Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I am the proud owner of a very niche website with some unexpected "success". I didn't intend it to be popular but currently it attracts around 25.000(it's a good start for a non-english site) unique visitors a month. The strange thing is that its hasn't been updated in months! (The articles are really old). Nevertheless, it has a nice layout and sets people in the right mood... it seems to attract people. (it's a wedding site)
My question is .. can I earn some significant revenue from this site? Iam sure I can increase the unique visitors if I want (provide more up-tp date content, adjust useability and user-friendliness,..)..
Currently I have adsense on the pages and I get around 100$ a month. I want to triple this to 300 a month.
Is this feasible?
Thanks for your feedback!
The amount one can expect from AdSense can vary widely depending on the type and topic of the site. But to try to answer your question, yes, it's feasible providing you have at least a few dozen pages with AdSense. You may be able to do a lot more than $300 if you add new content.
Welcome to WebmasterWorld
Forget unique vistor numbers, they mean nothing unless you are converting or you want boasting rights in the pub/bar/restaurant.
You need to compare vis-a-vis page impressions, clicks etc, all the metrics which Adsense give you.
Currently I have adsense on the pages and I get around 100$ a month.
For me, and many others, "25,000 visitors per month" would be pitiful however I cannot compare since I have not seen your site.
It would be interesting to see your stats etc since your niche is generally very popular.
Read the adsense info on ad placement and look at their heatmap. Also look at threads in this forum on ad unit placement. I'm guessing that better ad placement could help you a lot.
Add more content, as others said.
Go back and update the content you already have, if you can. Add more value to the old content basically, without it looking silly.
Fix any and all broken links - a lot of times when people have older sites and are looking at updating them, they may find broken links.
Go through your old articles/stories, and link those to more current stories, because these old articles /stories sound like they will be a psuedo-landing page, and the more deeplinking you can do (as long as it's relevant), the better value you add.
(annej beat me to this) I would also look at ad placement. Usually people can bump their earnings up with simple changes in ad formats/locations (the Google heatmap really does work).
The last thing I would look at - check your logs for the past few months for any sites linking to you. I'm not talking Google or any other search engine, but other sites that are linking to your site (especially if it's to a specific article). Work on relationships with some of those sites. If you start adding new content, this is an easy way to get that content linked from elsewhere, which also leads to more traffic.
As was said, it's hard to say how much revenue you can generate with 25,000 uniques in a month because it's not the best way to measure numbers by - In theory, you should be able to make a lot more than what you already have, with existing content.
[edited by: gendude at 6:32 am (utc) on Feb. 6, 2006]
If you discover that 75% of your traffic is landing on a handful of pages, it would be wise to add content generated towards those visitors and the pages they are landing on (this goes back to what I said about deeplinking from your old articles to your new).
I have a niche site too with about 25.000 uniques a month. I hardly give it any updates but the visitors keep coming. I started about a year ago putting Adsense on it. My first day I earned 1 buck. Boy was I thrilled! I have gradually put more Adsense blocks on that site and experimented with ad-colors and -placement. After a few weeks of experimenting I discoverd the site appears to be worth $100 to $300 a month. Although that doesn't sound as big bucks, I updated the site months ago. So making a few hundred bucks a month from doing jack!@#$ aint so bad I guess.
Go on experimenting with the ads, your site could be making much more than $ 100 a month, even without updates!
good luck.
All the advice given in previous posts re: content, ad placement, etc. is absolutly true. If you're in the $100 range, there is much you can do to improve your returns... better than 10X your present number.
Good luck.
Not to indicate you shouldn't try to improve things but just be aware that topics do make some difference.
The other thing you can do is notice in your stats which topics do well and add pages in those areas.
Also use key word checkers to see what other words might be popular in your general topic area.
when i signed up for my stats, they asked me that and i had no idea what to put down. i put 24 hrs.
Thanks for the advice I really appreciate. I will continue experementing with the placement of the ads. Also, I didn't updated my site in ages, still the same (few) articles since ages. I wonder how much impact it would have on my earnings if I added let's say 100 new articles.
Thanks all, this is the best forum for webmasters wanting to expand their knowledge.
