home by putting together a forum? Then I suggest you check out our spectacular Free Forums located online at Free-Forums.org and also visit the SEO and Internet Marketing Forums example immediately.

Category: Internet
Keywords: free forums, forums, forum hosting, forum, free forum hosting, create a forum