Forum Moderators: skibum
My site is starting to generate enough traffic for me to spend time on finding the best ad network.
While my site traffic is growning I am still a "little guy" generating between 500 - 600 uniques daily with around 1500 to 2000 page views daily. I would like to find a cpm program that would result in a monthly pay check what ever it would be. Right now I am using fastclick and like the default banners but they pay nothing. I am also using the pop up window on my site (one three busy pages) and it does not seam to be cutting it. When I check my stats I am seeing these pages getting plenty more displays than fastclick is reporting. I understand that the program only serves one pop up to unique per 12s but the stats seam much much to low, around 30 to 50 daily. Again my site is generating over 500 uniques daily and the pop up is on my homepage and my second most popular page, makes no sense>?
I have been working hard over the last several months to get my traffic to my goal of 500 uniques daily. Which I am happy to report I have made even before my goal of this summer. I am still spending most of my time trying to increase my google pagerank and site pages within my own site to increase my traffic. My next goal is 1000 daily at which time I will start to look seriously at making a buck of my work. Right now I figure I can hopefully get things rolling in that department.
About affiliate programs, I have used several with little success to this point. While I am not counting them out it would seam people surf or better yet "search" for recipes to simply print them out and there gone. Someone that is looking for "seared ahi tuna" is not likely to purchase a cookbook or culinary tool.
I have also been working with pages that focus on the producst and am starting to get "some visitors" for these pages but not many. I like the idea of the cmp model simply because I can get paid for those impressions ......
Any ideas?
Thanks for the help,
Chef Brian
Let's look at your affiliate programs. You're looking at your site a a FREE RECIPE SITE and I assume that's what you're keying it for in SEO operations. Yup, you won't make anything that way.
Make a COOKING site that offers great advice, links to some great resources for cooking (inlcuding your affiliate links) and offer some free recipes as the BONUS for coming there.
As I've said a few times, it does you no good to get LOTS of traffic if that traffic is there for the freebies. I'd rather have 10 qualified hits (i.e. people who might buy something) than 500 leech hits any day.
G.
Thanks for the reply, about my affiliate programs.
I target my traffic in the search engines by listing popular recipes, the word free comes up very little. However, it is just the nature of the beast. Now as I mentioned I have added pages that work with my recipe content that are more geared toward purchases and I have recieved some. When I started I got lucky and featured art by guy buffet. I made pages just for those prints and posters from art.com and allposters. I ranked well and made some ok money for little traffic (about 50 - $75 monthly). At the time I was ranked in the top 10 for searches "guy buffet" now my listings have droped off to about 20 something as more sites have begun to compete for these listings.
Honestly I have even thought of starting another site ....just for guy buffet and I might just do that. However right now I can really see my work starting to pay off. I do make some sales now and then but not enough to see monthly checks which is my goal. I will continue to add pages that focus on "products" as well as the recipes. I am also building up my newsletter to sell advertising in that although I do not think that will happen until I reach about 5000 subscribers (currenly at about 2100).
Any other ideas?
Cheers,
Chef Brian
Eacm month do a total fo your profits, look at them closely and start to make targets for your profits not just your hits. As each month goes by try to go forward. I'd like to suggest a few things and maybe you could look at implementing them.
Find out who visits your site and build up a picture of your average visitor. Begin to think about their lifestyles and then think about products that they would find a use for. My wife loves recipes and she also loves new kitchen tools!! I've learnt from experience that only targetted products will sell on a site. We have a few affiliate packages on our site but you wouldn't know it!! We integrate them into our service and ensure that customers can buy seemlessly. We found that our sales went through the roof. Just imagine this..your talking about one of your great recipes and you're talking in depth about preperation, mention a food processor form so an so that you recommend, link directly to another page within your site that talks about the pros of it then link to the affiliate site directly to the sign up page.
You could even contact the food processor company and offer to sell it at a commsission and do all the sign up for it on your page. Just an idea. Each month add new products and you should get going.
Another thing Googles great for info but terrible for gettting real customers. Move to other engines ie A$k or Overture.
Hope this helps a little. You could also think about going via a subscription model!! Offer some free preview recipes and get them to pay monthly for more.
Changing the angle a bit as Grumpus suggested is not a bad idea. A cooking theme is better than a recipe theme. Just like you said, people get the recipes and they're gone.
You want to work your affiliate links into the content on the page. A quick idea, if you can find a decent program for cookware. On each recipe, list the cookware/utensils/grill/etc best used for that recipe, and link to the products with affiliate links. You could also list them all on one page in categories. All products recommended by Chef_Brian, of course. ;-)
