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Ask HN: Best way to monetize 'decent traffic' site?

7 points by marcamillion ↗ HN
I run a site that gets a moderate amount of traffic, see images below from last 3 weeks (Jan 27 - Feb 15):

http://imgur.com/4KKTr7y

http://imgur.com/kmbvjHE

http://imgur.com/cEGwbDh

http://imgur.com/1Usyjpv

Traffic: 50K - 120K uniques, 250K - 800K pageviews (depending on month).

We have been using AdSense & BuySellAds for monetization, but quite frankly the income sucks from both. We would like to explore selling more direct advertising.

It seems that BSA is the AdSense for any site in our range of traffic. But due to the lacklustre results I would love to explore other options.

The site is a news site.

A) Any marketers have clients that may be interested in this type of traffic?

B) Do you have any suggestions for how we can monetize this traffic? E.g. alternative ad networks.

Thanks.

12 comments

[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 31.7 ms ] thread
loumf
Is there something about your site (or the audience) that would be valuable to specific types of advertisers? For example, are visitors indicating buying intent of anything (e.g. you review android phones) or are they particularly valuable (e.g. you have luxury lifestyle articles). If so, sell direct advertising to the right market (not through advertising companies).

Would your users trust you to make purchasing decisions and be ok with you getting a disclosed affiliate fee. Seek out affiliate relationships.

Make an e-product to sell to your audience.

marcamillion
All of the above are what I have examined, but we are a local news site - so that would be a 'no' to most of the above.

There may be a local commerce play that we haven't examined fully yet though.

loumf
* Sell direct to local advertisers like newspapers do. Look for affiliate deals for sites with localized versions (e.g. Groupon-deal-a-day, Dating).

* BuzzFeed style native-advertising (sponsored content) -- clearly mark it as sponsored. Good example of who would want this: events that sell tickets.

marcamillion
Great points. We are exploring the first, and have tabled the second for future consideration.
Gustomaximus
Marketer here: Its fairly common to come across this issue. Eyeballs are never as valuable as people think with the exception of some niche audience.

Good ways to leverage value are;

1) Find something that panders to your audience need and try to cater to that. e.g. This has loads of Caribbean audience (and I assume that is Caribbean immigrants in the western countries). Perhaps you can strike a deal with a money transfer or Cricket organisation. Look for organisations that value brand over direct financial performance as the later will be harder to place a premium. Also performance marketers rarely do small site sponsorship as we can usually get better value of the larger networks, or at the least your repeat business will be limited driving up your hours involved.

2) Look for more ways to get ads/products in front of people without hurting the user experience. E.g. are they buying services on site? The put a suggestion for a complimentary product post transaction etc. Affiliate model can be your friend here over a ad network.

Good luck.

marcamillion
Great suggestion on the first one. The second one is more tricky given the type of site we run (local news).

Maybe there is a local e-commerce play...not sure.

shiftpgdn
I think your big issue is the amount of mobile traffic you get. As an ad buyer mobile traffic is completely worthless. I would literally rather set my money on fire just to watch it burn than to spend it on mobile ads.

That said you might have some luck via a promotion partnership where you get paid to directly promote an item.

marcamillion
This is very interesting. Why don't you like mobile ads? The conversions aren't good?
shiftpgdn
Literally 0 conversions. Mobile ads might be great for brand awareness but for metrics you can track they are worthless for any sort of online business.
marcamillion
Very interesting. Will definitely keep that in mind!