How to make money from an information website?

Brendan Flowers

I've just launched a new website. At the moment Im getting about 100 visitors a day, but I expect this to increase by quite a bit over the coming weeks and months. The website provides information and has a forum. There is no fees or subscriptions attached to the site. So at the moment Google Adsense is all I have to make money from the website. And at that I've only made a couple of euro from it.

Is there any other options for making a decent amount of money from an information website? Once I have become more established I intend to approach companies directly about advertising on the website rather than relying on Adsense. But Im hoping there is other options that I just havent thought of. Anyone here able to offer some advice?

Peterdalkey

Assuming you can get to decent numbers of visitors, selling advertising is the most obvious way.. though Mr Zuckerberg seems to be finding it rather difficult and he has the numbers!
The other way is to sell them services or products yourself though your own advertising on your site, or better still, do both!

Kai123

Someone offered me 125 euro to simply link their website into a gaming related word in a related article. One off payment, but paid for my hosting for the year.

They contacted me, but if you have the traffic it might be worth asking around the various online advertisement companies.

The Apprentice

Whats your niche brendan ??

Has your new site got an Pagerank - ? Also over a month long approx how many visitors - 3k odd ??

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

Kai123 wrote: »

Someone offered me 125 euro to simply link their website into a gaming related word in a related article. One off payment, but paid for my hosting for the year.

They contacted me, but if you have the traffic it might be worth asking around the various online advertisement companies.

The reason they paid you so much is if Google work out you were selling links it will de-index your site from it's search engine... It's not exactly a sustainable business model.

jhegarty

100 unique visitors a day or 100 page views a day ?

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

jhegarty wrote: »

100 unique visitors a day or 100 page views a day ?

:rolleyes: Did you just ask "how big is the tumble weed?"

100 views is little more than looking up your own site and maybe having a crawl. To make any sort of real money from content sites you need to be doing 1million plus page views per month, or extremely targeted affiliate selling.

Obviously since you're just starting out it takes time to build traffic, but you should have had a monetarisation plan before starting and then work on getting the traffic up to that level needed over 6 months.

Kai123

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan wrote: »

The reason they paid you so much is if Google work out you were selling links it will de-index your site from it's search engine... It's not exactly a sustainable business model.

Never knew that I asked around and people said go for it.

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

Next time ask smarter people so.

The Apprentice

Im going to play devils advocate ronan and say yes you can ..

I am not specifically talking about jamming your site with blog links, guest posts in your site could relatively do the same thing your asking with some outbound links..

Totally google friendly and totally a sustainable business model.. :P Its just looking at this a different way

Brendan Flowers

Thanks for the replies so far everyone! Its 100 unique visitors I have per day and the site is aimed at students. As I mentioned in the original post though I expect the number of unique visitors to increase by quite a bit over the coming weeks and months.

So really apart from selling advertisements (as suggested in Post #2) is there any other obvious way of generating money from my site that I might not have thought of?

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

The Apprentice wrote: »

Im going to play devils advocate ronan and say yes you can ..

I am not specifically talking about jamming your site with blog links, guest posts in your site could relatively do the same thing your asking with some outbound links..

Totally Google friendly and totally a sustainable business model.. :P Its just looking at this a different way

So we're going off topic here, but why it isn't sustainable is because if someone reports a person for link buying - on a site nothing to do with the sellers site, Google staff will then examine all the incoming links to that particular buying links site and decide if those links are reasonable and organic, or if they have been incentivised. If they have been paid links or look like they could have been, Google / Google Bot will de-index the site. Its the same thing as why linking back to link farms is a really bad idea.

mneylon

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan wrote: »

So we're going off topic here, but why it isn't sustainable is because if someone reports a person for link buying - on a site nothing to do with the sellers site, Google staff will then examine all the incoming links to that particular buying links site and decide if those links are reasonable and organic, or if they have been incentivised. If they have been paid links or look like they could have been, Google / Google Bot will de-index the site. Its the same thing as why linking back to link farms is a really bad idea.

Pretty much covers it.

The middle ground, which a lot of sites use, is to get guest contributors and let the contributors have links back to their site.

You then monetise based on the content + traffic

Of course the other thing is in relation to actually monetising a site. If you're relying on it as your sole source of income you'll need to build up the traffic a LOT in order to survive solely on advertising revenue.

If, however, you're using it as an extra source of income then you don't have to as much ..

Peterdalkey

Brendan Flowers wrote: »

Thanks for the replies so far everyone! Its 100 unique visitors I have per day and the site is aimed at students. As I mentioned in the original post though I expect the number of unique visitors to increase by quite a bit over the coming weeks and months.

