Monetising a Low Traffic Website

z6vm1dobfnca3x

Hey,

I have just started running my first website which currently has, and will probably continue to have low traffic. But I am still hoping to monetise it in some way, even if the revenue generated just covers the cost of hosting etc.

The website is a local business directory for the Dublin 14/16 area called rathfarnharnham.info . I started the website to offer free listings to local businesses while hoping to generate a small income from Google AdSense.

However, I have quickly learned how strict Google are about content level etc. I am worried now that my site cannot possibly have enough content or traffic to meet Google's requirements, as the target audience is obviously quite limited.

I am just wondering if anyone has experience with running a similar website, and if they managed to find other ways of monetising their content.

I'm a University Student, and I need to eat! My current hosting plan with Wix comes to around €14 per month incl. VAT.

Any advice is much appreciated!

Hugo.

kirving

I know very little about AdSense etc, but I am from that area. Why call it rathfarnham.info? Plenty of places in D14/D16 that aren't Rathfarnham. Also, seeing info would completly turn me off. Has to be ie or I just regard it as a rubbish website. Not fair maybe, but it's the truth.

z6vm1dobfnca3x

Hey Kevin,

Unfortunately .ie and .com were both unavailable, so .info seemed like the next best option. I called it Rathfarnham.info because it has a bit more of a local or community feel than a site with 'Dublin' in the name, like a lot of other sites out there.

Obviously businesses located in Churchtown, Dundrum, Knocklyon etc. are all relevant to people to living in the Rathfarnham area.

I agree with you about domains other than .ie generally being generally untrustworthy, but in fairness, rathfarnahm.info is a fairly specific name and is aimed at a very limited audience! I think people will generally recognise it as a legitimate website, especially given the presence on Facebook and Twitter.

But thanks anyway! I'm always open to constructive criticism!

Hugo.

kirving

I really like the idea, there are plenty of really nice small businesses like cafes in the area that I never go to, purely because I just don't know about them. Dublin16.com, with basically and identical mirror site called Dublin14.com might be local, but also capture a wider audience.

jmcc

Your biggest problem, after getting enough traffic to make monetising with Adsense viable, will be keeping the content updated and current. Thousands of new Irish domains are registered each month and some of them end up with functioning websites. However thousands of Irish domain names and websites are deleted each month.

Regards...jmcc

Weebly

Maybe consider blogging to increase traffic, given that your website is in the local business niche, maybe you could go out into the community and interview some local business owners. This allows you to get high quality, useful content and they can plug their services at the same time... win/win

Nucular Arms

The logical step to me would be to increase the traffic to the site.

Once you have a reasonable amount of users coming in, local businesses could be approached to sell advertising space to.

As long as the ads are relevant to the audience (which they would be from being local) and / or provide a unique benefit to the users it could possibly generate some income.

kaloshma

I really doubt google adsense will be approved directly for your website.You could try going through youtube though.

Also you could consider affiliate marketing or even a retail store affiliate marketing program like the amazon partner stuff.

colosus1908

Since it is small traffic blog, you could try working on increase you user page view, by adding related content within post. Them apply for CPM networks.

smash

The thing is that if you want to find a business you use yourlocal.ie, order some food: justeat.ie, buy a car: carzone.ie etc etc. I think the days of small isolated business listing sites are well over. But if you're going to do it then maybe look at sandyford.com for some ideas.

tricky D

These types of directories/classifieds sites have been effectively killed off by Google et al many years ago and the few existing classified listings brands which switched media like Buy and Sell, or those who were early to market with a decent execution and backing like yourlocal have most of the horizontal market. Then there's the vertical market listing sites like justeat and carzone which smash mentions. The rest are fighting over the scraps and it's rare as hens teeth for a new listing site to have any decent success (there are dozens of examples of this on boards alone).

As for monetising, the main options are: ads, charged premium listings and taking a transaction cut (very hard to do as one of the properties of the web is that it is good at cutting out the middle).