how much you make a month with Dolphin based sites

how much you make a month with Dolphin based sites ? and what niche if that's not a secret you want to keep.

and how much was your initial investment?

I make a big fat zero so far.

amount spent?  over 2000$

i've spend over $ 2000,00 and i'm not even live yet!!
in working/design hours and server payments i'm well over $10.000,00.

How do you try to make you money?

just ads...?

2k is peanuts..... To have any chance of breaking even, let alone making a profit, you are going to need to spend several times that amount. IMHO the person that makes it big with a Dolphin site will be the last man standing - the one that stuck with it and poured enough cash into promotion of a unique idea to make it take off.

Someone will make it I am sure, but its going to take balls, a shitload of time, a mountain of luck and an ocean of cash... I spent the equvelant of $45000... and that still isnt enough to compete with a reasonable sized network... I will be returning to my project and sticking with it, but at the moment i am raising yet more money.

 

 You hit the nail on the head with the "last man standing" ... I remember when I first decided to open, over 4 years ago. Back then I had been following Dolphin for a while and wanted to do a site, I made a deal with a ning site that had a steady flow of traffic, and a good core base of members and moved that site over. At the time I was thinking like most new site owners do, thought I would spend about 2 grand at the most, then watch the ad money come pouring in. Let me say this now THAT IS NOT THE CASE!  Even with steady traffic you need steady GROWTH and the ad money is not as good as it once was. Was a time you could make 2 or 3 thousand a month from ads,, then at the end of 2010 Google made some changes and now it is a small fraction of what it once was. Far as starting out a site with 2 thousand.. That is a pipe dream. Dolphin is like crack, you always need more and more and more. Back when I first opened USU was the top site far as general chatting and socializing but that site has since fell off and is a ghost town, last time I talk to Jason he said it was due to Google blacklisting his site as a porn site, and killing all his keywords and his site going from making 2500 to 3000 a month, to not even enough to cover the server cost with the porn ads he is forced to run.

I have found that what is needed to last and grow more then the money it cost, it the patience and dedication. No one will make it big over night, that is just how it is, but if you are willing to put the money and time in, and wait and work constantly at traffic and always over looking your site for what is working and what is not then you have a chance at making it. I now have my 2 biggest, and a couple of others I just play with now and then. My niche site does very well, and it is only just over a year and half old now. It competes with my general social networking/chat site. With niches sites though, there is a limit to how big you will grow, depending on the niche.

On "how much the sites make" kinda hard to answer that, I guess I could just spend the money that comes in from the ads now days and be happy with what it brings in, anywhere from a few hundred to just over a thousand a month per site now days. I don't do that though, I in turn use the money that comes in to put back into the sites in hopes that it will be a greater return in years to come. Some months I blow a lot on adwords traffic, modules, server upgrades, and sometimes run contest on the sites that pay cash rewards to the members. Also with my niche site we take site profits and donate in name of the site, kind of like a form of advertisement... But if a person is wondering how long it will take to even break even on a site, if you do everything right at first, and that is going to cost more than 2 thousand to start, then if the stars are aligned just right and luck is on your side, you might break even on your second year of running.

What causes most sites to fail in their first six months of running is the growing pains we ALL go through. Things like learning that starting on a shared server will cost you ALOT more then it will save you. Things like crashes, FREAKING SPAM BOTS, when you realize the chat that comes with Dolphin sux and you need to buy a 3rd party chat if you want a dependable video chat option on your site, there is a long list of things that we all seen when we all started, but if you make it through that, and you have enough money to keep the servers running, and work non stop at getting traffic and keeping the traffic you get happy, then you will make it into the actual running. After that, begins the last man standing if you are not a niche and are just a general social site.

I want to pack up and leave the internet right now. I couldn't imagine the money for advertising once the site is up and running. 

Google adword is a bitch, too.

Totaling spending money on modules, programmers, servers etc.., I've spent about $ 4000 so far. I started creating my website in late July, early August.

