I have an image hosting website. I offer free image hosting of no charge. I get around 2000 uniques and sometimes more when I get linked to a particular image. The traffic mostly comes from social networking sites like digg, reddit, etc. Thats all fine but I need some tips for monetizing my traffice and to earn revenue from them. Currently I have adbrite but they dont pay much. Is there anyway to earn from more traffic? eCPM from my site is not much and I rarely get clicks on my ads. Is there any other way to generate revenue rather than eCPM and CPC ads?
If you can find a CPM site that will accept you then that would probably be your best bet. I'm with adsdaq but they won't accept media sites (videos, pictures, wallpapers etc.) so you'll have to scout around and see. You could start offering a premium service for a cheap price with many extra gains. This might be a good way get some money out of the site. You could also try pop-unders... since people are going to look at the image anyway once they are there... give them a pop-under and maybe they won't notice. Most pay quite well from what I hear.
Here's what i recommend: Use Kontera to get contextual links in any text surrounding the images. Use Adsense in-between the images (remember that you can put 3 Ad units, 3 link units, a search unit, and a placement unit all on the same page. Placed properly you can get a VERY high CTR. Sign up as an Ebay partner and place tasteful banners. Sign up as an Amazon affiliate and place tasteful banners. Sign up with Bidvertiser and place ads. Sign up with CJ, Pepperjam, TTZ, Linkshare, and any other affiliate networks and place CPM ads on the page. Place full-page gateway ads between the main page and the images. That's what I would do, and it's all part what is bringing me a very attractive income on a couple of key sites. One part, which I have not personally done, but which I could recommend is to limit the hosting space for free accounts, but offer a premium service with much larger space for a fee.
I'd recommend doing private advertising. People selling scripts (like me) would perhaps be interested interested depending on how targeted your traffic is and such.