Out of ideas. High traffic site, low revenue

5 replies
I have a four year old site in the FIFA niche. In 2011-mid 2013, the site was awesome. There were months I'd make $3,000. At it's worst months, it still managed $1000 or so. At it's best, I was referring sales to two ebooks. I also was able to score a private advertiser or two for a few months out of the year, and that was great.

Then things changed. I tried to branch out and create my own ebooks which did not perform well, and ended up burning a bridge with the creator of one of the ebooks in the process. I closed down my email list that had 15k subscribers over a year ago because Aweber fees were causing me to lose money. I couldn't sell to people. I still can't really. I don't know what it is. I tried Adsense again and got a dismal 0.4% CTR. Recently, one advertiser came back and paid me $1,000 for a month of advertising on a product that was directly relevant to my site. Not a single conversion, and he didn't continue. I tried to refer a very relevant product and its only making me $200-300 a month right now, dominating all of my ad space. Granted, my traffic is a third of what it was at its best, but I'm making 10% of what I used to.

I just feel so beat with this. I don't even know where to begin. Every advertising method just seems shady and like it wouldn't work out for me. BuySellAds did not accept my site.

I'm not here to feel sorry for myself. I want to figure out what's wrong and fix it. That or sell it if I could get enough for it, but I doubt I'd be able to get what that traffic is really worth because of the revenue situation. What can I do?
#high #ideas #low #revenue #site #traffic
  • Profile picture of the author James McAllister
    What else would players of the game be interested in? Probably sports equipment, jerseys, etc. Gaming equipment? Headsets, controllers, etc. Have you tried promoting any of that?

    Have you tried selling Ultimate Team coins? I believe many of the major sellers have affiliate programs.

    Could you start another relevant site with more profitability and direct your current visitors there?

    You don't have to make money just from FIFA, if you target some of your audiences other interests you'll make sales.
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    • Profile picture of the author SalesMagicMan
      What were the traffic levels when you had the $1,000/mo. advertiser? Where was his placement? Was the ad any good? How big was it?

      If you can, please clarify these questions and I'll try to give your some assistance in that area.

      Thanks.
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  • Profile picture of the author thedark
    I think that everything stays in the traffic source. You say that your traffic is at a third what it used to be, more precisely at 33%. Probably the other 67% of the traffic brought you the most revenue. For exemple, first time users who are landing from search engines tend to click more on ads. If you lost your search engine traffic due to an algorithm change or something else, then probably you were left with direct and referal traffic. Direct traffic is probably consisting of people who already visited your site before on the same or on a different machine.

    Returning visitors already know where your ads are placed and they probably already clicked those. Returning visitors are the worst for ads. However, they trust you and what you offer. I noticed that returning visitors tend to generate many sales if you have a product to sell, or with affiliate links placed into the content. For example, you write about something and you recommend a relevant ebook in the post. If the affiliate links are placed as normal ads on sidebar/header/footer then they are as irrelevant as contextual ads for returning users.

    How many unique visitors you have right now ? Try to compare the UV/page views ratio now and what you had before and you might be able to answer it for yourself.
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  • Profile picture of the author gcbmark20
    Hi,

    Try looking at some competitor sites.

    What are they trying to do to monetize their sites?

    What strategy are they using to build their lists?

    I recently created a video on how you can....


    Use this as a way to uncover their traffic strategy too.

    This may give you a whole new outlook and vision on which way you
    need to direct your site in order for it to pick up once again.

    Good luck.

    Gavin
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  • Profile picture of the author QueenMelanie
    it might not be you being bad at selling, it is probably an issue with the quality of traffic you are getting.. YOu should look into your analytics to see exactly what type of people visit, their ages, location etc.. to make a wiser decision about what to offer them
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