Monetising a website

roccles · 5 Feb 2015 at 10:22

Does anyone have any experience on this. I am currently working on a website that will be the first website I have worked on where any payment will be from traffic to the site. So it is more of an experiment than a get rich quick scheme.

The other party involved is paying for the hosting etc. So I have no outlay other than my time. They will also provide all the content . I am providing the technical experience.

The site is now at a stage where I can thinking about this a little more.

I will look at the obvious such as Google Ad sense and affiliate marketing from companies such as Amazon. Is there other services I should be looking at? Also what are your experiences of these and other services.

Cheers

radderfire · 5 Feb 2015 at 10:24

What sector is the website in?

You can always sell advertising directly on the website if you have enough traffic.

Rgds

roccles · 5 Feb 2015 at 10:31

The website is in the motoring sector its a facts and history website. As the site has only launched in the last week currently the traffic to the site is not large.

But I am interested in what you mean by selling advertising directly? Do you mean approaching specific companies and asking if they wish to advertise? If so how would you convert the clicks to revenue?

Edit (after thinking somemore): I guess they could pay a lump sum per week/month/year for an advert on the site, I had it stuck in my head that it would have to be based on a per click basis. So not sure we are at this stage yet but hopefully something we could think about in the future

radderfire · 5 Feb 2015 at 10:48

Yes, just sell someone a banner advert or some space on your website directly. You'll need to be established and provide meaningful visitor stats before you can do this though.

Other thing is, start your own shop and sell merchandise.

Start a directory and make a charge for being in that (not easy).

Create an eBook and sell that from your site.

Do lead generation, where you capture the details of the people interested in a given product and sell the leads to a company.

Rgds

Ewaf · 9 Feb 2015 at 11:03

Honestly, I wouldn't even bother monetising until you have a considerable amount of traffic.

Earnings from the likes of Adsense or Amazon will be zero or tiny with low traffic, and likewise, no one wants to buy ad space on a site with low traffic.

Monetising a website is not a quick process at all. I didn't even bother adding Adsense to one of my sites for a good year, until traffic was at a good steady level. Why shove ads down new visitor's throats for the sake of a few pence?

roccles · 9 Feb 2015 at 13:04

Thanks Ewaf and Radderfire

I am going to start trying to build the traffic and keep the site ad free to begin with the view to adding advertising to the site slowly once we have a good amount of traffic. We should within 3 months have just over 10k items on the site, we currently have aprrox 2k published. So would probably not even think about ads until full populated.

Out of interest Ewaf what sort of vistor numbers were you getting when you added ads to the site and what route did you take?

Noxia · 11 Feb 2015 at 21:13

I presume people using Adblock such as myself don't help these things. I turn it on for sites where it asks to support them by turning it off but if they're intrusive it remains on.

Ewaf · 12 Feb 2015 at 11:32

roccles said:
Thanks Ewaf and Radderfire

I am going to start trying to build the traffic and keep the site ad free to begin with the view to adding advertising to the site slowly once we have a good amount of traffic. We should within 3 months have just over 10k items on the site, we currently have aprrox 2k published. So would probably not even think about ads until full populated.

Out of interest Ewaf what sort of vistor numbers were you getting when you added ads to the site and what route did you take?

I added Adsense to one of my sites when it started getting around 1,000 visits a day. There just isn't any real point otherwise as the earnings will be tiny.

corama · 12 Feb 2015 at 13:41

Ewaf said:
I added Adsense to one of my sites when it started getting around 1,000 visits a day. There just isn't any real point otherwise as the earnings will be tiny.

Yes, I've been told to focus on content (with frequent updates) before thinking about earnings. If you're making money from clicks, then you need a reason for visitors to click on your site.

roccles · 12 Feb 2015 at 13:54

Cheers for the comments.

We have a fair amount of content for the site already as the idea for the site came from project that was started back in the mid 90s.

A book was published last year but this only contained approx 20% of the data that had been collected so the website will contain all of it and also allow for real time updates.

Its a shame the site was not created at the same time as the book as we could have added a link in there.

So its all about building traffic to the site and as I said in OP its more of an experiment than a get rich quick scheme.

I have looked into and signed up to a few advertising sites mainly to see how they work, this has led me to discover there is a lot of rubbish out there. One I signed up to wanted me to use these flashing "Download Video Codec" err no thanks!

radderfire · 12 Feb 2015 at 15:10

You can get advice on monetisation at affiliate marketing forums.

Rgds

Pestilence · 12 Feb 2015 at 16:51

In the early days, it's all about building traffic to the site. People need to be aware of your existence.

So your first priority is creating a wealth of content. Good content.

If you can make it the kind of stuff that gets shared on social media, and make sure that you're regularly plugging links with engaging comments on Twitter and Facebook etc. then you should get there eventually. Throw in a few bits of clickbait occasionally to help you out.

It can take a long time, though. It isn't easy to start building up that regular reader base... but until you have it, attempting to monetise through affiliate schemes or rented ad space just isn't worth it.

People need to know about your site, and there's no quick and easy way to get that to happen.

Don't even bother with the likes of the "I can get you 30,000 visitors in 12 hours for $3" or "I can get you 56,495,594,222 SEO-friendly backlinks in 9 minutes for $9" trash 'services' out there. They're a waste of time, money, and may in fact impact negatively on your site.

Even with an abundance of regular traffic, monetising a site isn't easy and on only one site isn't likely to make any kind of significant income by itself. If you were dependent on it doing so, you'd end up doing nothing but writing constant 'reviews' and 'previews' that are little more than affiliate sales copy. And that kind of thing is generally pretty easy to see through and will damage your reputation, reducing credibility and dragging your site down the ladder.

That's without even considering the list-building side of things with subscribers etc... but you need to have something you can actually sell to them to bother worrying about that.