I'm looking for some advice on monetizing the site http://cutebabyfix.com. Currently, the site makes ~ .50 a day on 250-350 daily uniques. I have both adsense and some affiliate via CJ, but have not made a single affiliate sale in the 5 months the site has been live. Obviously, this site mainly attracts female visitors. Unfortunately, the adsense ads don't align with the visitors - most of the visitors aren't of child bearing age being either college students or 35 - 55 year old working women, who are done having babies. With affiliates I've tried everything from baby products to jewelry, shoes, cosmetics, etc. Not a single sale, and an average of only one click ever three days or so. I'm at a bit of a loss on what I can do to make this site at lest pay for it's hosting. I'm considering moving the CJ ads to the top of the page for a week or so and seeing if that helps click-through. Any other suggestions? My other sites with less traffic than this are doing significantly better than this, but they are targeted to different niches... Does anyone understand the female mind enough to give me some tips?
When you say how can you be sure that the site is not visited by females who are likely to bear children? If you want to target a female audience who is interested in bearing children, maybe you can include articles for pregnant women, and taking care of your new born etc. Add products and images of things you want to sell, rather than the ones you currently have on your site. I think you are deviating from your site theme by displaying the images you currently have on your site. You should focus on tips and things needed by expecting mothers rather than what you have on your site now. Hope this helps.
Rosiee - yea, I've thought about that, but I'd rather keep the humor/cute baby picture of the day thing going. I have a lot of returning visitors (89 yesterday), so I'd hate to kill the branding & marketing I have done so far by changing gears now. I should have figured monetizing out ahead of time, but I guess I'll just have to keep experimenting and find something this crowd wants.
hey teej, here is some potential content (a bit preachy though) for your niche In the non-western world, the strongest woman is the one who has borne the most children, and the luckiest (and sexiest!) is the one who is most fertile. This is nature's law.
skiblander - interesting, I'll have to work that in sometime Aston - I'm getting OK traffic growth (not viral, but steady). What I'm missing is how to market to the visitors I'm currently getting. Some days I have a less than .05% CTR, so there's definitely room for improvement there!
A perfect example of why the site is probably not visited mainly by females is imreallysad.com. This collection of cute animal pictures was started by a male in a male-dominated forum, and much of the appreciation for it came from males. Just because it's a baby doesn't mean it's only us girls that are going to look at it.
Maybe a CafePress store would work for women (note it's absolutely free to open a store with them and start selling). I think with 250-350 daily uniques you shall be selling at least one T-shirt (or a mug / teddy bear / journal, etc.) per day. And sell stuff that women like - e.g. pictures of babies and so. Good luck!
I like the Cafe Press idea - we are just wrapping up a couple of shirts with the site's logo on it & some cute sayings (ie: Mine's Cuter!) that we had planned on giving away to submitters. We'll have to list them on the site for sale - I wonder if there is a Cafe Press plug in for WordPress? Dom - I'm pretty sure our traffic is 80% plus female, judging from the comments and the referring sites - especially on Hot Daddy Friday... ;
Hi, Try moving a set of your g00gle ads or affiliate ads over to right hand column above your comments? Try placing a set of horizontal g00gle ads above or below your first post? Try limiting the number of baby photos in the middle column to maybe 3 and then have a hotlink to the rest. Just a thought from a total newbie.
To get this website really going. I would set up a competition for baby pictures, and contact a couple of baby stores for sponsoring the competition.
Danielle - I tried a couple of those, and through tracking via adsense channels found that they didn't perform for anything. The upper LHS seems to be where the action is at. Theo - I have something like that in the works. I've got to get some sponsorship lined up & figure out the PR end of it, but a Hot Baby Daddy contest could be in our future.
I think you should have a blog make-over. You put the post at the left side and exchange it with the google ad. Put more baby or girlie colors on your site coz its just plain boring (I'm sorry) and then contrast it with your Google ad so users sight will not glide off the ad but instead catch the readers attention and actually read the ad. - IMO
First of all you need to search for a better web script to give the website a more professional look, and then you won't have any difficulty in finding sponsors.