Hey guys, This is my first post on digitalpoint. I have been following many of the debates in here with interest, and am looking forward to now being an active member. So on to the topic: I own a website entirely targeted for the Indian market which I launched a couple of years ago, and last year started to actively promote it. It fills out a very narrow niche (it is a free mobile service), and have picked up quite well. We now have a user group well in excess of 25,000 registered users (to whom we are allowed to send emails and SMS), along with an additional 7,000 or so people who are not registered but have signed up for an SMS alert service. Monthly unique visits to the site average at around 7,500 with approximately 80 new users a day. My problem is this: The service we provide can't be monetized, and although I have tried quite a few different ways of optimizing with Adsense, it isn't exactly a cash cow. Recently the service has been down a couple of times, and we are facing either re-engineering the site or doing/launching something different. What would you do with this kind of user group. Our users are young, tech-savvy and highly interested in mobile services. I would love to provide some kind of service that can either be monetized or alternatively use ads/affiliate marketing as a revenue stream. Any (Indian) website owners or entrepreneurs out there with suggestions as to how I could make this profitable? Either by relaunching the site or creating something completely now. I guess essentially I am asking how could I put all those registered users to better use.. Looking forward to hear your ideas! BTW I have chosen not to enclose the link to my site - I may put it up at a later stage.
Get ads my offline companies. Tell them the real stats of your website. Tell these companies what they could benefit if they advertise in your site. Write them letters, serious-looking letters, not emails.
Thanks for your reply. Do you have any real-life experience with following this tactic - and how to price it for the Indian market?
First of all, how many of those users are return visitors? I think you might need to consider an email campaign for visitor retention. That is a great user base to work with.
Yeah, I've been thinking about that as well. Can you recommend a good (open-source, preferably) system for managing email campaigns (tracking sent emails, setting up HTML mails etc.)?
There aren't any free services to my knowledge...look into Aweber, Mail Chimp or GetResponse...all have different pricing...good luck!!
you could find an affiliate product related to your website or service and promote it on your website you already have a good amount of traffic so you would probably do well as long as it is related.
sell advertisement on your SMS service, there is a lot of money in that. Think of people who would like to advertise with your SMS database. sell this information to some marketing firm search online you would find many.
Ok, so thanks for your help so far - I'll give you the URL here, maybe you can come up with some ideas when you see it: It's mms (dash) club (dotcom)
Then try these.just contact your local advertisers related to your niche and may be mobile store owners and show your traffic proof.Another way is affiliate programs.do you know "mobile spy".it is good conversion program.what is ur page rank?just sell links.
Find some people who want to promote their products. People are charging heavily for these type of services and that too for sms...
You have to option here, first is:- you can give advertisement of companies but you have to go and talk with them but tell them profits only. second you can sell your product through attractive offer through mails. now depend you what do you choose.
You've got quite a low traffic to start monetizing your website with Ad Networks such as Adsense (you can roughly make $100 for every 100,000 impressions which isn't the way to go) Try contacting potential partners to sell private ads, that should work a lot better for you mate. Al.
Don't put up ads. A better way is to monetize it using paid products. Your demography is young, tech-savvy, etc. So, sell them packages. Pick up 1000 open source mobile games from the net, package them and sell it for Rs 150. Pick up premimum ring tones, unlock code, ebooks on secret nokia tricks, etc. and try selling stuff. If you aren't convinced about selling just put up a dummy banner advertsing a non-existing product and see how many people are interested. There is a ton of opportunity here, dont waste it by putting up ads.