First post, hope this one will be met positively! The Antiriddle is an online riddle located at http://www.antiriddle.com It purports to be the hardest online riddle and has attracted quite a user base. Open since only early September it has broken the top 100,000 Alexa rankings and is currently hovering around 80,000. We consistently receive upwards of 500 unique and 100 returning visitors per day. Each user brings an average of 5+ page views. We recently suffered a setback due to my stupidity when I signed up for deltis.com, thinking the offer was too good to miss. Racked up $400 and supposed to get a check sometime in mid-November. Probably not going to happen. We currently rely solely on revenue from Adsense and Google Search and make around $1 per day. This number has fluctuated up to $25 when it made the front page of digg.com. I have two questions: 1) Is it possible to make more per day off of this, what I would deem considerable, user base? 2) What are my alternatives in terms of banners? (please, no pop-ups) Thank you very much! Any criticism or comments are welcome.
I didn't poke around too much on the site, but if it's supposed to be particularly difficult, what about offering a prize if they complete it? Not only might more people be interested, but others might stay on the site longer trying to solve it, which could up ad clicks too.
That's an idea we've already given much thought to. The main benefit we see from that is that we might increase traffic. On the other hand, it might also destroy the sense of working together to accomplish something. The problem that we're experiencing though isn't a shortage of traffic, but rather how to make money off of the traffic we are currently receiving. Any ideas?
Maybe try some CPA offers to do with contests and giveaways. Seems your traffic would be interested in such a thing
Get rid of the adsense and go for a commission junction offer. You can get $6.00 per lead there. I'm marketing to the Myspace crowd and when I switched to ringtones and music from CJ on one of my sites, my profits went from $1.00 a day to $10.00
You would register at www.cj.com. Then you can find different affiliate programs that you think might work well for your site, and you apply for them on the program's page. If your site is approved for the program, you can browse the selection of affiliate links, banners, etc., and then add the code to your site just like you would with Adsense. If you find companies that pay per lead, and fit your target audience, I've heard it can work out well. I haven't been terribly lucky with affiliates personally though.
Thanks for the advice. I registered and applied to 5 different programs but have not received answers from any of them yet. Any other advice?
I would go with an Adsense Adlinks bar accross the top of the page or maybe below the links. I remember looking at some research about how your eyes analyze the page and those ads at the bottom will get an appalling click through rate. Also, try to make the ads in contrasting colors to the site layout and change them occasionally. I know people with riddles websites and they generally generate very little ad revenue. I certainly wouldent think commission junction would work well because its hard to define your audience.