Already making a little passive, want to step it up

4 replies
I've got 4 domains (the domain names are questions that people often search about their age) that I've had for about 5 years now. I've got a calculator on the site, and then you can share the results. About 18 months ago I decided to put more than just a single ad I had on the site.

I've not done any marketing on the site at all, but they're getting about $80-90/month now altogether from the couple ads on the site (large banner up top, square beside the text, text link ads below the button). Traffic is at about 9,000 pageviews per month between all four of them.

My question is, does anyone have experience with simple passive sites that require no work, and if so, what did you do to ramp up traffic (and $$$)?

My bottom line goal would be to increase traffic about 10x-20x. Of course, any more on top of that would be awesome too.
#making #passive #step
  • Profile picture of the author JC Web
    If you want it to be truly passive, you will probably stay at low numbers. However, there are things you can do that don't take a lot of time or work that can increase your traffic and revenue. Without knowing more specifics it would be difficult to give you advice.

    What you need to do is determine how to reach the demographic that is interested in what you have to offer. This should not be too difficult for you since your sites are based on at least some demographic information in the first place. Now depending what those demographics are, you may want to use various types of social media or advertise on forums or blogs, etc. You could also do PPC if the cost was not prohibitive.

    It would be wise to find more ways to monetize that would bring in more profit per visitor. Again, this would take some work though and not be 100% passive. You could get people to sign up to an email list and market products related to what that demographic wants.

    You could also add content to your site to get more organic traffic - again not passive - but doesn't have to require a lot of work each day. You could find some higher payout products to advertise on your site. You could also write some articles specifically promoting those products.

    There are many other options but it depend on the specifics. Bottom line is, if you want to stay totally passive you should not expect a lot of return. But you can choose to do some upfront work and get returns for a long time or do a little work each day and get some returns as well. If you want no work at all, you are minimizing your potential income from it.
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  • Profile picture of the author bluejeans
    What niche specifically? Age-related health information, or "what happened that year" information? If you want to keep it relatively passive, I would start building a list, but bear in mind anything online that's left to simply sit and grow stale diminishes with time.
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  • Profile picture of the author McHoffa
    Definitely would like to make it a little more active to increase revenue. It's more along the lines of "what happened that year" style of site.
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    • Profile picture of the author abundantlife085
      I'm no SEO expert so you'll want to do your research on this but one idea that came to my mind is something (a plugin or tool?) that scrapes content from Google Trends. You could have it auto-post (prob not great for SEO) or have it sent to an outsourced writer to rewrite the content and post it to the site.

      Passive doesn't necessarily have to mean it's all automated, it could mean that it's passive 'for you' but other people are doing the maintenance of the site and adding fresh content to build it. I'd just take everything you make from the site and reinvest it. And integrate a Facebook page widget in there so it's automatically building a fan base too. Once a Facebook page starts growing it keeps growing every day/week without you having to do anything. At least that's been my experience. Even when I forget to post something new to a particular page for a long time.
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