Forum growing into eternity

[symptome]

I'm interested in your experience about how your forums grow in the past.
Did it grow the whole time without stopping and does it still grow?
Or did you reach a level where still many new threads where started and indexed by SE but you didn't get more guests and so you didn't get more money out of your advertiments ....?

How would you describe the "normal" life cycle of a good running forum?

Thanks a lot!

[briansol]

for me, it peaks and it valleys by season. But, the overall trend is growth.

note, i didn't have analytics until mid 2006

[symptome]

How many years is your forum running?

[briansol]

since 2001.

[woostar]

My first forum has grown out of all control. Running forums is becoming a full time job. In 2½ years we've gone from half a dozen members posting maybe 100 posts a week to 1000+ posters a day posting 180k+ posts a month. Not peaked yet, in fact most weeks (usually Moday or Tuesday) we beat either most posters or most online records. Am having problems with advertising prices at the mo. but think that's just the niche + economy.