So really apart from selling advertisements (as suggested in Post #2) is there any other obvious way of generating money from my site that I might not have thought of?

I did suggest in post # 2 that you sell them products or services yourself from ads on your own site which will cost you nothing!

PapaDragon

I would take the adsense off if i were you.

It is a new site and it is a forum and information site and you want people to stay and interact. By placing adsense on your site your giving people a way to leave your site. Adsense we are talking pence , it's hardly worth it.

I would just concentrate on building up the site forget about earning money from it in the short term. People dont like being bombarded with stuff, especially when it is a new site.

Put in a question when their joining your site " would you like to recieve offers ? yes or no .

You have their email address and permission to send offers then. After awhile start sending them the very odd tip in relation to the content of your site ( i dont know what your site is and I dont want to know and keep this to yourself). example , top ten tips, things to do, how to save on your next purchase that type of thing.You could also create a free guide to download in order to capture their email address too. And maybe then have a paid product also. You have to eat:)

Eventually when you start to build trust with your base. Then you can start earning money from them by sending other offers in relation to your content. It is about convincing your audience that you are the authority when it come to the content on your site and what you are trying to sell.

Advertising- it is really about having the numbers here in terms of subscribers and visitors. Keep track of all these stats.

Short term - if you really want to ...

maybe hook up some daily deals offers on your site at the top/sidebar.

depending on your content maybe create an offers thread ?

oh, and for forum tips look at boards.ie here closely look at how they operate, and what they do best and how they place their ads and sell to us. And copy what works no need to reinvent the wheel here. Then look at other sites in your area and do the exact same. Dont copy their content though.

I would also say to think about the goals of your site and what are you trying to achieve ? And what value you are offering ? and why customers should visit your site.

And stick with it as it will be a marathon not a sprint.


Hope this helps

RedXIV

Sorry to drag this slightly off topic OP

but this is an area I've found myself interested in recently. I've a few ideas for sites I want to create anyway but I'm interested in seeing how I could monetize them as well. Are there any books/courses/links people would recommend for this? I'm looking for as much information as possible really.

Thanks again and once more apologies to the OP for dragging this off topic

J_Wholesale

Very difficult to make money from an info site.

I closed down a forum only two weeks ago that I'd built and helped run for 3 years. We shut it down because the moderation got to be too time consuming, and fights were breaking out too often. It got to be a pain in the ass to run.

At the time, the forum was getting 600K page loads a month. It had 30K posts, with 160K comments and 2,500 members. It was the most active forum in its niche in Ireland.

We ran Google ads on the site - 3 spots on each page, and it only brought in €150 a month. Peanut money, despite the high page loads. Hosting costs (shared hosting) ran to about €200 a year.

In its best year, when we had some industry specific advertisers, we only took in about €3K in ad revenue. But this fizzled out last year, as most of the advertisers had such crappy websites and landing pages that they couldn't convert clicks into sales - despite the very focused nature of the traffic.

I don't mind giving these figures out, because the forum is now closed, but consider the traffic and income figures above before you invest the time and work in building an info site with the intent of making money.

The Apprentice

So let me get this --

U were earning on a website close to €1700 a year that had running costs of €200 odd.. and it was time consuming to moderate - so you closed it ! ??


Palm and face come to mind !!

J_Wholesale

The Apprentice wrote: »

So let me get this --

U were earning on a website close to €1700 a year that had running costs of €200 odd.. and it was time consuming to moderate - so you closed it ! ??


Palm and face come to mind !!

I don't see the problem. Two people running the site, €1500 profit, less tax = less than €500 per annum each.

Would you work an hour or 2 a day, with no chance of a day or week off, for €10 a week?

I know salaries have dropped in this country lately, but we're not at third world levels yet.

riveratom

J_Wholesale wrote: »

I don't see the problem. Two people running the site, €1500 profit, less tax = less than €500 per annum each.

Would you work an hour or 2 a day, with no chance of a day or week off, for €10 a week?

I know salaries have dropped in this country lately, but we're not at third world levels yet.

You didn't consider selling it? That was a lot of page views/month...

The Apprentice

Apart from your ignorance to the "Value" of this particular site speculating on what i would or wouldnt do is .. just not cool, we shall not go there.

There are dozens of things you could have done with this particular site, each of which would not have hindered your life in any way and would have picked you up a healthy check either now or in the near future.

A very foolish thing to do, although done now so i dont think theres much point in talking about it ..

J_Wholesale

riveratom wrote: »

You didn't consider selling it? That was a lot of page views/month...

