I don't want to pay for advertising unless the goal is to make that money back + profit.
Exactly! There should be a defined purpose when paying for ads because that should be as a means to an end and not just casually throwing money away.
Most people fail with ads because they just assume it will result in something special, but they buy them with no real goal and therefore don't advertise the right pages or campaigns.
This is why when I see new guys who are interested in starting up a new forum project with the view of copying what worked for another person, I do advise them to work on their own goals because what they want might be different from what the person they are trying to copy is after. It means applying the same strategy wouldn't work.
Doing all that follow up is very important when advertising on social media platforms. It's why some people prefer to promote on forums as they don't need to do the extra work and research that comes with it except for looking out for more active forums to advertise on.
Definitely easier to promote on forums. I felt like I had better success that way. Though if I did put in the effort perhaps much different outcome.
Yeah! The simple truth is that everything will be a lot easier advertising on forums because you're already working with the right users that are already into forum's usage until social media platforms with so much noise which makes targeting very hard.