let's just assume that CoFo had ten times the number of members and an average of 300+ active users at any given time. now, what does your bandwidth bill look like?
Well if it had ten times the number of members and required ten times the amount of bandwith, thats say 100gig a month, now if a dedicated server could handle that, with a 1000gig bandwith allowance, only costing US$99 a month, that is not much, as i said bandwith does not cost what it once used to.
you won't get rich off of advertising alone, especially once you put your staff on some form of salary.
Well I am not saying you will, though have you tried adsense? Selling text links? And for the record, the plan for the forum network is definitely not to base its revenue on advertising alone, it is only being built as a platform for something else in the works, yeah another pipedream, but like I always say unless you try, how will you ever know what is possible. Also there are many companies out there who base their revenue model solely on advertising, so that is not an entirely true statement.
I cant disclose the cofo details, but I do have some systems in place for the administrators running the site, which is different to the way things were done at wmf.
I am not going to agree with you on this one, I am going to stay positive, basically everything I do is a learning experience, and I am learning more each day. And besides, I have a day job which pays me just fine, for the most part my websites are my hobby and an educational/learning experience. So whether they do well or not is irrelevant.
Like I said before, it is important that the niche you choose is a profitable one, size and traffic alone does not equate to profitability.