I currently run a simple music blog which releases news updates that cater to a very specific audience. The traffic can range anywhere from 1500-3500 on any given day depending on whats happening in the music industry. It has been up for over a year and Ive tried all of the click based advertising services (adsense etc.) and have determined that my visitors are a little to savvy to click on them. I never advertised my site to just get hit's, the majority of people that come on the site are loyal readers who visit every day, making this a very specific niche for an potential advertiser to target. I have come to the conclusion that the best way to monetize my site would be to go private and have a company sponsorship or an advertiser that is purely interested in just having their ad viewed when a user logs on, and aware that it isnt necessarily going to be clicked on. Sort of like a seeing a billboard on the road. Is this sort of thing realistic? Any other ideas of what I could be doing? Or how to approach a company asking if their interested? The site's demographic is probably 15-30 year old techie, music lovers, so ideally maybe a online store that sold band tshirts, or musical instruments? Also, I would say, due to the simple nature of my site that i have a large amount of RSS only readers, along with a considerable amount of twitter followers linked to my RSS feed. Any way I could use that to my advantage? Thanks
Telling us about the site is one thing, but without actually seeing it, and knowing specifically what demographic and music niche is services, any commendations would be a generalized guess. I have a music site myself and monetizing it has been a challenge since music ads pay crap. CPM advertising is an option, but probably based on the traffic that you have stated, not enough to buy a car with. Care to share the site, or is it a guarded secret ?