Already 120,000 monthly visitors but almost no revenue
I am starting to get very frustrated, after 2 yrs of crazy amounts of work and $70K invested and having my website online for 1 yr I already have 120,000 monthly visitors but still can't monetize the traffic as I would like. Adsense brings chump change, I had a sponsor for the first semester of the year which was paying very good but it stopped and everything was reinvested to continue developing the site. Now I am pretty tight in money and therefore I can't launch an e-commerce store which could bring in the much needed revenue. Should I focus on continue uploading content and wait until the time is right to launch the store online? This site is for the Mexican/Hispanic Market so no option for drop shipping or anything similar and as well it is a population which is in its infancy stage in online commerce. I am attaching an image of the growth I am having so far. It's all been organic.
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Did you try a "donate" button? – Frenchie 12 years ago
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What was your original plan as to how this site was going to make you money? – Chelonian 12 years ago
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The site is basically something similar to vetstreet but in spanish, to sum it up right now it is the most complete and profesionally designed portal in Mexico (search venfido). My plan to monetize the site initially was to launch an online store but once I got the sponsors which was a premium dog food I decided to continue developing the site before going in to ecommerce. I dont want to put the donate botton, I feel it diminishes the "business" aspect of it. – Daniel 12 years ago
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if you think store can bring the revenue then why not use turn key / third party monthly paid solution such as magento go , ebay etc . – Mr Coder 12 years ago
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I agree about the "Donate" button--awful. Question: how good are you/your team at selling ad space? I'd guess that is the limiting factor here. That you were talking in terms of *just one* "sponsor" strikes me as indicative of the problem. Instead, you should be aiming for dozens of vendors competing for space on your site, and hitting that hard and well (and if you can't sell to them, hire someone who can). – Chelonian 12 years ago
4 Answers
Be sure you are capturing email addresses from your visitors. in a few months you could have a list you can do sponsors through worth 100s - 1000s. Just vet the list well. Just an idea.
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Hi Bryan, I am capturing emails. Around 1,000 per month. You are totally right. – Daniel 12 years ago
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What are you suggesting? I may be misunderstanding but passing email addresses onto third parties would not be right – Adam Lynch 12 years ago
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@AdamLynch I believe bryan is talking about selling products to his users via email marketing. You build a relationship with your community and then 'recommend' related products which have your affiliate link in them or that your company sells. ie: you could send out a weekly email describing the "Item of the week." – Logan Besecker 12 years ago
Have you talked to any of your visitors/potential customers? Do you have a way of communicating with them? Could be comments, Twitter, a contact page, anything to be able to start a conversation and see what they want and are interested in, and use that to fuel ideas for monetizing. Without knowing anything more about your site, I don't think anyone can give any more specific advice.
As far as advertising, if you can find companies who are interested in your audience specifically you could try approaching them for an advertising deal. You might get better results that way than through Adsense, although it would be more work on your part.
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@chelonian You are totally right, I just left some steam out but need to keep it for my self. – Daniel 12 years ago
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@Daniel I deleted my comment now for that reason. – Chelonian 12 years ago
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I like this idea: those 120K visitors must be getting value from your site, and human nature means people want to give back. Simply ask what features of a premium subscription would be worth $2/month (or whatever) to them. – Darren Cook 12 years ago
One option would be allow premium subscriptions. Offer users that decide to pay something extra; this could be as small as an gold star by their icon but it would be better if you could give them more relevant content and features.
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Hi Tom, yes, I had a vet to chat for free for 1 year and people were loving it but I had to let him go once my sponsor decided to stop advertising 2 months ago, exactly when panda was hitting everyone and my traffic doubled right that month. Now I have a ton of people coming back looking for the vet for questions but I can't afford to have him at this moment. I am considering offering a monthly/semester/year subscription that would give access to the people to chat with the vet in business hours. What do you think? – Daniel 12 years ago
You've got the community, but you need the product, and you need to provide a way to get paid. You have created something that gives value to the users, but you need to allow them to give back.