So far I have not launched my site. For now, it is only testing with a closed group of participants. I will release a beta version in November.

I noticed that almost all modules need adjustments, sometimes because of errors (bugs), and others because the module was not helpful on my site as I would like.

Also, as my native language is not English, I'm having to translate all the dolphin and also all the modules. I bought the translation that existed in the market, but it is bad. Looks like it was made using goggle translator and without any revision. So money was lost. I'm having to translate everything.

My hope is that my site will operate in a niche market online that does not exist in my country. But I know I still will not be easy.

niche niche niche and content content content...

I honestly don't believe the google ad words spam words whatever are worth the 'investment'... plus monitoring their effectiveness with googles skewed 'reports' is less than straight forwards!

I've used Dolphin for niche community sites where products are sold, or members pay for members access to media content for that niche. 

None of them porn or adult...

Could argue that the paid membership to access premium content was the content and not the site, but then again, isn't that the case with any website?

Some have made reasonable money for part time projects, was bringing in about £2000 a month one site, £1500 a month on another for a good year at one point. 

Along with building and running the sites, I was producing video content for them, sports instruction and reporting content. When I let that go, the memberships slowed down, eventually I lost the 'drive' due to other work focus and family needs and the sites dried up. Lasted a good couple of years though and was a good 'test' run!

Most of the advertising I was doing was just word of mouth stuff from members to others, a bit of forum posting also on other sites and that was about it. 

Did another site for local stuff, that was bringing in again about £1500 a month with local businesses paying for advertising on the site. Showed very big potential due to the way it was setup and the facilities it offered but again, no time to develop it as much as it needed!!!

If only I had a good investor, I could commit the time needed and make one of the many good potential sites I've played with turn a real profit! 

DaiHLO,

Thank you for the encouragement, I will unpack and stay to make it happen. 

I think main thing is though to have content of value. No one walks into a shop and pays to go in just to look around... they pay for the products within the shop.

Same with a site, if paying for it is not worth it, or they can get the same thing elsewhere for cheaper or free, then most likely they will not pay. the site is a portal for linking the members to the content, thats where the value is... 

One thing I was working towards, on at least one of my sites was to allow others to also include their content and receive a % of site income for it according to the view rate and popularity of their content. Was not easy to setup, measure and then of course distribute money without it all being manual work... kinda figured out a system for it, but by that time I was not feeding the site myself as much as I should and it slipped... Once a site starts to 'slip' it can be difficult to get people back... re-selling a subscription access is harder than making the first sale!

One of the main problem is the Payment modules. I have yet to come cross any modules that have an easy payment solution. I spent around $6000 and maybe a year to develop my site. Since it is an Adult site , you can imagine the limitations on advertising and promoting it. However I found ways around it and with affiliation programs and banner exchange you can actually make money. Last month I collected about $700 USD. You have to know where to post your ads and know your industry even better so you can approach to them. Making money is all about how many members you have in your site. Then again dolphin is not designed to handle high volume members . Usually after 200 to 300 members it will start to get slow and you will need a dedicated server. So there will always going to be challenges ahead but it is up to you to find a solution.   Give it a time and you will succeed.

 Well this thread is two years old so they should be pretty successful by now right?

lol

My company invested countless hours and a few thousand dollars in licensing, modules and custom development to turn a forum site into a dolphin community. It absolutely killed our member base because the product was so full of bugs.

We were not able to effectively monetize any feature set, the way of the internet ultimately decides that fate because everyone expects everything NOW and FREE (to them, at least). 

Project: abandoned. I have multiple phpbb based websites that thrive off a smaller niche and bring in anywhere from $50usd/mo to $800usd/mo - they cost me zero licensing, minimum server requirements making hosting cheap. A thriving dolphin community is a pipe dream - contrary to popular belief, if you build it, they will not come. This product is too late to a game that's no longer being played with the advent of mobile technology.

