UK-USA fifty fifty traffic = what kind of ads?

but I can't use adsense

[dr_paul]

Hello!

My site is a humour site because its written in Britain but also a humor site because its equally read in the USA.

I cannot display adsense any more since Google decided the content of my site was adult/mature (I would say its borderline but I get the feeling its probably not worth arguing with them so I'm looking for something new)

With a typical day of 400 visits:

150 are from USA
150 are from UK
30 from South Africa
30 from Australia
30 from Germany
10... the rest

So how best to monetize this 50-50 Atlantic Split?

SO FAR: Amazon requires that you sign up to their .co.uk and .com programs separately. If you send someone to amazon UK but you only have a .com registration - then you get no money. And if you have both, then which link do you choose to publish?

Just started with ebay and there seems to be a similar decision making required to send people to UK or DOTCOM...but I'm not clear on that yet.

So what's the ideal strategy? Is trying to build a trans-atlantic readership a waste of time if I want to monetize without Adsense?

How do others do it?

Thanks for any wisdom!

[topr8]

>>How do others do it?

well we use a geo-location system (made inhouse but very simple, match the users ip address against a database to see where they are from)

then we serve the appropriate amazon or affiliate ads

[we have amazon, adsense and a few other affiliate ads on our site]

[purplecape]

I belong to both the UK and US Amazons, and I just put links to both at the foot of my book reviews. If you don't want to get into geotargeting, which doesn't always work, you can just let your visitors choose.

With only 150 visitors/day from each country, though, don't expect big earnings. If I were you I'd put my time and energy into developing the site and building traffic first, while researching your alternatives so you are ready to go when your traffic has grown.

[dr_paul]

thanks folks

Yes purplecape - I am trying to build traffic! ... and this question is part of my research to find out what to do when traffic rises - the figures given were more to illustrate the geo-proportions rather than absolute numbers.

Anyway - posting two links (Amazon UK and Amazon US) sounds like one solution but 30/400 coming from South Africa and Australia is still about 7% each - significant enough to not cut out. To fully provide for such traffic you would need one link for every country... which obviously gets a little bulky in terms of page real-estate.

Even two links sounds a little clunky and would perhaps alert users to a sales strategy rather than feeling 'natural'. What do you think?

the geo-location idea sounds a lot slicker. topr8 - how would I even start to implement that. I know you say its simple - but not if you know nuthin it aint! Any clues?

Thank you both for replying.

Paul

[purplecape]

On the book review pages, I'm very upfront that it's a link to Amazon. People don't seem to mind. I actually have three links, as I belong to the Canadian Amazon as well.

I can't tell you what to do with SA and Australia--neither one has an Amazon, of course, and I doubt many people will be ordering from an overseas Amazon.

Agree that geo-location is slicker.

[topr8]

>> how would I even start to implement that

you need a database that associates ip addresses to countries, these are avasilable both commercially and free [i use a commercial one i think it costs around $40 a year and i get monthly updates] i believe there are free projects on soundforge which are just as good.

you then grab the user's ip address, which is availble from the http headers, query the database to see where that ip address is from.

nothing is totally accurate however i have found it to be very accurate.
[ip addresses change allocation from time to time]

its called geo-location and most big websites that cater for multinational users use it to some extent, assuming you can run a database it is very easy to do.

[dr_paul]

Thanks both again for taking the time... appreciated.

I will certainly look into geo-location. Hopefully there will be some nice, dumb plugins for Joomla or Drupal!

and pc - i didn't even reallise South Africa didn't have an amazon. Might try the double/triple links in the meantime while I sort geo-location.

Thanks!

Paul

[purplecape]

Amazon has been slow to move into smaller markets (and even some larger ones, such as India). But you may be able to find a local alternative, of course.

good luck!