How best to monetise site?

[Fill-Your-World]

We have a blog site that has to date served only to drive traffic to our store, push our stores SEO efforts and to engage with our customers. However Im wondering whether we are missing a trick by not trying to monetise it directly.

We have recently spoken with a large clothing retailer who wants to advertise on the site for £30 a month- does that sound about right? The site currently get around 5,000 unique visitors per month, and switches between PR 3-4

So perhaps banner ads would be a nice way to monetise it, but is there anything else/better that we could look into? Google adsense is a possibility, but my concern would be that our competitors ads would be appearing and thus taking traffic from us to them....Does anyone else use adsense on a similar site? How much revenue is generated from it?

Any thoughts welcome

 

[DesignerNick]

How about eBay Partner Network? All you need to do is get an account and get something like PHPBay and it is ever so simple to add eBay ads into your posts / pages that are laser targetted

 

[paulus]

We have recently spoken with a large clothing retailer who wants to advertise on the site for £30 a month- does that sound about right? The site currently get around 5,000 unique visitors per month, and switches between PR 3-4

I would be happy with that price.

Regarding the Adsense and it's effect on your "real" sales, why don't you trial it for a month? As you say, there is a risk of distracting potential customers with ads, but the only way to find out to what extent that matters is by testing it.

EDIT: Great user name by the way

 

[Fill-Your-World]

How about eBay Partner Network? All you need to do is get an account and get something like PHPBay and it is ever so simple to add eBay ads into your posts / pages that are laser targetted

Will take a look, thanks!

 

[crossdaz]

We have a blog site that has to date served only to drive traffic to our store, push our stores SEO efforts and to engage with our customers. However Im wondering whether we are missing a trick by not trying to monetise it directly.

We have recently spoken with a large clothing retailer who wants to advertise on the site for £30 a month- does that sound about right? The site currently get around 5,000 unique visitors per month, and switches between PR 3-4

So perhaps banner ads would be a nice way to monetise it, but is there anything else/better that we could look into? Google adsense is a possibility, but my concern would be that our competitors ads would be appearing and thus taking traffic from us to them....Does anyone else use adsense on a similar site? How much revenue is generated from it?

Any thoughts welcome

Banner ads tend to convert very poorly tbh. One affiliate sale for a branded fashion retailer can net £30 alone - so your prospective advertiser is taking the mickey. It's not just a case of linking to one though - you have to do a bit of work and suffer some trail and error to get a good one.

Adsense is perhaps the most consistent and reliable but, again, takes some experience to get just right.
You can filter out anyone you don't want to appear in ads btw .

Ebay is also good, as has been mentioned, but only if you generate revenue - just sending clicks won't do it for you.

 

[crossdaz]

As you say, there is a risk of distracting potential customers with ads, but the only way to find out to what extent that matters is by testing it.

This is a logical assumption but in practice does not have such an effect. If the visitor is not drawn to your offering then they will leave anyway.

 

[herodigital]

getting ads from retailers on there would be great, don't waste your time with AdSense, it'll take you months to reach £30.

Also I would push to £50/month - I think a niche site like that which gets good traffic can afford to be a bit pickier with who advertises on there which in turn raises the price a bit.

 

[TangerineDream]

I am really keen on affiliate networks these are really flexible and you can find them for every possible type of product so there will be a fit to your site. This way you can get a slice of the action when a click results in a sale. However, you can look at reviewing products of free samples or cash as well. Yu can look to review relevant books and then have affiliate networks to Amazon... There are loads of great ways of earning a little money..... But little money is that way to look at this. It is unlikely that you wil ever get a wage from blogging very few people do.

It is probably worthwhile pointing out that you must also consider your audience. Will they get switch off if you start to make money from the site. I personally feel it is important to be honest with the readers and if you have been given a free be or paid / sponsored or place adverts and you do any form of endorsement DECLEARE YOUR INTEREST.

Good luck

 

[eventdomain]

For affiliate partnerships to work, you need one key thing - a high traffic site, in the perfect niche....

Affiliate partnerships have one objective:

to get their client ads onto homepages for low cost or even free.

What happens is the publisher (affiliate) is sold on 'the great partnership opportunity' places the adverts and quickly realises their traffic wont click the ads, thus it cannot work for them - ever, their visitors just wont click onto the ads in enough numbers for any clicks to happen, never mind actual sales.

The affiliate never makes anything from this. While the merchant (affiliate provider/owner) gets free advertising - as its tough to keep installing/removing affiliate code. Tbh, many sites dont do this, as its a risk and largely not worth the hassle involved for the publishing site as the fees paid are too low.

Also a websites visitors can also 'smell affiliate links' a mile off and wont click. So it fails - I must get 5 partnership offers every summer, its annoying.

 

[gotreatme]

We have a blog site that has to date served only to drive traffic to our store, push our stores SEO efforts and to engage with our customers. However Im wondering whether we are missing a trick by not trying to monetise it directly.

We have recently spoken with a large clothing retailer who wants to advertise on the site for £30 a month- does that sound about right? The site currently get around 5,000 unique visitors per month, and switches between PR 3-4

So perhaps banner ads would be a nice way to monetise it, but is there anything else/better that we could look into? Google adsense is a possibility, but my concern would be that our competitors ads would be appearing and thus taking traffic from us to them....Does anyone else use adsense on a similar site? How much revenue is generated from it?

Any thoughts welcome

I would work on gaining some partners, speak to certain companies and offer your services directly (like you already have done) & then place banners on the blog.