I have a humor site that draws the same type of users as icanhazcheezeburger.com The humor is clean, the concept is very quirky and appeals to the general public. In other words, it's not a niche. I'm holding off on massive promotions (stumbleupon, etc.) until I find the right income generator. Based purely on word of mouth, the site is at 4500 uniques a day and adding roughly 650 new visitors a day. Cheezeburger is using AdSense, which is fine. I've used it successfully in the past. But I'm thinking this may be very fertile ground for an affiliate offer. I'm hesitant to use CPA, because I've found endusers to have little patience for filling out forms. However, there are a couple of sweet free electronic offers out there that might work. The offer needs to appeal to a wide audience. Anyone have any success with PPC campaigns other than AdSense? Or any other ideas? -RR EDITED TO ADD: I've been doing this long enough to see real traffic potential here. At the current growth rate, we could be at 50K uniques or more per day within a few months. So it's OK to assume it will be pushing a large volume of traffic.
With that type of traffic you can offer an advertise page which you can set up banners around your site and charge monthly
You need to go to Alexa.com and figure out the demographics of your site. Find offers that target that demographic. I know that sounds simple/stupid, but you might be suprised to find out that your demographic is 60 year old men who are visiting your site from work. Then viagra would be a good choice, etc...
Try Mobile Offers. They convert like crazy and appeal to a good cross section of the community. Have lots of networks I can refer you to if you want the best ones for these types of offers. Other than that, PPC is probably not the best way to go. You could try Adbrite if you are really brave and want to experiment but until I see your site its difficult to assess if this would be appropriate.
Are you also building a list with that kind of traffic? You can perhaps send emails out to that list (with humor) and include some ads, or sell the ad space in the emails itself, or even PPC ads or ads to affiliate products. You can also create complimentary products which you can also sell to the list. Out of my own experience, your own products generates the most income, but is a little more work. Immediate wins would be the advert route.
I'm tracking, thanks for the answers, all. Our demographic is all over the map. I have several niche sites that earn well, and the metrics are predictable. This site shows very broad demos, in all categories. So my offer should be broad as well. (factchecker, totally concur with your suggestion.) Mobile is intriguing, and I'm with Azoogle. I'll have to bounce over and see what they offer. I also like the banner ads idea and may farm that out once we have proven heavy traffic. Regarding membership/lists. The site doesn't really lend itself to capturing emails. Visitors pop on for a quick laugh and then bail. Some will stay and view previous funny content. Again, icanhascheezeburger is a good parallel example. And regarding 'own products.' I agree, it's a great business model, one that I actually use very successfully in my off-line business. (I'm a best-selling author at a major NYC publisher.) But this demo is not going to buy get-rich programs or other Clickbank-type stuff. I'll have a look mobile other 'broad' CPA offers. And maybe find a way to run Google or Yahoo banners of upcoming comedy movies. That makes a lot of sense. The problem with Google is the site itself. Very limited on keywords, so the ad content would be hit/miss. Unless G triggers ads based on meta tags? Thanks again, all.
I don't agree with you in that you can't build a list. Even the site (icanhascheezeburger) that you say is a parallel example of your site is building a list. Have a look again at that site and you will see that it has a membership area. That is exactly a list building strategy. Secondly I have joined myself a site which would alert me and send me the latest jokes by email. Lots of people join that way because it is less effort to open your email to find the latest jokes in there, than trying to remember the website name and go there everyday. That is perhaps why some people only stop by once on your site and move on forgetting to return. Personally I think you are loosing out on additional opportunity here. I however agree with you that google ads will be difficult considering the content. But there really are only 3 broad markets out there you may need to focus on. These are the 3 biggest: Money Making, Health and Fitness (weightloss specific), Relationships like dating. Focusing on those should be applicable to the most people who visits your site. Everyone lives jokes, as most people would have the above issues... (yes not all, but most).
I would either go for ringtone cpa's or similar or better yet, get websites/companies to buy advertising on your site directly. Put up banners showing what's available and write a page about your stats, visitors etc.