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Ask HN: How would you “monetize” this site?

9 points by coldshower ↗ HN
The site is a simple tax lookup. Enter an item and it will tell you if it's taxable, anywhere in Canada. It's a free service that's geared towards lower income families, but it's for any Canadian who wants to understand the tax system better.

The site has been rejected by Amazon Affiliates and Google Adsense for not having original content (it's tax information gleaned from government sources).

So getting back to the question: for a site that might not get a lot of traffic, what novel ways might I monetize the site?

The site is here, for anyone who is interested: http://txttax.ca

7 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 11.8 ms ] thread
imaginenore
Try other ad networks. Or contact sellers of tax software and make a direct deal with them (e.g. they pay you per click).

I'm surprised your sites got rejected, I have a few that run on publicly available data.

coldshower
Not sure I'll have enough traffic to appeal to advertisers. I'll check out some alternatives to Adsense. Thanks.
sharemywin
might check out some of the affiliate networks. you could build ads for some of your top searches.
svisser
You've already identified that it may not get much traffic and it isn't monetizable with two big ad networks.

It's worth experimenting with a few things but you may just need to move on to another project that has better chances.

cauterized
Build an API. Allow free use up to N requests per day. Sell higher usage tiers to businesses.
csallen
I like the suggestion to build an API and charge for requests, as well as showing products for your searches and generating affiliate links. You could probably just add a blog to the site to get approved by Amazon.

On a related note, I think you could improve the copy of your site a lot. Explain to visitors why your site is useful and how using it will make their lives better. Also, not sure why, but the initial load was super slow for me. May have been my internet connection though, because I'm having trouble reproducing.

My site (https://indiehackers.com) has lots of examples of people monetizing their websites and side projects, so maybe read through there and get some ideas. I can help put you in touch with any of the founders if there's someone whose brain you'd like to pick.

pynerds
Can you recommend step by step process to earn $1000 per month through amazon affiliate site?