Quote Originally Posted by drcollie View Post
It wasn't easy for me to set up this v.bulletin forum, I'm not a computer tech guy. Spent many evening hours trying to do it without making a mess of things - and now I'm terrified to tweak it much (such as changing colors, etc), because I don't want to blow it up!
There are some easy tweaks you could make, such as better connecting the site to your store website - in my opinion there should be an obvious link.

vBulletin makes it easy to mess around with skins without harming your forum. From the administrative control panel, go to Styles & Templates, then "Style Manager". Click "Add New Style", selecting (for example) this as the parent. Uncheck the new style so it's not allowed as a user selection. Then play with it, see how it looks, and revert anything you don't like. If you like the changes you make you can copy them over to the main style, or set the new style as the forum default.
Quote Originally Posted by drcollie
I'm told I should run Google ads on it, but its kind of nice to have it plain and simple.....and not fuss with it too much. It works....and runs fairly fast, I'm happy with it.
I don't know that you have the traffic to make much money from AdSense, especially if you contrast the amount you can make by sending away a prospective customer through AdSense versus getting them to make even a modest purchase from you. (Not everyone share's my sentiment, but I'm also a bit suspicious of most businesses that say "Buy stuff from me", while simultaneously presenting a bunch of ads for alternate sources... but then Amazon does it, and I buy from them.) Keep it simple and clean, but perhaps promote yourself a bit with some links to information about the store (even if just to your store's website) and how to request a quote.