Still feel like I should do something with the licensing that was purchased, but even wordpress, the free blogging suite, has been developed into a superior community platform than dolphin with buddypress (more stable, too).

The reason above , i don't want to spend any more money ... at the moment i'm taking my time building my site slowly , make it free bugs , or at least minimize the bugs and make sure i get members , more members before investing any more money.

Peace and cucumber

No, the popular belief IS that it's a pipe dream. 

I've been building sites with the WordPress [WP] platform lately and, while it's not "perfect", it is in many ways much nicer to work than the Boonex Dolphin platform.  That said, I don't think WP is a better option for busy community sites at this time.  But my guess is there's a strong enough interest in making it work that WP will soon evolve to become very good for "simple" community sites... and eventually more complex sites with custom work added.  For those of us that have decided to stick with Dolphin for a while longer... we'll just have to continue waiting (but not for too long) to see whether Dolphin will mature into something truly robust, secure and (for the dedicated developers we all appreciate) very popular.

Hi every one,

I've been working on an Idea I think will be beneficial for everyone that owns a dolphin site, as you can see there are thousands of us, if every one comply and agree to advertise  this sites on their own and work as a team, we can achieve something, let say I can advertise on my site or create backlinks for everybody in here, will you do the same for me and the next person for you and for me and so on and on, by doing this our sites will reach audience, but one thing you can be sure of, if your clients don't like your product maybe they might like mine and vice versa, but how we can get every single person in here to think like me, "NETWORK" people if we don't create one and help each other out, we will never be able to compete with those big monopolies out there, think about it, and if you agree, then lets work together toward something, I'll be waiting on your reply, thank you all.

 
That idea is not new. It is called a Link Farm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_farm

And if you read the last paragraph of that wiki page i linked to, it can have devastating results.

I have a niche market, the only Dolphin site like it. Been working on it since 2009. Currently, I make $-65.00 every single month like clockwork and couldn't be happier....

Hello deano92964,

I know what a link farm is, but I don't think we are looking at this solution the same way, you are thinking about creating hundreds of backlinks and I am talking about creating banners linked to a specific website as you can see it is totally different, do you rather to pay hundreds of dollars to Facebook for one week with no results and I tell you with not results because I've done it, I have spent not hundreds, but thousand of dollars on Facebook, and not a single member from them. Now if you have 50 or 100 sites running with dolphin agree to advertise your banners and you do the same thing for them, now could you please tell me where do you see any devastating results on this, just saying.

 backlinks are not as valuable as they once maybe were.

A site with good content and a focused audience, will attract people to go through the registration process, hopefully engage with content and create their own participation, and then maybe pay for something on the site.

a site with hundreds of backlinks, possibly competative sites, but without the above will get no interest from browsers.

I've said this so many times before,

focus on your content, site layout and navigation, and THEN think about advertising / how to get members to your site.

Otherwise it will be a waste of time and money and you will end up fed up.

Dolphin, WP... its not the platform that makes a site what it is. It's the approach to building it, populating it with content, and having an effective route to market.

facebook adds, google keywords and the usual stuff 'they' tell you you have to purchase in order to get people to your site are NOT the way to approach making a site a financial success. Guess who tells you this is the way? Facebook and Google. 2 of the most profitable companies in the online world :-)

What sells the most? A conflict between 2 parties. e.g American vs Russian people, Manchester united vs Arsenal supporters, Religious people, political parties supporter etc.   What ever hits your ego can be sold. No will force you to join but you will do it by your self to defend your side. And admin will sit n watch n make money :p That's how media makes money ;) 

How ever I am adopting a model based on revenue distribution. I'll get money for ads. Ill keep 20% and pass on the rest to the users. Now you will ask how will I do it. Well that part you have to think by your self :p FYI never relly on single advertising company. Always keep backup.

It's not just about the money, so you had better enjoy what you're doing and believe in your project.

It's fun when things start to fall into place.