Ideas to make established online sports game profitable?

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znine

znine

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Jun 27, 2006
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Minneapolis, MN
Hi,

A family member of mine runs a unique online sports game. Here's some statistics.

Monthly Statistics for May 2006
Total Hits 5095894
Total Files 1565150
Total Pages 64757
Total Visits 17875
Total KBytes 57493325
Total Unique Sites 7696
Total Unique URLs 424
Total Unique Referrers 367
Total Unique User Agents 588

Alexa rating is roughly 73.5k

Stats fluctuate a bit depending on the number of sports currently active.

The site started in 2002, and currently has 6k members. About 10% of those are active however. Profits have been virtually nonexistent. In the past AdSense was used without much success and stopped when the site was banned for unknown reasons. Currently there's a "mall" area where users can purchase items from some popular sites but this is rarely used by members.

With the amount of time, energy, and money put into this site, there's a strong dedication to make it profitable. What do you think could be done?

Thanks
 
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-Put up ads
-Sell banner space
-Sell related items / use afflilate links to related items.
 
I think some new feature should be added to the site, i.e. an excuse to email all the members. This could hopefully get some of the older members to come back. To make it profitable you could try some other advertising networks, you could also try things like CJ.com for sports products.
 
When approaching potential sponsors and advertisers the response has generally been that the site is too small and too low traffic if there's a response at all.
 
Perhaps try integrating the products for sale more into the site instead of cornering them off into their own "mall" section. You could try YPN instead of Adsense as well if you have mostly US traffic.
 
Before spending a lot of time monetizing it I think you gotta sit down and think about why only 10% of the membership is active. Then think of ways to retain their interest. After you can do that, focus on getting more traffic, getting the existing dead readers to come alive and be more active, and only after that will you really be able to monetize it
 
Payton said:
Before spending a lot of time monetizing it I think you gotta sit down and think about why only 10% of the membership is active. Then think of ways to retain their interest. After you can do that, focus on getting more traffic, getting the existing dead readers to come alive and be more active, and only after that will you really be able to monetize it
Click to expand...
This is a good point, as was the idea to email all the members. Do a redesign or a big content surge or perhaps even a contest to get people interested in the site again.

Then start trying to make money off those returning members.
 
Thanks guys.

A redesign and some new features have been in the works for a while now, but it's hard to support the costs required especially with the cost of running the site as is. But I suppose that needs to be done to get this to work.
 
You can also try doing something where as they gain points they can then buy real products (sports jersesys, hats, etc.) with the points. That should get some repeate visitors.

Then add a refer a friend option where the referrer gets x% of their friends points, which should boost your user base a bit.
 
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