re: Rooster..... any idea what happened to Cockytalk?

Php BB is free but a bandwidth hog.

Then you have monthly server fees with packaged bandwidth. Anything over that and costs rise. Typically you have a backup running just in case and a busy board needs dedicated servers to prevent latency issues and slow loads.

I just looked and you could definitely find a host and launch a site these days for $500 a month.

Then you would need to do a deal with an ad server (google) and hope they don't interfere with your model.

Your goal should be transitioning to a premium content model and that requires content and shopping cart, etc. Do a deal with Fanatics for gear and goodies.

Find some willing moderators to do various shifts.

It's a lot tougher than it looks.

This site we're on right now for instance, this is a large endeavor.

GatorCountry is the largest independent sports website out there if I am not mistaken. I don't know if Ray Hines still owns that site or not but I think he launched his own servers and maintains them himself to keep costs under a couple of grand a month last I heard.

This site is probably the second largest when you combine all of the various boards. I've always wondered what their traffic numbers are like among their entire community here but I suspect it's in the 10-25k unique users a day realm and probably doing close to 300k ads served per day.

That's a lot when you look at current CPM rates so it may not be that high, I dunno.