Marketing issue. Help needed!

Hello everyone,

Looks like I need a marketing advice with my project.

Here is the situation – I run a real popular web instant messenger service.
I’m getting a good traffic and the number of users is growing up really nice (about 20-30% every month).

There are two problems with banner networks I experience:

1. Most of them prefer content based sites, so my messenger (chat) service part of the site is not allowed for most of them.
There is a content part on my site and there is no this issue – even Google is approved there.
But static content part gets 15-20% of whole traffic only, so it’s like having a Ferrari car and drives it on 25mph only…

2. Geographic location is the issue as well. I’ve been approved by several solid networks to run ads on messenger (chat) pages, but they are restricted for US/Canada and sometimes UK traffic. I do geographic filtering there and it let me utilize at least some of “chat” traffic, but it’s even not a half of it…

So, the problem is “I’m a little bit lost”. I’m not clear what best options to get better revenue are?

I see two options right now:
- Build a content part for my users (for example some community service like MSN Groups) and run ads there.
- Build a new project completely not related to current one and use current one to generate traffic for the new one.

The problem is that I feel much more comfortable to improve current instant messenger project and I know it’s real to make it more popular. But without a stable revenue model it’s impossible…

P.S. I'm open to discuss it out of the forum if somebody wants.

 

Do you have ads on your messenger service already?

 

Yes, I do. But I've explained that current ads utilyze US/Canada traffic only at messenger/chat part and google ones at static part (which is <20% of whole traffic)...

 

How about trying to promote some things through affiliate programs? Something that IM users could be interested in, e.g. mobile phone ringtones, games.

 

I would have to say yes to the content page for members kind of like this www.icq.com and load it up with tshirts, ring tone downloads, contests, free stuff, and maybe an arcade for games and make it so they are able to chat while playing in the arcade, sweet!