Great content, so where’s my money?
by Sapphire (January 31, 2007)
Last year, I set a goal for Project B-2 Bomber to get 10,000 visitors in a month (AwStats) by December 2006. It missed, but this month it gained a lot of traffic and crossed the 10k threshold yesterday evening. This is pretty exciting stuff, even though it’s not translating into money (yet). My goal for December of 2007? 25,000 visitors.
I’m going to vent now about the frustration of having one really excellent site (I can say that, since other writers contribute) that makes less than it costs to run it while I have some super crappy sites with no original content making around $80/month just from ads? In fact, this site brings in around $80/month on ads, and it’s a helluva lot better than the other site making that, though it’s nowhere in the ballpark of a site like B-2. But that’s how it is. I guess we’ll see how it is when B-2 hits 25k visitors per month.
The problem with a really great content site is monetization. People come to read and discuss, not click ads. Not even CafePress ads, despite some really awesome designs we’ve got going in there. You almost need some sort of product bundled into the functionality of the site, but what? In the meantime, toss up a crap site in a competitive niche and get some PR on it, and bam, you’ve got links to sell.
Like I said, I’m just venting. I didn’t start B-2 for money; I started it as a hobby. It’s very ripe for BlogAds, which can be pretty damn lucrative, so maybe the best is yet to come.
Posted in Blogging Tags: Project B-2 Bomber
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January 31st, 2007 at 5:10 pm
I can understand the frustration… I mean even if it was for a hobby - the eventuality of having it make some money would be nice (even if it just covered hosting)… it can be frustrating when there is great potential, but the people who visit are looking for specifics… not browsing (which would lead to clicks I’m sure).
Be happy with the traffic tho that is so awesome!
February 2nd, 2007 at 5:09 pm
You know, it’s funny. I have one site that I ignore and it makes adsense and aff sales. I have an Amazon store hanging off it. I got another $2.00 this month and I have really low traffic stats as I haven’t gotten excited about it for awhile. Still I think it has good content but people click off all the time and earn me money.
My aff site, where I want people to click and buy gets very little stuff clicked off. I haven’t worked at having great content but apparently people like what they are getting and rarely click off to other sites via google (on the content pages) or my aff links. It earns amost no money–unless I start monetizing the blog!
February 4th, 2007 at 9:51 am
Empress, it’s my hope that it’ll still cash in eventually.
Bonnie, it just seems so random sometimes, doesn’t it?