We considered it, but the income wasn't large enough to entice real money, and the only interested parties were fan boys who thought €100 was a lot of money.

dvdham

J_Wholesale wrote: »

We considered it, but the income wasn't large enough to entice real money, and the only interested parties were fan boys who thought €100 was a lot of money.

Sounds crazy to just close a site with that amount of traffic! did you have a look at the likes of Flippa?

jmcc

The Apprentice wrote: »

So let me get this --

U were earning on a website close to €1700 a year that had running costs of €200 odd.. and it was time consuming to moderate - so you closed it ! ??


Palm and face come to mind !!

Some people might factor in the cost of their own time spent maintaining the site into the equation. This is often the biggest killer for information based sites - whether the site owner's time could be better spent elsewhere and for a higher return.

Regards...jmcc

RedXIV

Honestly I'd be happy for that kind of return that you spoke of. I just want to learn more about the business as a whole. Hosting advice, domain acquistion, website packages, ad words and all. I realise its a big chunk of information to seek but the problem is its so big I can't get a grip on it to start with!

The Apprentice

jmcc wrote: »

Some people might factor in the cost of their own time spent maintaining the site into the equation. This is often the biggest killer for information based sites - whether the site owner's time could be better spent elsewhere and for a higher return.

Regards...jmcc

Yes, and i could of also factored in a Webmaster Or perhaps paid moderators to run the site for less than the cost of that €1700..

Do you think the moderators of boards.ie get paid for their work ??
I would have sold it, despite him getting offers of €100 he probably didnt ask the write client to buy...
Either way, letting it die a death when he left €100 on the table would have left the baby jesus cry ..
If he or she didnt want the money why not donate it to charity !

jmcc

The Apprentice wrote: »

Yes, and i could of also factored in a Webmaster Or perhaps paid moderators to run the site for less than the cost of that €1700..

Well it might be worth making an offer on the site.

Do you think the moderators of boards.ie get paid for their work ??

Most do it for the kudos or because they are interested in the topic. But there is also a group of very hard working people in the background who are paid (I think).

Regards...jmcc

J_Wholesale

Sometimes things don't work out, and the best thing to do is to walk away, not chase after 10 cent pieces in the gutter, like a homeless child on the streets of Mumbai. One of the hardest lessons to learn in business is when to call a halt and say 'enough is enough.' I can see that at least one person here still hasn't learned that lesson, but it's one that most successful business people learn over time.

The reason I posted the figures I did was to point out (a little too subtlety maybe), that even really good figures on a busy forum (page loads, posts, comments, users, etc.) do not always mean that you can earn real money - and before anymore jumps in and says that €100 is real money, I'd remind you that this is a business forum, and that in that context, €100 is NOT real money, whatever biblical figures might think.

I didn't come down in the last shower. I run successful online businesses. And I do not consider €1,700 a year to be anywhere close to successful. It's hobby money - nothing more. Which is fine if your website or forum is a hobby, but not fine if it's the B word - Business.

And this is, after all, the Entrepreneurial & Business Management forum.

The Apprentice

Yes.. that was i was clearly saying but your not reading the post clear enough.

Why not hand it to someone to take it on, for fun, for ****s and giggles ?? For charity ??

Whats this walk away bullcrap your spouting about, your trying to sound like sean quinn with your money millions ? and to answer your point no i wouldnt consider 1700 notes a hell of a lot of money either.

But Irish red cross or perhaps the childrens hospital would have been happy with a small donation of €100 .. cept your money millionaire brain grew too large for ure skull..

MOH

The Apprentice wrote: »

Yes.. that was i was clearly saying but your not reading the post clear enough.

Why not hand it to someone to take it on, for fun, for ****s and giggles ?? For charity ??

Whats this walk away bullcrap your spouting about, your trying to sound like sean quinn with your money millions ? and to answer your point no i wouldnt consider 1700 notes a hell of a lot of money either.

But Irish red cross or perhaps the childrens hospital would have been happy with a small donation of €100 .. cept your money millionaire brain grew too large for ure skull..

Presumably if someone's running a website which is generating less than €5 a day, and taking a significant amount of work to run, they're the best judge of whether it's worthwhile selling it. Or even giving it away, which might raise other issues.

Besides, even if it was making 5 grand a day and they decided to shut it down and walk away from it, that's their business too.

Not sure why you're ranting and rambling at someone who's just provided some figures to help illustrate to the OP that even with a large number of page views an information site can be difficult to monetise, depending on its nature.

The Apprentice

aye me either