What sort of ads to put on a general news site?

Since it is general topics and not a specific niche site.

[brizad]

I'm invlolved in my first non-niche, general site. It is an online version of print newspaper. Right now the primary traffic is from folks in that town, but since a lot of the topics are global/national, the traffic is starting to come from all over.

I am running adsense which is maybe the best solution but I'm wondering if there are more options.

So since there is not a specific focus of the site, I'm not sure of what ads would be profitable on it. I've tried some general things--magazines, DVD, video games, quick loans, credit cards, credit counseling, etc. But none have made anything so far.

Anyone have any suggestions for ads for this situaion?

Also, since the ads are non-specific, are the CTR and purchase rates pretty low generally? I've had CTRs of .01-1.5% but I don't know if that's good or bad in this situation. And as I mentioned, zero sales/commissions though.

I appreciate any suggestions :-)

[BriGuy20]

You might want to try an ad service like Google Adsense/Yahoo! Publishers Network, or even a lower tiered one like Industry Brains or AdBrite.

Also, if you have a good pagerank (5+), you can sell text links. These will get you a steady income stream each month as long as the inventory is sold.

You might also want to try submitting your site to the news amalgamation sites (Google News-type) for more traffic, if they aren't listed there already.

[brizad]

Hi Briguy, Thanks for your idea. You may have missed my second line:

I am running adsense which is maybe the best solution but I'm wondering if there are more options.

I've not tried YPN though so that might be a good idea. Didn't think about selling links either.
Also thanks for the tip on submitting to news sites.

I Appreciate the ideas!

[humblebeginnings]

I understand the problem of monetizing a non-niche site.
However, people who read the news are interested in what happens in the world and want to learn about things. So you might want to try some travel affiliate programs. Affiliate programs for language education or other trainings could also be appropriate. How about books (Amazon) and art? If you want to stick to Adsense, there are options too. Write a couple of static lines about travel on your foreign news page and use the section targeting tag. So no matter what the foreign news is, your visitors will see travel ads. Best of luck!

[vite_rts]

Might one ask, what town an what country your website covers,,,,

[MarkWolk]

I've had CTRs of .01-1.5% but I don't know if that's good or bad in this situation.

This rather shows that your site is interesting and valuable. The less interesting the content on a website, the more likely the visitors are to click on ads, out of frustration.

If you want to increase that clickthrough, the only solution is to experiment with your adwords on different spots on the page, and also different color combinations. See [google.com...] this page of Google's advice on that topic.

As for complementing Adsense revenue, I haven't found anything that would even remotely compete with it. CJ is a disaster, and other similar networks a waste of time. Chitika looks nice, but does not work for me... however it might be worthwhile trying for you.

For my own websites (all travel related) I have finally settled on a combination of Adsense and Amazon links. I prefer Amazon links to specific products, and the images are served from my site (not Amazon's). The income is tiny, but that kind of link brings value and content to your site.

[edited by: MarkWolk at 8:51 pm (utc) on July 22, 2006]

[brizad]

Might one ask, what town an what country your website covers,,,,

It's based in a small town in Indiana USA.

Presently about 60% of the content is local news. However the other 40% are pieces dealing with global and social issues.

The site's only been live for 3 weeks and already it's getting a lot of traffic from around the world. 8 countries so far. Mostly from Europe and especially Denmark. Don't know why, maybe they're interested in life in small town America :-)

But as the site grows and get more writers then it will focus more on national and world affairs. It's a pretty unique concept as far as news sites go. We're doing things on it that you won't even find on the big news organization's sites.

The main site goal is not monetization but rather engaging people. That being said, I wouldn't mind making some residual income off of it either ;-)