Monetization Question

First use these to find your target demo ...
- analytics
- quantcast
- fb page (will give you percentage breakdowns for gender, location, age, etc)
- youtube channel with history vids or something
- feedback page on your blog or simple poll in sidebar

Then after you know who your audience is, monetize it based on that demo. Some random ideas ...
- "buy [item related to ancient history] on ebay" ... I'd be more descriptive but I didn't really pay attention in history so I can't think of any interesting historical items. even if they don't buy that specific item (or if ebay doesn't have it), your cookie is now on their comp
- textbooks if your audience is mainly college students ... or if this is the case, think of non-history products that college students like ... first things that come to mind are girls/parties/gaming etc
- books
- trips to places that you talk about in your articles
- not adsense because 18k visitors would barely make anything. putting your own aff links on there would be a lot better
- make an iphone app covering some of your articles' topics in more detail etc, sell it for $1 and use your site for the initial traffic

But again you need to figure out your demo before you can monetize it.
 


You may think about some premium content on your website where people can subscribe for a small amount of money. In return they get extra content not visible to other visitors. If everything fails you may try ask for donations saying you don't want to charge for content but eventually you will close the site because of lack of funds :)
 
What's your domain? This isn't a ton of traffic and it's not a money site (yet) so I wouldn't be too worried about someone "jackin your stuff" (lol). Honestly, content locking for premium content and adsense are probably your best bets since this sounds like an informational site. Don't just put adsense up and expect it to earn... learn what you're doing first. Also try out some other ad networks that run PPV, etc...
 
cheshire said:
ebay?
Click to expand...

+1

there's tons of antiquity products for sale on ebay and if you have a site about it, people would be interested in owning a part of what they are reading about. Could also intro archaeology tours and get a cut from that. Tons of possibilities, you just gotta know your audience and target around that
 
Thanks for the comments so far, I setup Facebook, going to get a bunch of friends to like the page, and I've added to the site.

I'm going to mention the site, like Glasshole said, it's not a moneymaker, plus it's gotten to the point it is at now, by having unique high quality content posted regularly for 3 or 4 years now, so it's not too difficult to build up traffic on many topics that are more profitable that way.

The site is ancientstandard dot com, I've had adsense back up on the site, placement was in the template, so it was not always ideal, I turned it off again, it was getting maybe 1 click per 700 impressions, so I'm thinking it's a waste of space right now.

I added a bunch of amazon links to pages that got more traffic, and they seem to be getting enough click throughs to warrant seeing how the conversion works out there. Does anyone know of wordpress plugins that will automatically post a product related to the content of the page? I can go through each page and insert amazon links manually if I need to, but I'd much rather spend the time other ways.

My next plan is to try out Ebay / maybe some travel offers as that sounds like something that might work, I'm going to start looking at the demographics as well.

Any ideas / comments people have on placement etc. would be extremely welcome.
 
You could replace the picture at the top with an ad banner and/or put them between the posts. There's a Wordpress plugin that inserts ads between each post (or whatever interval you specify) but I forgot the name.

I don't like the huge "Ads" link at the top, it makes the site look spammier than it is. Has that always been there?
 
Yes it has, it was part of the original design to link to information about advertising on the site, but it could easily be removed, as it's not really been any help.

Edit: and it's gone.

Re: putting banners in, could easily get that done too, only problem is, I haven't had any luck selling banner ad space. Unless you are thinking of the space being used for other stuff.

Thanks,
Dave
 
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DaveLL said:
Yes it has, it was part of the original design to link to information about advertising on the site, but it could easily be removed, as it's not really been any help.

Edit: and it's gone.

Re: putting banners in, could easily get that done too, only problem is, I haven't had any luck selling banner ad space. Unless you are thinking of the space being used for other stuff.

Thanks,
Dave
Click to expand...

I meant banners for your own affiliate links.
 
@Dave: CafePress/Zazzle

There is a ton of media relevant to your topic that is public domain -- photographs, paintings, etc. Slap them on coffee cups and put it on the site. My kid and I finance a model railroad habit with public domain pictures of old steam engines on tee shirts, coffee cups and prints, promoted on a general interest to the hobby site that I built last year.

Mind you, CP and Zazzle are shit commissions and have a ton of shit restrictions -- but on the other hand, you have the ability to offer something that is not seen anywhere else online, and the site's domain is so nicely memorable/brandable that you could build a name for the site as a source of cool archaeology-themed coffee cups as easily as you could for the content itself (which, btw, is pretty good from my brief scan of it.)


Frank
 
Sounds like you definitely have a potential goldmine on your hands. Definitely not mainstream, and I'm sure your demographic fits into a very targeted niche. Good luck!
 
If you want to test out book offers I have a ton of them. The founders are old time direct marketers that focused on continuity book clubs. So we have a handful of exclusive continuity book club offers you might want to check out. Let me know if you are interested. Send me a PM.
 
mileytipton said:
hi,
May be you feel my answer is little diplomatic. This is how I feel about it.
I mean for a site output is important in the form of money or profit or whatever you call it. On the other hand traffic and views are also important for your site, because it affect your site ranking on search engines.
Click to expand...

ban :boid:
 
start a membership site and charge a monthly fee to access information that you can get anywhere else about 'ancient stuff'....assuming you can dig up some decent stuff...

or....what about Affiliates - Ancestry.com just checked, they pay 60% of sales....that might fit well...
 
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