Hello all, I am new to the site in terms of posts but I have been a regular visitor and lurker for some time. Lots of good information here and tips. My question mainly has to do with my main website right now. It is a videogame website for a very popular videogame franchise. As far as fan sites for this franchise goes, my site is the second largest even though it's only about a month and a half old. The biggest fansite and thus my biggest competitor was founded back in 2004 so they have a very large head start on me. The site is a combination of forum, blog, reviews, tutorials and videos so to say the least it is quite all inclusive. Currently I get about 70 visitors a day and about 1000 pageviews a day earning me about 50 cents. Is this typical for a site with that kind of traffic? With the hosting being cheap 50 cents a day will pay for it but I want the site one day to bring in a decent income of at least 2-3 grand. What other ways of creating income from this site do you recommend, I don't want to have too many ads or spam my users with affiliate links since the purpose of the site is to further the enjoyment of the game for my users. Any suggestions? Some more info about the site: Currently we are waiting on the third release of the video game series and I expect a large influx of users once the game is released. The site's draw is the content it provides for the fans but since the third installment isn't out yet but will be soon the interest in the second installment has died.
I think the biggest concern at this point isn't so much creating the income but it's getting the traffic (IMO). One of the best ways to get more traffic is to get ranked higher in the search engines.... This will start with creating more links to your site.
True but the one thing that concerns me is how little organic traffic matters for my competitor. Over 75% of their traffic is direct traffic. My site ranks high(top 10) for several popular keywords for the video game but my traffic from search engines still comprises less than 20% of all my traffic. This is a very popular video game also, consistently ranked in the top 10 most active video games for the xbox 360. Are their other good methods to bring traffic besides search engines?
You can try Pay Per Click and that will sure bring you traffic but at what cost? Can you afford to lose 100s of dollars in the beginning on PPC or not? Sometimes, websites do not even have a good monetizing strategy and they start a PPC campaign. All the traffic they get is pretty much useless and will never make them any money. It would be the same if Twitter when it started was paying 1000s of dollars a day to bring people using PPC. They still have no monetizing model and if they did that it would be just absurd. They relied on word of mouth and other popular websites to spread the word about them.
There are plenty? If you are looking for paid methods to bring in traffic there is always google adwords or you can buy ads on other websites related to your niche. If you are looking for free methods for marketing, try hosting a contest, submitting videos with links to youtube, submitting articles and links to pages like digg, ezine, and stumble upon.
Will, do. Currently the bulk of my traffic is direct (word of mouth) and Yes I am looking for mainly free ways to bring traffic. Does article writing really work?
the average niche website will make little no money , but anyone can make a lot of money with a good plan and hardwork. First thing you need to do is not go for average aim high !
How do you know that only 75% of the traffic is direct? and 75% of what is also a good question. 750,000 of 1,000,000 is pretty good. Seriously though, you could go for a little more broad terms in hopes of getting related visitors to your site. Another great way to target people would be FB. You can actually target people who have said they are 'interested' in certain things. Put the video game as one of the keywords and you could have a little goldmine of traffic. Only problem is it can be a little expensive..... Also, I'm not really sure article marketing to bring traffic to your site is the best idea... I'd be thinking article marketing to get the backlinks. IMO.
How do you know that only 75% of the traffic is direct? and 75% of what is also a good question. 750,000 of 1,000,000 is pretty good. Seriously though, you could go for a little more broad terms in hopes of getting related visitors to your site. Another great way to target people would be FB. You can actually target people who have said they are 'interested' in certain things. Put the video game as one of the keywords and you could have a little goldmine of traffic. Only problem is it can be a little expensive..... Also, I'm not really sure article marketing to bring traffic to your site is the best idea... I'd be thinking article marketing to get the backlinks. IMO.
lol, I know because I'm friends with the person who owns the site. And it's more around 75% out of 5,000 visitors a day. Anyhow, thanks for everyone's responses I'll try some of these suggestions.
Wow..there is something amiss here. Are you paying someone to get you traffic? If so, I think they are ripping you off..70 visitors contributing 1000 pageviews is highly improbably..Websites are considered highly successful if they can manage around 5 pages per user! Anyway, assuming the stat to be true, then I think your traffic is highly engaged on to your content, but less on the ads. Remember social networks have a lot of pageviews but very little ad clicks..
It's correct, I'm not paying anyone for the traffic. All the people who visit my site are coming to it directly mainly from word of mouth spreading through the community. Google analytics says about 14.56 pageviews per user. My click through rate is about 1 click every 2 days or about 1 click every 140 visitors. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, all I know is that I need more traffic =p. NOTE: my 50 cents a day is mainly from pay per impression.
You are something wrong here. I wouldn't care if it was because the CPC was bad., but if you say 1 click for every 2000 pageviews (assuming only one ad per page), then the CTR is real bad.. I can take a look at your site and suggest something. PM me if you would like..Free advice
Will do, I would love for any input. Like I said, it's a fan site for a video game so that may be the reason for the low CTR
70 visitor per day cant actually make you good income. It will be better for you focusing on generate more traffic than earn money now. Once your UV increase, then sure you can simply make good money
Your site is just 1.5 months old and you got 70 visitors a day and its a good start for such a new site. Next thing is, do you get more repetitive visitors or new visitors?
is your competitor just monetizing their site with adsense and cpm banner runs? there has to be something better.
You should be able to do a lot better than 50cents per day, but I'm not too familiar with the video games niche. What type of programs are the authority sites in your niche promoting? Are there any CPA programs you can piggyback on? Or any residual income programs? The amount you can earn in a niche depends largely on the financial muscle of that niche, and the affiliate infrastructure. If both of these are poor, the sites within may struggle financially.
The problem with the video game industry are how low paying the ads are per click... just keep that in mind. If you want to bring in 2-3 grand a month, you are going to need some serious traffic. That being said, it's not impossible