Ideas On Monetizing Image Based Site?

tencentpiece

tencentpiece

New member
Nov 11, 2010
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Melbourne, Australia
www.linknarwhal.com
So I've got a domain that is pulling around 10k/uniques (30k+ pageviews) a day. I currently get around a $1.5 CPM from the site, the break down is as follows:

Three ad units: $1CPM
In image advertising: $0.05

The ad units I'm currently using are a mixture of CPM and adsense, I can't get accepted into the top tier CPM networks because the site content is not original (it's pretty much just a celebrity gallery) and I'm currently using gumgum for my in image advertising.

Anybody have some thoughts on how I can monetize this a little better? I currently rank #2 behind wikipedia (I'm ahead of IMDB now) and I can probably beat the wikipedia entry with a little bit of extra work but I'd like to try and get this earning more than $45/day before I spend some money getting rid of wikipedia.

Stuff I've tried: Pushing the celebrities DVD's via email and facebook (no comissions, people don't want to buy DVD's when they are working out a chubby to a celebrity).

I wouldn't mind putting something behind a wall and then using CPAlead or something similar to try and make some extra $$. Only problem is? What to put behind the wall? There are no bikini photos of this celeb and she has never been naked either, there are a few of those shitty mormon porn/bubbling photos of her but I think that would make people rage quite hard.

If anybody comes up with anything half decent, I'll do some free xrumer blasts for you.
 


45 bucks a day from Image traffic is pretty decent IMHO based on your Stat. I would not spend too much more time and work on my other sites.

If you Insist, I'd spend half an hour implementing the following.

1) I would try to improve the adsense CPM by using some high paying keywords related to celeb.. words like DVD, Posters, Movie Tickets will trigger some higher paying ads. Be wise in using those words. Don't overdo.

2) I would improve the CTR by adding an Image only Adsense Unit which is the same size as your image gallery thumbnail

3) I would do "Polls" and then ZIP submit.. Code for a simple poll I use:

Code: 
Lady Gaga will get Pregnant This Year!
<input type="radio" name="choices" value="choice">Yes</p>
<input type="radio" name="choices" value="choice">No</p>
<input type="button" value="Submit!" onClick="window.location='hxxp://affoffer.com' ">
Click Submit and receive a FREE AMazon Gift Card to buy lady GAGA DVD!</p>

4) Content locking is for douchebags. It also fucks Usability.
 
With the content locking, I was not planning on locking down the whole site but rather just a small section like VIP pictures or something like that.

I realize I'm already getting quite a decent CPM for this site, but I'd like to experiment a bit more and see how high I can get it. If I can push it a little then I could easily pump out a few of these sites per week and then hire somebody fulltime to run them - but at the moment I just want to get this first site locked down.
 
tencentpiece said:
So I've got a domain that is pulling around 10k/uniques (30k+ pageviews) a day. I currently get around a $1.5 CPM from the site, the break down is as follows:

Three ad units: $1CPM
In image advertising: $0.05

The ad units I'm currently using are a mixture of CPM and adsense, I can't get accepted into the top tier CPM networks because the site content is not original (it's pretty much just a celebrity gallery) and I'm currently using gumgum for my in image advertising.

Anybody have some thoughts on how I can monetize this a little better? I currently rank #2 behind wikipedia (I'm ahead of IMDB now) and I can probably beat the wikipedia entry with a little bit of extra work but I'd like to try and get this earning more than $45/day before I spend some money getting rid of wikipedia.

Stuff I've tried: Pushing the celebrities DVD's via email and facebook (no comissions, people don't want to buy DVD's when they are working out a chubby to a celebrity).

I wouldn't mind putting something behind a wall and then using CPAlead or something similar to try and make some extra $$. Only problem is? What to put behind the wall? There are no bikini photos of this celeb and she has never been naked either, there are a few of those shitty mormon porn/bubbling photos of her but I think that would make people rage quite hard.

If anybody comes up with anything half decent, I'll do some free xrumer blasts for you.
Click to expand...

What are your thoughts on gumgum?
 
at that CPM could you not just focus on getting more traffic? Some 'half nude' pics behind a content lock would probably work if you made a nice teaser to get them to the to the lock, but I would probably just try to drive more traffic or start a similar site based on another celeb.

my 2 cents.
 
maybe also try to rotate some popular mobile/freebie offer that appeals to the mass ?
have a look at your demographics and see which countries the users are coming from, and see if you could match them up with appropriate offers
 
PBaller said:
What are your thoughts on gumgum?
Click to expand...

Pretty happy with them, I accidently listed the CPM I am getting as $0.05, it's actually $0.5. Most of the ads are pretty deceptive and have stuff like "VIEW MORE PHOTOS" which obviously takes some traffic away.

I wouldn't use it on other sites but for low quality sites that are picture intensive it's perfect.

They have a few competitors, some of which I've tried and some of which I haven't tried. The other ones I have tried have failed miserably but it's probably time to get everything another chance and see whats the best.
 
tencentpiece said:
Pretty happy with them, I accidently listed the CPM I am getting as $0.05, it's actually $0.5. Most of the ads are pretty deceptive and have stuff like "VIEW MORE PHOTOS" which obviously takes some traffic away.

I wouldn't use it on other sites but for low quality sites that are picture intensive it's perfect.

They have a few competitors, some of which I've tried and some of which I haven't tried. The other ones I have tried have failed miserably but it's probably time to get everything another chance and see whats the best.
Click to expand...

$.50 CPM?? I have noticed many of their ads are "View More Photos" or other irrelevant ads. Have heard good things about Image Space Media as far as their ads and reporting tools go.
 
PBaller said:
$.50 CPM?? I have noticed many of their ads are "View More Photos" or other irrelevant ads. Have heard good things about Image Space Media as far as their ads and reporting tools go.
Click to expand...


I tried image space media and after 48 hours it was still only showing 4 active images it was working on (it should have been working on like 1,000+) and showed revenue of like $0.05, when the site had something like 10,000 impressions so I killed it.

I might send a rep over there an email and see if they can give me a guaranteed CPM and try again.
 
Actually I would go for this:
There are no bikini photos of this celeb and she has never been naked either, there are a few of those shitty mormon porn/bubbling photos of her but I think that would make people rage quite hard.
Click to expand...
Try to put up a mrskin banner and you will see, it can give you a nice + income
 
tencentpiece said:
I tried image space media and after 48 hours it was still only showing 4 active images it was working on (it should have been working on like 1,000+) and showed revenue of like $0.05, when the site had something like 10,000 impressions so I killed it.

I might send a rep over there an email and see if they can give me a guaranteed CPM and try again.
Click to expand...

4 images? Lots of times with ads like that they need to be scrolled over in order to be activated so could be something like that. I would definitely e-mail them.
 
Instrumentalist said:
Mind if I ask what CPM network you are using? I have a couple general/entertainment image galleries that I need to start monetizing a bit better, lol.
Click to expand...

adtegrity is the main one, took me like 6 months to get approved though.


I tried putting fake naked pictures of the person behind a paywall and didn't have much luck (that page was getting about 3,000 hits a day and only one or two verisons. So I switched back to having no wall and end up making more money this way).

I'm scaling this site into other niches at the moment and it's working quite well. But if anybody has any other ideas/CPM networks to try let me know - I'd love to get a higher CPM (currently sitting at around $0.3 per ad unit).
 
yea thanks for telling me about GumGum :)

My account balance is up to $22 and making around $1.00-$2.00/day with them now!
best hit them up to collect that 20% fat referrer commission lol

<3

1Lsj-screen-shot-2011-02-08-at-9.11.00-pm.png
 
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