So I have plenty of money-making sites but I feel the need to give back... so I've got a cool little site that I basically set up as a service, it has some ads on there, the hope is to cover hosting costs... but i am looking for some suggestions on good ways to market a site that isn't designed to make money? the site i'm referring to is http://www.howyoucanvolunteer.org it still has a long way to go but i'm working my tail off trying to write and purchase content to go on there.. Any help and suggetsions would be greatly appreciated!
A few methods that come off the top of my head are: 1- Make use of Press Releases. Like for anything else it will need to be well written, but unlike for profits they have the advantage of being a "feel good story" that people love (even if they don't actually participate). In my opinion you should really place a lot of effort here for a couple of reasons. The first being of course the chance of your "feel good story" appearing in a major publication, on a major website, and/or radio, television, or online streaming video/audio interview opportunities. And the second the possibility of catching the attention of a celebrity in the process that might be interested in being a "headliner" for your efforts. 2- Hold a "How You Can Volunteer Event." Online ideas could be a blogging marathon, or host an auction with proceeds going to...(see BiddingForGood.com). 3- Put a lot of time into designing a logo and web site button (badges). You want yours visually pleasing and very unique. The focus on this needs to be "when people see it they associate it with your company." I.E. When you see a pink ribbon what comes to mind? Then make sure you are "selling" your visitors on the idea of placing a badge on their web site. I also noticed you don't have anything in your forum sig about it. Wouldn't hurt to add it there as well. Edit: I just noticed your donation button is way at the bottom of the page on your site. Why not move it up into the first scroll. Maybe above or below your search function on the right of the page? Good Luck!
In your case, since you are dealing with volunteering, it's pretty easy. Easy because other well established volunteer organisations or organisations who use volunteers will gladly promote your site if you are doing something valuable to help out. So, work out what volunteers want and what organisations who take on volunteers want and give it to them. Firstly, you need to enable volunter organisations to promote their opportunities so install a job listings type program for volunteers. Make it free for both advertisers (non-profits) and volunteers to use. When choosing the job listings program, look at existing websites that do it in one region or country or category and see if you can import a feed from their database regularly. Do a few deals like that and you could have a few million listings fairly quickly. SEO your site well, especially for volunteer job types, like [children's hospital volunteer] for example. Thats what people search for, not an organisations name. Organisations are looking for more ways to recognise and reward volunteers for their efforts. So when you are ready to promote your site to the volunteering organisations, why not do it with an awards program? Get organisations to nominate one or more of their volunteers for special recognition, perhaps in different categories, like the children's hospital category or on a regional basis or age bracket basis. As with any website, solve a problem, make people's lives easier, find out what people want and give it to them... and SEO for the right keywords like homeless volunteer (that's my organisation's site). An consider, before you get in contact with non-profit organisations exactly what you site is. It is a privately owned website, funded by your business, to serve and support volunteers and volunteering. If you honestly don't want to profit from it, pay the hosting yourself (geez not like that's expensive). That means get rid of the ads entirely. At the moment the site is designed to make a profit for you. If you do want to make a profit from it, that's ok too, just don't bullshit. Cut the ads for now and when it is successful and known and getting significant traffic, solve another problem at a price, like add into the volunteer job listings paid job listings with non-profits. I promise you this, the non-profit sector is aproached by people wanting to make a buck every other phone call, we can smell bullshit from a thousand miles upwind. So be clear about what you really are or aren't doing. We can also spot good oportunities that are cost effective from the same distance, so why not offer some and make money at the same time. No problem there. I'm not saying you aren't genuine, but as a member of your target market, the last thing I would expect to see is google ads and a space for sponsored links.
First thing I want to say that it's not a non-profit site, because you put google adwords there. You can't even submit your website to yahoo as non-commercial websites for free.
Thank you for your input, It has really helped me to form a better plan of where I can take the site and what I can do with it. I have already started dfrafting a couple letters/emails that I'm giong to send to the volunteer organizations that I know of. And I'm having one of my outsourced teams seek out organiations to add to my directory. Thank you also to the guy who pointed out that I won't be able to get non-profit status with the ads. I'm new to the whole ' not in it to make money' thing on the web. All of my current sites are monetized. So this will certainly be a learning experience for me. I do have several ideas that i'm going to try to implement, so only time will tell how i'm going to do this!