Who was your first?

Hey guys! There are many experienced webmasters and traffic owners on this forum.

Do you remember what your first traffic source looked like and how you monetized it?

 

In 1999/2000 or so, I sponsored an ad in the "Internet Tourbus" newsletter which was published by two techies and offered links to new websites that they would discover each week. Back then, AltaVista was the primary search engine and it was not so good, so finding cool websites was not so easy and they had a very popular newsletter. Unfortunately, I did not have a monetary angle (very few websites had one back then) and it was an experiment on my part about "eyeballs" which everyone was trying to get in the hope that would eventually turn into money somehow. It worked and I got "a lot" of traffic (hundreds of visitors, I believe) for a hobby website.

 

Craigslist. From 2005 to about 2010. Then they started ghosting (like for real) anything affiliate marketing related. AdSense.

 

Interestingly... Yahoo and Google... MS killed yahoo now.

 

Wow! That was so long ago! And what was your first monetization source?

Well, I hope you've found a way to monetize your website now! What networks do you use now?

 

It came much later when I launched an IT supplies ecommerce site in 2004. AdWords was one of my first advertising efforts and you could set your click price range from $.05 - $.35 and get tons of leads. Occasionally, I would try raising it to $.75 per click but it really was not necessary to go that high.

 

I was promoting a website for local rap artists when I was about 12, so this was around 2002. My main traffic source was forums - hip hop forums. Before social media became popular, forums and chatrooms (AOL days) were the best ways for me to promote music. Then came SoundClick.. and then MySpace, where I was able to generate tens of thousands of views per month relatively easily.

My first monetized (affiliate links and Adsense) website was a blog and the traffic source was Google. This was 2008-2009, and I did really well, just blogging about things I liked. Hm.. if I could just go back in time and continue those blogs and buy/hold a bunch of BTC I would be set for life.

 

My first traffic source was Google and Google Adsense was my first monetization method.

 

From 1996 to 2004 my traffic was mainly coming from Internet Relay Chat (IRC) servers as I was server admin, server operator, owner of many IRC networks (like 28), and was also administrating many more IRC networks or just most influenced channels on some big networks (Some Serbian some International). As I was doing that I was also having bots running my ads on all those networks and channels bringing people offers on my websites and making many deals with other influencing people of that time in the IRC world.
But I don't count that as the start of my online business carrier, I count my start as 2004. All that was before 2004 was just playing around and having fun as I was young and didn't do any of that primarily for making money even though I was making quite a nice amounts back in those days.

 

Oh well… we all wish we could go back in time and buy some BTC
BTW you can do the same now. I mean do what you love and monetize your websites/traffic with PropellerAds

 

What kind of website did you monetize? And what year was it?

 

What a story! And what happened after 2004?

 

Through social media

 

Indeed I remember, I used a blog and this was how I got it monetized
1.
1. Focus
Blogs need focus. You need to have a specific industry, niche or topic that you write about repeatedly. Try not to go all over the map. You'll find that veering off on tangents will make you lose your core audience. People want to visit a blog -- and keep revisiting it -- because it fills a need or a void. That happens by staying focused and on-topic.

2. Quality
People think that blogging is about pushing out an enormous amount of content. But it doesn't work if it's thin content. Your content needs to be quality content. It needs to be thorough, well-written and cite its sources. If a study is referenced, it needs to be linked to. Don't skimp on quality if you're serious about monetizing your blog.

3. Value
Your blog needs to deliver value. What can you teach other people about? What are you an expert at? Take the time to deliver value. Create thorough tutorials and informative posts that interweave things like videos and other media to truly help people understand or figure something out. Value is a precursor to income in any industry, but especially in blogging.
Check out more right here, it could help you get started htt ps: //b it. ly/ mon ye-digitalp oint (reconnect the spaces and interchange e and y)

 

Mine was Facebook Ads. And even now I am using it quite successfully!

 

I began with Google

 

I remember in 2013 I sold mouse rugs

 

My first traffic source was Overture - the old major pay per click search engine before Google Adwords was hot. I promoted a book about baby sleep tips and made my first sale driving direct traffic to my sales page.

 

I started with Overture, About Us, and Alta Vista. I was then in charge of about 15 online gambling websites and a few hotels.