Monetising

[stu567blue]

Hi Everyone,

I'm really hoping someone might be able to help me. I run a website design agency, and we mainly build websites for businesses, host them and carry out SEO work accordingly.

Alongside this I also run a small business/community website that has been slowly gaining momentum, at least in the form of traffic. I'll give some basic outline

- The website: provides business and community news from around the local area, ocassionally interviews and so on
- The website also provides a What's On guide, giving people a run down of some the events happening across the local area
- An online business directory which holds over 100 businesses
- An online Job board
- Social Media wise we have reach over 13,000 followers across the social media world.
- We also a monthly meet up, for businesses to come together and network

All of this has been provided for free.

Now I'm going to be honest, running the above takes me a considerable amount of time and of course resources. I have a single ad on the website and have considered adding more, but I really don't want to disrupt the users experience with ads, I offer an advertising program for the website at a small fee, but have had no take up.

I'm now at a point where, I want to make the decision to either get this website generating some revenue or chalking up the past 8 years up to experience.

Any suggestions or thoughts would be great.

Thank you.

 

[Porky]

Hi Rob,

You probably already know the reality here. To make it viable you need to sell direct advertising packages on the site. Premium listings in your directory, banner adverts etc you could put some packages together.

Affiliate adverts or google adverts imo will deliver very little for you these days. Affiliate marketing paid well years back but now you need incredibly ridiculous high volumes of traffic to make it work.

You mention member meetings so that sounds like membership fees are possible if not already and perhaps combine with directory listings, advertising packages as membership benefits? Feature paid blogs on the site with links back to their website that sort of thing.

It’s a real shame to lose what you have but the markets moved on, I had a really busy work related forum a while back and i could make some good income running MIVA adverts back then at so much a click however they closed and google adwords which superseded them paid very little in comparison, so low it wasn’t worth the effort.

Hate to say it but you are going to really struggle to make it pay and may have to make a hard call. It feels like some kind of membership package coupled with the meetings could be your way forward as stated but other than that I’m out of options, sorry I can’t be more supportive. Good luck

 

[fisicx]

If you want it to cover costs people either need to pay to advertise/list or you need adverts.

Or you use the 13,000 social media follows to ask for help running the site. Off load the whole thing and it becomes someone else’s problem.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

You have nothing here to monetise. 8 years in and a 100 business listings with some random followers is a hobby at best.

All the numbers you provided are pretty much irrelevant anyways as the important numbers are missing which makes me think the site performs poor at best.

Give it to the community and focus on something else.

 

[Simon.P]

Affiliate marketing paid well years back but now you need incredibly ridiculous high volumes of traffic to make it work.

Hi Porky.
What do you mean by high volumes? Just wondering as UKBF is plastered with ads

 

[Lloyd N8N]

Hi Rob, I actually think you can monetise this and have some experience in this World.
I actually run a local community website myself.
Drop me a message - would be good to take a look at your site.

 

[brianj_hill]

Hi Everyone,

I'm really hoping someone might be able to help me. I run a website design agency, and we mainly build websites for businesses, host them and carry out SEO work accordingly.

Alongside this I also run a small business/community website that has been slowly gaining momentum, at least in the form of traffic. I'll give some basic outline

- The website: provides business and community news from around the local area, ocassionally interviews and so on
- The website also provides a What's On guide, giving people a run down of some the events happening across the local area
- An online business directory which holds over 100 businesses
- An online Job board
- Social Media wise we have reach over 13,000 followers across the social media world.
- We also a monthly meet up, for businesses to come together and network

All of this has been provided for free.

Now I'm going to be honest, running the above takes me a considerable amount of time and of course resources. I have a single ad on the website and have considered adding more, but I really don't want to disrupt the users experience with ads, I offer an advertising program for the website at a small fee, but have had no take up.

I'm now at a point where, I want to make the decision to either get this website generating some revenue or chalking up the past 8 years up to experience.

Any suggestions or thoughts would be great.

Thank you.

You say your primary business is Website development and SEO. My advice to any budding entrepreneur is to focus on one thing and make it a success. 8 years is a long time distraction from your core business and better to use this to drive progress in your core.

 

[stu567blue]

Hi Rob, I actually think you can monetise this and have some experience in this World.
I actually run a local community website myself.
Drop me a message - would be good to take a look at your site.

Morning

Have sent you a PM.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts in due course.

Thank you.