Need help monetising site!

I have a site which is getting around 15 - 20k uniques hits a day.

This comes from a tagged link on stumblupon, social bookmarking sites and blogs.

The site is www.playubuntu.com

I need help turned that traffic into revenue.

I currently only get 3 - 4 cliks a day from my adds and it seems like a waste of money.

Does anyone have any ideas?

 

Use your site traffic to build a newsletter (give away something free to get people to join your newsletter) then figure out how to monetize your newsletter...

 

Figure out who is coming to your site and why they are coming. Then see what they are doing and proceed to dig deeper to figure out what their real interests are.

Are they students doing research for class? Are they 18-year-olds looking to play games? Did they come to the site because they are interested in the topic as a whole or did one specific item pull them in (and then lead them away)?

You can create a newsletter, but you'll still need to answer simple marketing questions. Otherwise all you're doing is transferring people.

The newsletter can help you filter though. But, a newsletter on what? If it's just on the site's topic, you've accomplished nothing. You'll potentially get signups and no one will do much of anything.

And here we are, full circle, back at some simple beginning marketing questions . . .

 

If it's stumbleupon and digg/social media be prepared and expect a very low conversion. This traffic is very well known as being blind to ads and any affiliate links. Like @marketjunction said, try to build a list and use it later to advertise whatever you have to. Catch them when they're not on the "scanning time"

 

Try selling something via affiliate links, find product related to your website which surfers may have an interest in, try clickbank marketplace to start. Some products will give you 75% of the total sales, so one purchase can generate $50,, so even one sale per month can make a difference.

 

My two cents to this thread: I suspect that the reason why your website receives mainly visits from StumbleUpon (and Digg?!) is because of the emphasis that you put on social bookmarks from those websites by placing large buttons for StumbleUpon and Digg, and small buttons for other social-bookmarking websites. Besides, StumbleUpon-users like the "Stumble This!" widget and Digg-users like the "Digg This!" widget on websites, something that you do not have. A major drawback of StumbleUpon and Digg is that their users are very savvy and tend to be (totally) not interested in advertisements, as mentioned previously. Another reason may be that the submission strings in the javascript of all your social-bookmarking buttons is wrong. Each of the social-bookmarking websites uses a different string that contains the URL and the title of the website to submit. Look at the strings in the social-bookmarking bar on SEO Digger; they are all slightly different, but they all contain the string url=http://seodigger.com. I suggest you to modify the strings in the javascript of that German social bookmark script to include the URL and the proper title of your website. It would look something like this:

url=http://www.playubuntu.com&title=Ubuntu Linux Games on Play Ubuntu

Code (markup):

I also found it a bit strange that the first rows of social-bookmarking websites in the widget are all small German social-bookmarking website, while your website is in English. Perhaps you should delete these German ones and replace them with more popular English ones, or put the German ones at the bottom. Alternatively, you may want to consider using a different widget, e.g. that from AddThis, Socialmarker or Socializer. It never hurts to manually submit your website to other social-bookmarking website, e.g. using Social Poster.

 

Go check out other sites, and contact their advertisers.

They are always looking for more sites to advertise on.

 

You have a ton of usability and design errors on that site. You may want to read a post I just made: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=692951

 

Try to get the adverts more targeted, especially the "freinds" section at the bottom

 

You easily can try pay per click ( PPC ) networks to change your traffic to money. I suggest Google adsense. Try it and see the result. Also you should submit your website to more social bookmarking websites to have more traffic not only to one social bookmark.

 

how about try use the clickbank products maybe it will work out with your traffic, some traffic suitable with adsense some is not, u should try all channel

 

The number one way I make money from my sites is through eBook sales. The eBooks are either written by me or I have them written. On a game site i would sell one written for the most popular games. I would place the book for sale on the front page but using a newsletter or auto responder series does a far better job because you can pre-sell your eBook. It only takes about 5 newsletters to build trust and start making money. I would definitely add a Newsletter sign up box and have a preset series of emails to send all pre-selling an eBook or something similar.

 

Place your ads perfectly ...

Now this one having Good PR and alexa ... so if you can not manage it than sell it off on Flippa.

 

try linkshare

 

I'm with Adam. Build a list (newsletter in this case), then sell things to this list...

 

Is there a way you can do a marketing campaign for companies there other than just plain ads?

 

Work on advertisements too. You might want to check this.

 

You can always try using cpa sites, such as cpalead.com, and put some surveys on a required content of your site. It can make you tons of money if your visitors really want your content.

 

i would find a high quality cpa network to promote a great product that is extremely relevant to your content. i think it's important to give people an option to buy-into something that is relevant. in addition, add some adsense, just don't make it too clunky. building out your email database and selling through that is a great idea....

 

Try putting some CPA email submits banners at the top of your websites. Stuff like get an iPad, get a PS3 etc. Should work well based on your website's theme.