Monetizing sites?
by Sapphire (December 17, 2007)
I don’t think I know how to monetize a site. Most of my sites are low traffic - ranging from several hundred to 5,000 uniques (by AwStats) per month, so it’s not surprising each site doesn’t make much. But I’m starting to think that these small sites collectively ought to be making $200/month or more. They include ChillyCool and Project Mai Tai, some affiliate sites and some article reprint sites. Project Mai Tai, for example, makes under $10/month from about 2,500 visitors per month. Does that sound right to you?
Or look at it this way. Project B-2 Bomber is getting over 16k visitors this month. This site (BlueMushrooms) is getting half that (keep in mind that includes the directory as well as the blog). And one of my article reprint sites gets under 1k per month. Guess what? Each site earns me around $100 per month. I’ve got to be doing something wrong there. Given all the people who make $100/month with nothing more than AdSense on a site or two - an earner I’ve never made more than a few cents a month from - I definitely think part of the problem is me.
Or is AwStats really that misleading? I notice Quantcast thinks I’ve had about half the traffic this month that AwStats reports. But even if AwStats is that far off, I still have one site with X visitors, another with half of X, and another with a piddly little amount, all doing equally well.
What do you think I should be making from, say, this blog? What do you think you’d be making if you owned it? What would you do differently?
Posted in SEO
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December 17th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
I’m in the same boat as you, but I think I’m on to something after digging around a bit through my sites. The sites I currently run that have a more “techie/internet savvy” crowd attached to it do not do as well for Adsense. I think it has to do with them being more aware of ads than most.
Now with a couple of my sites that are completely non-techie and lean more to the general Internet population those Google Ads are clicking like a hot damn in comparison. I think it depends largely on who your audience is.
Perhaps offering 125×125 - branding for sites on those sites you have that don’t have a great click through would help suppliment - if you’ve got a good PR and a not so bad Alexa, people will advertise. Also if they like the content they’ll advertise. I would lean to starting low on the pricing and as interest grows or if you see people advertising month after month - you could increase the rate a little and see it goes.
Just ideas
December 18th, 2007 at 8:55 am
My non-techie sites have never done too well with AdSense. I don’t know if this is because my traffic’s lower than everyone else’s or because I don’t place the ads where I should. I make do better with other PPC networks, but even those results are pretty weak.
I am offering 125 x 125 ads here and on a couple of other sites. This one sold two ads despite having zero pagerank, which is encouraging.
I agree with you about techies being ad aware.