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Ask HN: I own a 2M pageview/month website, am I capitalizing on this?

12 points by smattiso ↗ HN
I own a website that has 2M page views a month on 275k uniques. Right now my monthly revenue is ~$8000 USD, of which half comes from ads. To be honest the website looks like it came out of 1999 and I haven't investigated too much into other revenue streams.<p>I'm wondering whether I should invest time and money into improving the user experience, SEO, advertising deals, and other revenue streams. I know this is a very ambiguous description of my situation but I am hoping that others who manage similar sized websites can comment on their revenues.<p>My main question is whether I am generating a decent amount of ad revenue for that amount of traffic. The average user spends 10 minutes on the site.<p>Thanks!

24 comments

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[dead] BrazilVC
You can try running some affiliate programs... if you find some that convert well with your users you can probably make a lot more money!
broccolilettuce
I think the expected rate is about $6 /1000 impressions for ad based stuff
chewxy
Where in the world did you pull a $6 CPM value from?
[dead] jack9
He got it from 2004 I think
Mitchella
Agreed, thats a very high CPM rate. He even states that of the 2M page views only $4000 is generated from ads.
42tree
calculate the NPV of (incremental revenue - required time & money to invest). If NPV > 0, go; Else, no go
smattiso
that is impossible to estimate. If I were able to estimate that I wouldn't be asking this question. Also, your usage of the term NPV is flawed. Thanks though.
calgaryeng
Not quite sure why you even thanked them for that response. Wasn't worth the electrons it is printed on :)
dangrossman
Unless your audience is in a particularly valuable demographic, you're doing better than average on ad revenue already IMO.
crynix
I'd recommend adding an email to your profile so we can contact you.
Mitchella
You can always try adding some type of affiliate plan to your page that has a product relative to your content.

When I was doing ad based revenue on my apps one thing we did was play around with different advertising providers. Play around with the audience who could view the ads. Placement, etc. Take a day or two and play with the ads to see which gives you the best result. Whichever placement, rotation, etc. gives you the better result is obviously the better long term choice revenue wise.

I'd like to know which site this is, seeing it always helps. I don't understand why most people ask questions but don't provide their website.

42tree
simple

1. hide identity: they don't want people to find out who they are

2. avoid competition: they don't want others to copy their business

ibudiallo
Mostly because they don't want to be considered spammers
VelNZ
I own a website that gets 15% of your pageviews but I'm having trouble finding any advertisers. The website is on BuySellAds but isn't getting any bites despite a highly educated niche audience.

Does anyone have any tips for finding advertisers? You can easily find the website by going to the domain of my email address or my submission history.

revorad
Why don't you sell the templates on your site?
VelNZ
I do have eventual plans to make a "Premium Templates" section but I need to find a graphics designer and LaTeX pro who are willing to work for a percentage of sales to make this a reality. The rest of the templates are not made by me so I have no right to sell them.
cheae
Have you tried Adsense?
VelNZ
Yes, adsense generates virtually nothing. I had it up for about 6 months and it generated ~$70 or so. The site does get a lot more traffic now but regardless, it seems like I would receive far more income from something like BuySellAds.
mootothemax
Yes, adsense generates virtually nothing. I had it up for about 6 months and it generated ~$70 or so.

Sounds like you have something very wrong going on there. I have one incredibly crappy site with 5k uniques/month that is bringing in more than that.

I'm no expert, but if you'd like me to take a look, ping me on email.

[dead] orangethirty
How much time do you spend maintaining it per month?
orangethirty
How much time do you spend maintaining it per month?
vineet
You do have an ambiguous description - so my answer here is very general. Feel free to e-mail me (see my profile page) for a deeper discussion.

My instinct is that you are getting a decent amount of ad revenue, and that you might be able to get more - but it will likely require a whole bunch of experimentation to figure that part out.

I would instead focus on the other opportunities: driving more users, and generating other forms of revenue.

You likely will be able to 2-4x your users by experimenting with SEO and Social traffic sources. Also, 2M page views means you likely have a lot of users that you can try to get them to interact with the site more - that interaction will likely result in them coming back and getting more users (via) facebook.

With regards to revenue your simplest bet could be with thinking about different affiliate programs - you might want to approach relevant companies even though they might not have an explicit program.

If you have a specific niche of users, then you can likely drive up ad revenues more, but even if not you can try segmenting your users giving them a little more reason to stay and finally targeting them differently for higher ad rates.