I need some serious help

lots of users :) no money :(

[Evroccck]

I'm new to this whole money making deal with sites.

I have over 30k users, growing by about 500 / week, and average about 300,000 page views a day.

Most of these are college students.

I just signed up with Commision Junction. i'm looking for the best way to make some money off these sites. Can you guys give me any tips on placement, successful affiliate programs and anything else like that to help me make some cash. I've always been focused on growth, but its getting expensive to maintain all of these.

One thing i was thinking about doing is Drop shipping textbooks if I can find a book supplier willing to work with me, or should i just focus on an affliate program? Will it provide me with similar return?
I have a book search program set up but it uses Amazon's program which has provided me with poop returns.

Thanks in advance for any insight and direction.

Evan

[antoine]

It's difficult to answer this unless we know the reason behind people visiting your website. It sounds like it's college students, but doing what? Is it school related? If so textbooks might be a good idea.

[jcoronella]

First place to start is the ad networks:
- BURST Media
- Fastclick

Then try the contextual,
- Google Adsense
- others only if google won't let you in.

THere are a myriad of college targeted Aff programs, but you really will have to test them all against your user base. There are term paper sites, resume sites, job search sites, etc that come to mind as a possible fit.

[skibum]

personals, spring break travel, tickets, credit cards, clothing, text books, cars, payday loans, electronics, how to make money, etc...

[Evroccck]

One of my sites is mainly a message board community but I also have a photo gallery, book search, calander, hot or not type section and a few other things

im not sure where to put stuff w/o making it seem like we are peppering the place with ads.

[edited by: jcoronella at 2:52 pm (utc) on Sep. 9, 2004]
[edit reason] Please no specific sites or site reviews per TOS [/edit]

[Evroccck]

btw i have been selling banner ads to local businesses but I think my price maybe a little high. What is a far banner price for say a month?

[onlineleben]

We had a thread going about someone else facing the same "problem" like you last summer/fall. Unfortunately I cannot find it, but maybe some others remember it and can post the url.
It was about a site that received massive traffic from a link on an universities website and we talked about monetizing this traffic.

[Evroccck]

if anyone can find it, id would be very helpful

[Receptional]

i was thinking about doing is Drop shipping textbooks if I can find a book supplier

I think that would be a route doomed myself. Students on a community site aren't there to buy books and would probably object if that is what they were offered.

Students are, in general, poor and looking for the freebies. So consider affiliate programs that "excite" students and "offer something for nothing" imho.

Apart from that - do whatever JC says ;)

Dixon.

[feiman]

On the affiliate marketing side, choose the products that are most targeted to your audience (like the aforementioned dating programs and such). Some of the dating programs will allow you to fully customize it using your look and their engine, which will produce much higher results than a banner ad.