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How to Monetize my Local Events Website?

by wallybrain
7 replies
Hi all,

I have a local events site that receives most of it's traffic from a local boot fairs page (mostly via Google) that gets between 400 and 700 visits on a Saturday and Sunday. In March 2015 the website received 3,686 sessions (4,724 pageviews and 4,182 unique pageviews).

The website has been going for a few years and has around 2,200 Facebook fans and over 3,000 Twitter followers.

However, I have not been able to come up with a decent way to make money from it. If I could I would be able to spend more time on it like producing regular blog posts and adding more events.

One idea I have considered are job listings either from an existing local job website or adding a paid-for job listing system to the site myself but do not think the website receives enough traffic or is not necessarily relevant enough (although over a year ago I asked on Facebook if they would like to see job listings on the site and it got over 100 likes which is a lot more than the average FB post).

Any ideas?
#events #local #monetize #website
  • Profile picture of the author Nick Lotter
    Have you thought of showing those traffic stats to local businesses and offering them advertising space on your site? You could offer them weekly or monthly advertising options and charge them to place an advert. Or start a newsletter and offer advertising space on that. If it's a local site for local people, I'm sure it would be an easy sell to local businesses - especially businesses involved at the events.
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    "Do not wait to strike until the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking."
    William Butler Yeats
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  • Profile picture of the author Ethan Chong
    Personally I think traffic count is not that important If u want to make money from it.

    What really matters is the amount of targeted traffic u generate. If u really want to make money from it, u should try to look at what ur target audience need and help them find a solution to their problems.

    This is the basics of any Internet marketing business.

    -Ethan
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  • Profile picture of the author Slade556
    Nick suggested a good idea, just sell ad space to other local businesses. You could try adsense or other ad netwworks, but I think what Nick suggested is a better solution, because it's long term and you can set your own fixed prices.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kiyarameru
    Displaying ads targeted towards the demographic that visits you sites seems to make the most sense to me.
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    • Profile picture of the author wallybrain
      Thanks for all of your replies! Very helpful. How much do you think local businesses would pay to advertise based on my traffic levels? Also, how much do you think I could generate in Adsense?

      I'm worried that I would only be able to sell those advertising slots for minimal amounts of money which wouldn't make it worthwhile to me considering it would take a lot of time to sell the advertising slots.
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  • Profile picture of the author Nick Lotter
    Compare the costs of advertising in other mediums. How much would it cost a local business to advertise in the local newspaper? Magazines? Sign boards? Radio ads? Where do they currently advertise, and how much does that cost them?

    You now have the advantage of knowing what your price point should be in order to be competitive, but you also are able to show them how many visitors will see their advert, visitors can click through to their website and you can track those clicks to show them how effective it's been.
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    "Do not wait to strike until the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking."
    William Butler Yeats
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  • Profile picture of the author wallybrain
    Thanks Nick! I'll have a look into that.
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