I need ways to monetize my site.

Hi,

I have a vacation rentals site http://www.vacationcentric.com with 170 vacation rentals listings and 215 members, which I have attracted in the 4 months. Out of the 170 properties, I only have 1 paying member though.

My only other source of income is a banner and 4 text link ads going at monthly rates and they cover my expenses. (Thanks to DP)

This leaves me making only about $20/month.

What are some other ways I can make money on my site? I know I have a good amount of members and listings for only 4 months online but I am not making any money...

Should I spend big bucks and sign up with an affiliate network as a merchant to get paying members? Please help. Thanks

BTW, I'm 14 so this is my first major site and I am new to a lot of this.

 

Google Adsense is by far the largest monetization system on the internet. Being only 14, I'd recommend signing up under your parents name (with their permission, of course). If you have steady traffic I'd imagine you'd do pretty well with this website. Alternately, you could work on traffic. The more visitors you have, the more money you make through advertising (adjust prices accordingly). Affiliate marketing could work, but since I'm not an expert I'll leave that to others.

 

Y'know, I just wanted to say -- you doing very well for your age, running your own site at 14 and already learning the ropes of webmastering. You come off as pretty mature with your posts, would've never guessed you were 14. Keep it up.

Yeah, get your parents to sign up for Adsense on your behalf...and have them get you set up on Commission Junction, too. On CJ, do a search for vacation/travel related affiliates that you could offer to your members.

 

how your traffic? you can try out CJ for some vacation rental or cruise related affiliated programs that pays good

 

You could consider Project Wonderful (www.projectwonderful.com). I'd probably sign up and see what sort of response you get from advertisers in a week. You might find it suits you, or it might now.

Otherwise adsense will probably do quite well with your traffic, and should come up with a lot of relevant adverts.

 

Thanks Ikaruga, hopefully I can aspire to be like some of the very successful webmasters here someday.


Thank you everyone else for your suggestions. I trying some of them out now.

 

I recommend AdSense and SearchFeed bot great sites with XML feeds of keyword-specific ads!

 

Adsense is.....

No good anymore, they just smartprice everyone who ever does well on there.