Something is not quite right and I don't know what ... or why.
I'm not sure if this is the right section for this post and I apologize if that not the case.
So, I have this site which I am trying to build as an authority site for the last 4 years, in Cyber Security 'niche' - if you can call it that way.
The site is anchored in area in which I work ( and like to work in ) and I don't mind occasionally posting various stuff from my field. My posting habits are.. sane. Sometimes I post a few times a day and sometimes a couple times a week (60%). I am also actively developing (programming and designing ) a new social network like extension for my site which will allow users to submit content and news and do many other things too.
I have ~1200 posts which get ~185K visits a month, out of which ~60% are new visitors and ~40% are returning visitors ( according to gAnalytics ). Visitors habits vary, but they usually spend, on average ~11 min on the site with bounce rate of ~9% and ~55% exits.
The look of the site is good, with OK ad spaces. Not the best possible but better than 85% of other sites. Back-end is under my control too, so site speed, load balancing, CDNs etc have similar success percentage ratio like previous statistic ( ie. faster than 85%-90% other sites out in the wild). The cost of running my space is low, below $100. I do all the technical work and all optimizations so this is expected.
The site is also semi-SEO optimized. I don't lose sleep over SEO/SERP optimization and depending on which service I ask, my SEO score is 75% SEO optimized and higher. I'm not ranked as good as I would like to, but I am confident that my rank will improve over time and I'm not worried about that. I don't buy traffic or spend any money on marketing, advertising, seo professionals or other bullish artists. I am what you would call 100% natural and I get 100% organic traffic. I'm not sure if I can consider social traffic organic. I get ~20% of the traffic from social networks, ~35% direct and ~40% from google search - US. The remaining percentage is.. 'the rest'.
The topics that I cover are not 'generic', but more focused on developers, programmers and people who like (and live) computer science. Smart people. These users are usually very technically skillful with many years of experience. People who are not easy to fool around. Users to whom you cannot advertise new antivirus and expect to convert. I tried
Over the years, I tried and tested many different ways of monetization for this type of traffic. I still do. I often switch around and reboot old tests just to see the difference in performance. I tried CPA, contextual, PPL, PPC, E-Lists any many many other things. To some extent I have made some progress but not as much as I would like to. These days I sell advertising space and use Adsense ( to some extent I also use CJ, LinkShare, ShareaSale and Amazon) . Adsense is getting ~$30-35/day while anything other than Amazon is not converting at all. HQ CPC, CPM programs are also too generic for the space I run. CPM are too annoying for my visitors and almost never 'targeted'. I would not mind annoying my users if they where at least related to the field. However this is almost never the case. I net, at this point ~$17K a year with my site after I take all expenses off - aprox. ~1K.
This may sound ok, and I am satisfied with the results but I've got a feeling from reading posts on this forum that the performance should be higher. I'm not sure if this traffic, performance and earnings are expected and/or normal ( although slightly lower because of the type of my site ) ? I would really appreciate any input and, apologies for not posting the URL.
Please do not message me or respond with sales offers (etc) since I'm not interested in that type of help and will not respond. I am here for constructive discussion.
So, I have this site which I am trying to build as an authority site for the last 4 years, in Cyber Security 'niche' - if you can call it that way.
The site is anchored in area in which I work ( and like to work in ) and I don't mind occasionally posting various stuff from my field. My posting habits are.. sane. Sometimes I post a few times a day and sometimes a couple times a week (60%). I am also actively developing (programming and designing ) a new social network like extension for my site which will allow users to submit content and news and do many other things too.
I have ~1200 posts which get ~185K visits a month, out of which ~60% are new visitors and ~40% are returning visitors ( according to gAnalytics ). Visitors habits vary, but they usually spend, on average ~11 min on the site with bounce rate of ~9% and ~55% exits.
The look of the site is good, with OK ad spaces. Not the best possible but better than 85% of other sites. Back-end is under my control too, so site speed, load balancing, CDNs etc have similar success percentage ratio like previous statistic ( ie. faster than 85%-90% other sites out in the wild). The cost of running my space is low, below $100. I do all the technical work and all optimizations so this is expected.
The site is also semi-SEO optimized. I don't lose sleep over SEO/SERP optimization and depending on which service I ask, my SEO score is 75% SEO optimized and higher. I'm not ranked as good as I would like to, but I am confident that my rank will improve over time and I'm not worried about that. I don't buy traffic or spend any money on marketing, advertising, seo professionals or other bullish artists. I am what you would call 100% natural and I get 100% organic traffic. I'm not sure if I can consider social traffic organic. I get ~20% of the traffic from social networks, ~35% direct and ~40% from google search - US. The remaining percentage is.. 'the rest'.
The topics that I cover are not 'generic', but more focused on developers, programmers and people who like (and live) computer science. Smart people. These users are usually very technically skillful with many years of experience. People who are not easy to fool around. Users to whom you cannot advertise new antivirus and expect to convert. I tried
Over the years, I tried and tested many different ways of monetization for this type of traffic. I still do. I often switch around and reboot old tests just to see the difference in performance. I tried CPA, contextual, PPL, PPC, E-Lists any many many other things. To some extent I have made some progress but not as much as I would like to. These days I sell advertising space and use Adsense ( to some extent I also use CJ, LinkShare, ShareaSale and Amazon) . Adsense is getting ~$30-35/day while anything other than Amazon is not converting at all. HQ CPC, CPM programs are also too generic for the space I run. CPM are too annoying for my visitors and almost never 'targeted'. I would not mind annoying my users if they where at least related to the field. However this is almost never the case. I net, at this point ~$17K a year with my site after I take all expenses off - aprox. ~1K. This may sound ok, and I am satisfied with the results but I've got a feeling from reading posts on this forum that the performance should be higher. I'm not sure if this traffic, performance and earnings are expected and/or normal ( although slightly lower because of the type of my site ) ? I would really appreciate any input and, apologies for not posting the URL.
Please do not message me or respond with sales offers (etc) since I'm not interested in that type of help and will not respond. I am here for constructive discussion.
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