Profit Monetize Later: A harder thing to do?

[Shawn Gossman]

Are free forums hard to monetize later on down the road?

If you start a forum that's free and you don't immediately make a premium feature, are you setting yourself up for monetization failure?

Think about it this way. If you join a forum and everything is free, why would you later on agree to upgrade because you already get what you want for free? Most people are upgrading for a benefit, not just to support a forum or the owner.

And if you take away something that was free and then all of a sudden put a price tag on it, you're asking for a negative result and potential mutiny.

Would it better to launch a premium plan right from the start? Why or why not?

 

[Nomad]

So far I have tried selling membership plans only on one forum and I had only one sales. I tried selling membership after moving to premium software and revamping the forum. Currently, I am running forums where the aren't any membership plans. Unless you offer something useful to the users, you cannot sell your memberships. I don't think timing matters, you can introduce whenever you like but the paid membership should come up with something valuable.

 

[Cpvr]

I believe so, especially if your forum is already free-to post on. I'd rather introduce ads instead of paid-membership if I were to go this route.

Ads would be a much better alternative instead of charging my user base to use the forum(with extra perks).

 

[Mike30]

Having a couple of years into a paid to join forum, I am about to come to the conclusion that forums are meant
to be free and people expect it. Maybe selling a tool or a special feature can make it if you target the correct audience.

Even on big forums where there are memberships, not all users are willing to pay, so I guess the best bet is to make
an useful tool for a small percentage of the userbase, but keeping it free to let free users maintain activity (which is the blood of any site)

Analyzing my own behavior, I go back to check on multiple forums because they are free and I already have an account there,
otherwise I wouldn't bother to go and post a couple of posts when I have some time available.

By learning from my own mistakes, I will try a free social site script to experiment with MicroLikes, giving more emphasis on activity vs just post or post count.
(I would keep the forums, but mainly to post content where users can come back for references and support --not as the main layer for activity)

And also will experiment with some ads as @Cpvr said. The majority of users are fine with some ads as long as the website is free to use. (I hate ads, but I don't see another way around at the moment)

This is just my opinion/reasoning, not the absolute truth.