Forum Moderators: phranque
I'm not sure if this is the appropriate forum - I apologize if it isn't.
I have a bit of a dilemma.
I have a dead niche site based on "art". It's a very time consuming niche with no return. I took down the content, which was mostly pictures, to save bandwidth.
I still get 10-20 uniques daily from other sites, and maybe %30 returning visitors waiting for the site to be back in order.
There are no ads. No products. It generates no revenue. What would you do with it?
I wanted to put some adsense but as I understand it, Adsense is friendlier to "article" sites with lots of keywords. My visitors expect free pictures. My niche isn't about health, travel or high tech widgets, so even if google does accept the site, from my understanding, I doubt I'd get high paying clicks.
I'm busy starting new sites now, but it hurts to see this poor dead parrot getting traffic for the past 2 years and not making any revenue. I had no idea I could actually make any revenue, until I found this forum a few months ago. I'm quite impressed by you all.
Basically, I wanna take advantage of the compounding effect and not wait another 2 years, and be in the same situation.
Desperate options I considered:
1) Popups. Lots of popups. Exitfuel popups I think is at $5 cpm and I'm looking to complement it with others. Any suggestions? (I realize popups are annoying but if it has to come down to that...)
2) PPC like Allclicks, (I'm not a U.S resident.). Not sure of CPM banners, I hear forums use them and have low returns. Still better than my site, which has no ad revenue.
3) Completely change the theme of the site. (to anything). Or to topics current visitors might be interested but aren't about art - perhaps games and gadgets. (something with a higher adsense rate), put some RSS feeds of related blogs, and apply for adsense. (Without investing an unreasonable amount of time on it.). And let it roll.
I'm not expecting too much. As long as it does generate a bit. Like I said, for the past 2 years I made negative -$30.
How would you best make use of such a site if you were in my shoes?
Any suggestions other than ExitFuel?
That depends on where you place them, etc. I once got ridiculed by a WebmasterWorld member about my "made for adsense" photo gallery. The photo gallery was there way before adsense, but that is besides the point. The point is, if you describe each picture in as much detail as possible and line up adsense ads near the pictures and descriptions... this type of site can do fairly well with adsense. Enough to cover running costs, at least. My so-called "made for adsense" photo gallery is on an art type site as well. With proper descriptions of each photo, the ads have proved to be very well targeted. There are ways to make it work.
Now You can check on Your pages with a right mouse click what sort of ads would appear.
It should be ads from galleries, similar artists.
If not, You have to ad more information on the pages, about what the pictures are.
Each page should have a context description:
1.) The artist
2.) From where is the artist
3.) What painting technic is used
4.) What is to see on the picture
Write it like You would have to tell it a blind man.
The spider of the search engine is blind and can only read text. The Mediabot determing what ads should appear is also blind and can only read text.
When Your check with the preview tool shows well targeted ads, use AdSense for the site.
I have 2 painters where I have AdSense pages with art.
CTR, CPM, EPC are in the lowest range of all my sites, but it's more than nothing, more than the hosting costs.
Any suggestions other than ExitFuel?
Stay away from this #*$!.
They bring a site a very bad image.
They stop repeated visitors.
It will bring much less than AdSense.
I have a couple of sites that are very heavy in images. I find that when I put a new page up on one of them adsense dials in good ads quickly, in fact, almost immediately.
I suspect that part of it is that adsense will serve generically themed ads based on the rest of your site if your new pages are fairly similar. Shortly thereafter they will then focus a little better.
As always, with webmasterworld, I learn something every time I log in. The suggestion to 'describe as to a blind man' makes a lot of sense. I now have a good bit of work to do on my sites but I'm positive that bit of advice will help me a LOT .
Also, the better the descriptions, the more traffic (of course)
As far as bandwidth, keep in mind that you are not doing a coffee table book. You are doing a website. I usually take my 1 Meg photos and optimize them down to about 400 x540 pixels or so at about 30K in size. I'll generally put 2 or 3 such pics on a page. You'll need to determine what will work for you.
CG
INTERESTS
For instance, if the interest lies in art appreciation you can set up a referral deal with an online artist. There are plenty of cool artists that sell their advertising directly online. If the site visitors are art appreciators, there's a possibility the OP (original poster) could monetize them finding great art for sale online, making deals, and monetize the site through lead generation.
The OP could even sell referrals/advertising to art dealers who sell stuff online, selling the advertising itself, or taking a lead generation stake.
Then there are posters, art reproductions, you can create cafepress t-shirts of art that is in the public domain, etc and sell that...
VISITOR DEMOGRAPHIC
If his site is about graphics and design related topics, and if many of his visitors are graphic design students or amateurs learning how to design graphics, he can aff design software or Adobe add-ins, etc.
So focus on the audience: what they are coming for, and what demographic. Then find a program to fit that, or even alter the site to accomodate a particular program.
