Please give me your suggestions on this. I have this one site that is geared toward kids and teenagers. I only have paypopup and adbrite on this site, and they were put on less seen spots because visitors were complaining abt ads. I didn't mind at first, and i got around $2/day from these ads. OK, pretty fair, the server just costs $30/year anyway. BUT! But now the site is getting more and more viral visitors more than i can handle and it caused the site to use lots of bandwidth and server resources and i had to upgrade to a VPS!! This really sucks for me because the cost of vps is much more expensive than shared server. I am now paying $40/month for the vps (i have my other sites on this server as well). Now i am really torn, in between to sell this site OR NOT TO SELL. This is more like a hobby site and i have become attached to it. But at the same time, i don't think a hobby site should cost me more than i am making with it! Donation is out of the question because most of these kids don't even know what paypal is! Charging them to access content is also out of question, for the same reason! WHAT DO YOU GUYS THINK? Please lend me your suggestions on how to go about this! Should i sell the site and let someone else do justice for the site, or should i keep it and do something (suggestion pls?)?
Your story does not quite ad up. You are making only 2 bucks per day on the amount of visitors that your hosting couldn't handle? That's got to be a lot of visitors.
Around 1,600 to 2,200 visitors per day now. The site is on wordpress and it had cpu usage of up to 36% when it was on shared server, the site was suspended a few times by my old webhost because of this. The problem is, it got more and more visitors, it kills my server, and the ROI (Return on Investment) is low. The ads from adbrite and paypopup don't generate that much revenue because people don't click ads and the cpm for paypopup is about $1. I feel like it's not worth it to keep it. This is NOT one of those clickbank sites that make a sale with "large commission" every "few" visitors. This is one of those sites that offer "free" stuff with "a little bit of ads" plastered around it. So here it's like: "more visitors DOES NOT EQUAL TO more money" because you had to spend for (expensive) monthly server fees. That is why i'm asking for opinions and suggestions from those who could offer some. Sorry if i confused you.
If i were you,i gonna sell it coz the website is lossing money plus the earning is lower than expenditure. Or the second choice is use more ads at the site such as adsense and private ads.
Thanks for your suggestion. I've used adsense on this site before, and my whole account was smart-priced because of this one site. And what do you mean private ads? Did you mean selling ads "directly" without middle man? (btw, mentos do you have an account at sitepoint, i feel like i knew you somehow)
IF you could develop it even more, you could just keep it upand keep promoting it and updating content.
Thing is, i don't even need to update it, promote it, or develop it now and the visitors are flooding in more than i can handle. I don't want the site to be "big". I don't want recognition. I just want decent revenue from it. Problem came because the site is growing, it needs more funds, but the revenue stream isn't increasing along with it.
If the issue is that Wordpress is eating up your shared server, install the WP Super Cache plugin. That should easily take care of your CPU issue. If bandwidth is the problem. Try to optimize your theme or pick a theme that isn't as graphic/html heavy. Shouldn't be too hard to recompress the images in the layout to save some bandwidth and speed up loading times. Also, if you do decide to sell, shoot me a PM with the details.
I would try to monetize it more with more advertisements. At the end of the day though, its about making or losing money. I personally would not keep it unless it was either breaking even or making me money, even if it was a hobby site, unless of course you have a plan to generate more money in the near future.
You can ask for banner ads from few other relevant websites who have their business based on your theme !!! You can also enter into affiliate program
go on hostgator omfg....they have good hosting for 10$ per month....and it can handle 2000 visitors per day easily
If I were you I would put it up for sale and see what kind of money you get offered for it. Then decide if u want to keep it going or sell it
I must say that your problem stick me as quite odd. You have a website that you enjoy working with, and now that it goes well and starts making traffic you want to sell it? I would advice you to write a new post where you give us some information about your site, so we can help you make it profitable again
Kind of an odd problem... there are a million ways to get revenue from a site once you have traffic! Now that you have traffic start monetizing methodically and you will not only earn money but also piss off less kids!
It seems that you have not thought of it very well before starting it. Anyway, it all depends on you. If you really can't do anything about it, then it would be best to just give it up.
So many good suggestions here. I have considered about this wp super cache plugin thing before. Maybe i should re-consider that, since i heard it'd save cpu usage. By the way, bandwidth is NOT a problem anymore now, since i have moved to a vps with 300GB bandwidth/month. Back in my old shared server days, i tried gzip compression on all my sites to save bandwidth and it really did the trick for saving lots of bandwidth, BUT at the cost of cpu usage (really high bcos it needs to compress everything before sending data to users). And that was the reason my sites were suspended. I have stopped using gzip compression now on my vps server anyway, since i don't have problems with bandwidth anymore. BUT the problem with cpu usage persist even now. I'm seeing cpu usage of up to 70% and memory (RAM) of up to 50-60%, but memory is burstable. ^^Good suggestions though. Thanks. FYI, my old webhost is Hostgator's shared hosting. Problem is not the 2,000 visitors. Problem is wordpress has many flaws in caching and mysql connections (some caused by plugins, not core wpress). Wordpress is fine for low and middle traffics, but for high traffics, you can't possibly host on SHARED server anymore. Shared server just isn't suitable to supply the needs. I think shared server could still handle 2,000 daily alone, but i have FEW OTHER SITES on this server that are getting about the same kinds of traffics, but i'm not complaining about these other sites because all these other sites are generating the kind of revenue that i hoped for, unlike this one site in question. Yup, to the others who have been thinking that it's odd, yeah, i admit it, i have become friends with my visitors and i started to feel bad when they're complaining about ads. I tried to minimize the ads but they kept on complaining. I don't completely feel fine about this, i want to generate some revenue without disappointing them, and i think this is my biggest mistake. I know now why people are saying that you can't let too much emotions get in the way of business. Now that i've already giving in to my visitors' requests (minimize ads) once, i don't know how to refuse. I read one of Steve Pavlina's post in his blog last night and i think that is what's happening to me now because of my mistake, because i let the visitors "take control". So, a better insight to the problem i hope? Any further thoughts?
You should definitely install the WP Super Cache plugin if you have a popular wordpress site. It dramatically reduces the sever and database load. You can list your site for sale to see what kind of offers you get. In a business sense if you don't think you can make your site profitable then you might be better off selling it. However if you like the site and it is more of a hobby then business then that may be different.