Suggestions On Monetizing My Site?

6 replies
I have been working on a directory of online marketing companies that is currently in beta stage. I have not settled on a business model for it and I would like to see what others would do with the site to monetize it. Site URL is emarketdesk.com.

Background
The site is targeted to small business owners with the goal of helping them identify the different types of online marketing as well as the top companies within each field.

The domain is under a year old, site went live in September and currently sees ~200 unique visitors,1500+ page views per month. Traffic is pretty evenly split between organic search, direct, referral and social media.

Other than building social media profiles and testing out an Adwords campaign last month (too expensive), I have not done any marketing.

Potential Revenue Ideas
My initial thought was to eventually serve advertisements but I estimate I would need 100k page views at a generous $10 CPM to earn just $1k a month if I serve one ad per page. This is still a consideration but I know it will probably take over a year or longer and a lot of work for me to get to 100k page views per month.

I've also considered capturing lead information and referring them to agencies/marketers. I read somewhere that the average price per lead can be sold for about $40 but then I see people selling 1k leads for $100 on Leadbuyersnetwork so I am really not sure what the market is here and whether this is a worthwhile avenue to explore.

Strategies
It looks like the most common advice I have seen so far is to build an email list and I just so happened to have recently started doing so, not through the site but through events related to small business marketing that I host. What would be a good way to collect email addresses on the site? Where would you place the call to action?

Content Creation - the biggest question I am debating is what type of content should I create? Would you recommend articles, infographics, videos, other? I am strongly leaning towards infographics as I believe they would capture my audience the best.

Social media vs SEO - I've also read a lot that social media is going to take over SEO in terms of priority for where you show on SERPs. I'm leaning towards focusing on social media because of this and the fact that there is heavy heavy competition in the keywords I want to rank for. Not sure how to deal with that either.

What Would You Do?
If this was your website, what would your strategy be and what is the cost, earnings and time frame associated with that strategy? And advice or suggestions would be appreciated.
#monetizing #site #suggestions
  • Profile picture of the author tyronne78
    You said you host events with small businesses. Are you trying to teach small businesses in your area internet marketing? Are you a small business consultant? I'm not sure what niche you're in.
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    • Profile picture of the author dana67
      I agree. What specific areas or industries are you trying to target?
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    • Profile picture of the author willblieve
      Tyrone - I have hosted one networking event where SMB owners/marketers discussed and shared their marketing experiences. I am not a consultant or looking to teach anything, merely use this event to direct users to my site for now.

      Dana - I am trying to focus on platforms/software/tools that SMB owners can use for marketing.
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  • Profile picture of the author GinaStringer
    Don't use advertisement too early, use it only as a last resort. People hate ads, it lowers your website quality and people'll leave your website.

    Just focus on growing your website first while building your email list.

    About content creation, I can't give you any recommendation. It's better to ask your audience directly.

    Building information website takes time, don't take shortcut. Build your site properly, write some quality contents, improve your website design. Promote it to social media, forums, and websites like reddit.
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    • Profile picture of the author willblieve
      Originally Posted by GinaStringer View Post

      Don't use advertisement too early, use it only as a last resort. People hate ads, it lowers your website quality and people'll leave your website.

      Just focus on growing your website first while building your email list.

      About content creation, I can't give you any recommendation. It's better to ask your audience directly.

      Building information website takes time, don't take shortcut. Build your site properly, write some quality contents, improve your website design. Promote it to social media, forums, and websites like reddit.
      I think ads are more harmful for load time and SEO purposes than anything else so I wouldn't touch that until the site is established. However, it could actually give credibility to a website IMO. If the site I am visiting is displaying ads from established brands, I know that the site has to have a solid amount of visitors and that they met the qualifications for the ad network they are working with.
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonwebb71
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    Now I remember why I left here many years ago!
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