I have an anime site, it's not like your average download or streaming site, so it's a bit niche in what people are looking for in a site. It's about anime and manga. Most clicks with Google Adsense aren't really getting me much. Page rank 3, 3,400 montly visits, and 11,000 page views. The site is animegerad.com How can it get money to help pay for the costs? And how are other anime sites getting so much traffic?
Well I also run a website that isn't really your typical download/streaming anime website. I personally use affiliate programs with Rightstuf, AnimeNation, and Amazon as my way of making money. I haven't really done any banner advertising or used Google Adsense at all (Adsense isn't really go for anime sites... from what I've heard anyway). As you may expect, most anime fans nowadays just download the shows they want to see and don't actually purchase them, which makes this a slightly difficult route to go. My site gets decent traffic (about 3500 uniques a day with 18000 pageviews), and a built in base of people who read the reviews and are interested in actually purchasing the products. So I typically get around 20,000 - 25,000 affiliate link clicks per month. It just depends on the type of people your site attracts, and the established base of visitors. Though I would imagine it helps to have a site people are coming to in search of titles, and not just in a general anime sense. As for traffic, my site doesn't get a ton. It just has some very good rankings for a number of reviews and for certain key words/phrases. You're probably not going to be able to achieve the level of traffic some of these sites do if you don't go the illegal route. Being able to watch episodes for free is quite the draw for people. As always though, I would say the best way is to have quality content that people are interesting in reading, checking out, etc., as buying up ad spots and text links can be rather expensive and not really get you too much for your money. Hope any of that helps.
Anime and gaming is a niche where large forums are created so I think joining other gaming forums is the best way..
Are you concerned with traffic increasment. How old is your site? I think you have quite a lot of traffic per month. Now you have to monetize this traffic. Sell links on your site!
Nosferatugatsu, your reply was quite helpful. How much would sitewide links go for? And the site is nearly a year old. I have quite a lot of posts at several anime forums.