Any suggestions for monetizing a site with poor quality traffic?

[Shiznaught]

I have a gag humor website made in 2000, which still gets a steady ~13k pageviews per month. The site gets many inbound links and organic traffic and has a PR of 5.

Unfortunately, because the subject matter on the website is so odd, it is very hard to advertise anything successfully. Adsense will only display public service ads, and the only thing that works at all is Adbrite and a Cafepress shop. I get about $20 a year from each.

Does anyone have suggestions of making some use of this site? Again, I would characterize it as a ridiculous/gag site, and it was even featured on a german tv show which profiles funny websites, and it was even mentioned in a book.

[koncept]

I'm not sure there is any particualr product / affiliate program that would work well for that "niche". I would recommend Adsense but since they aren't displaying ads for you why not try the other PPC networks like Yahoo, or even 7search or Miva, etc. Seems pay per click would probably be your best bet. I mean, what the hell are people reading jokes shopping for? Nothing.

[markwelch]

The traffic isn't remarkable (13,000 visitors per month isn't much, especially when you identify this as "poor quality traffic." Even with a really good match, it seems unlikely this site would earn enough money to trigger the monthly payment requirements for most affiliate programs. (Such sites rarely earn more than $1 per 1,000 pageviews, and more typically earn only pennies per 1,000 pageviews.)

I'm currently working with a merchant (QuoteProducts.com) that might be a good match, because they sell posters featuring famous quotes, sayings, and phrases, and many of their products are humorous. Since their products are unique (not sold by other online merchants), your visitors would probably be seeing them for the first time at your site.

Obviously, other poster and greeting card programs might be apporpriate to experiment with (you might get some results if you can pick and choose select titles from QuoteProducts.com, AllPosters/Art.com, CafePress, Zazzle, and others, all chosen to match specific content at the site).

Honestly, though, it seems unlikely that the probable revenue would justify the time spent to integrate affiliate links.

[mfishy]

YPN might work if you can get an account there. ALso, you may be able to sell a bunch or text links if you can bump it up to a PR6. Those combined on a lower traffic humor site might bring in $500 a month...

[TrustNo1]

You ever try gag/prank merchants?

[vincevincevince]

There are two programs that come to mind: Gambling and porn

If, like me, you'd rather not promote either - consider if there's some good you can do which doesn't earn you money. A message of peace, free banners for charities, etc...

[vik_c]

Visit other humor sites and see which merchants they're promoting. Anti Spyware affiliate programs may work. Free e-greeting sites pay per lead sometimes. Try them. You could create some other web site around an affiliate product and link it from this site if your site has some good PR. 13K page views per month are less than 500 a day. Humor sites generally have a high unique visitor to page views ratio. For all you know you may even be at less than 100 uniques a day. So your traffic isn't much especially considering that humor traffic has generally low value.

[gamiziuk]

Have you tried Chitika eMini Malls (CPC)? The ads show up according to keywords you plug in - so you can display products of your choice: ipods, pocket pcs, laptops, fishing reels, golf clubs, etc.

[CatLady]

I would tend to agree with TrustNo1 and try out some prank merchandise affiliate programs to see how they do on your site.

[Essex_boy]

How about bolting on an ecommerce shop selling jokes and novelty (tasteful) items?

[incrediBILL]

Try CafePress or something similar, sell stuff with your jokes printed on it.

Like a t-shirt for women that says "Guess what, I'm staring at a BOOB too, YOU!" or whatever ;)

[Gambling Pablo]

Well, you could always try the gambling niche.

Besides, the gambling CPA deals are much more profitable than any other program, For instance if you only delivered one player you would make $170. With that traffic I'm sure you will deliver at least one player in one year. and that's much more than you are making now.

[edited by: skibum at 6:55 am (utc) on Sep. 27, 2006]

[vite_rts]

have you considered selling books?

I think with amazon you could even specially select funny books comedy video's , that kinda thing

if you ask nicely, some of the affiliating masters here might show you how to make money

[Shiznaught]

I'll have to agree with Vince.. I've tried a lot of the above suggestions, including cafepress and selling funny books from Amazon. Never really ammounted to anything, though it's always fun to see what kind of random stuff people will buy from Amazon through your links.

[Beagle]

Just because I always have to say this when someone suggests selling books through Amazon - Take a look at some of the other stuff Amazon sells. Games and toys, for example, if you want to stick with humorous stuff - or comedy DVDs. But if you have a handle on who your audience is, there are probably other things you could target to them that aren't specifically humor-related. (Or, of course, you could make them humor-related, which I've done occasionally even on a generally serious site.)

[greenleaves]

study your audience. Make a few surveys. Find out their age group, interest, where they are from, etc. Study your log files. What keywords are they using to find your site? Maybe those logs hold the secret to decent revenue.

Then market an affiliate program that is directed to your audience.

If all else fails, and you don't care about reputation, you can market an online pharmacy, everyone has to buy drugs, and many do that online. Personally, I wouldn't recoment it.