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Requesting Assistance with valuation, monetization, and growth on my Blog.

by DanParker
4 replies
Hello Warriors,

My name is Dan, and as you can clearly see, I'm brand new here. I was directed here as a good source of help with getting the most out of my website, as I want to take it more seriously. I've known for a while now that I have a good site on my hands, but it wasn't until recently that I started looking at things like analytics to get a real view of what I had.

I've been reading lots of articles online and have added things like facebook autoposts, and adsense to my website, but here is my current situation

I get roughly 3.5 million views per month on my site. I do have adsense, and a single ad on the right side that is 250x1200 in dimensions. They pay me 200 USD per month, and the adsense banner at the top (which is getting about 1.7m views a month) is paying me between 500 and 900 a month. This isn't really enough to keep me going, and I feel that I should be capable of getting a lot more out of the website if it has this many monthly views.

I have no idea what it's like to appraise an adspot, what I should be asking for, etc. It know what cpc is, and cpm, I've been doing my reading, but a lot of the guides are for beginners talking about things like your first 10,000 views, and well, two years in here, we are well beyond that threshold. I'll refrain from linking my site as i don't want to be advertising, I genuinely would like assistance in maximizing the income I can get from this website.
#assistance #blog #growth #monetization #requesting #valuation
  • Profile picture of the author JC Web
    There are a lot of factors involved here. There's really not any information to go on from your post. One thing is what the market/niche/sub-niche (if any) the blog is about. There is a big difference between getting a few million views to a cat video website and a few million views to an investment website, for instance.

    Another important factor is where these visitors are coming from. Different sources are of different quality. Another factor is demographics of the visitors. Another factor is buying intent of the visitors. Another factor is whether the traffic is warm or cold. Another factor is what you actually offer to the visitors on your website when they do get there. Another factor is whether they are new or returning visitors. Several other factors of course as well.

    Just the number of views you get a month in itself is not enough information to answer any questions or give any advice. There are a variety of ways to monetize, but the best ways are not the same for every site. And the value of ad space or any method of monetization is not same based solely on number of visitors. Congratulations though on doing well attracting visitors to your website.
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    • Profile picture of the author DanParker
      The niche the blog is about is a trading card game called Yugioh.

      Because of the nature of a clock, i'll use just 'yesterdays' numbers for a full 24 hours.

      80,117 views on the site yesterday, 14,049 of them were referalls. 6900 from search engines, 3200 from reddit, 2200 from facebook, 600 from youtube, 300 from twitter, and 250 from the wikia dedicated to the game. The rest is various forums.

      For demographics, looking at the last 30 days

      85.42% are 18-24
      13.87% are 25-34

      98.3% are male
      1.7% are female

      46.14% are from the USA, 6.85% are from the UK, 5% from Canada 4.85% from germany.

      Let me know what other demographics you'd need

      You'll have to help me understand what the difference is between warm and cold traffic, but as for buying intent of the visitors, I can say that the purpose of my site is translating news from Japan.

      The gist of it is that cards in this game are similar to stocks: they go up and down in value based on supply and demand for them in the competitive scene of the game. A card from 7 years ago is still legal for play, and if a new card comes out tomorrow that can be used together in combination with it, demand suddenly increases for that old card, and it's value spikes. Japan, getting the cards 3 months before we do, gets news of cards 3 months before we do, and the service I offer is accurate and fast translations of that news so that the audience in the west knows ahead of time which cards to invest in, and which to get rid of that are no longer useful.

      still using the last 30 days, there is 17.1% new visitor, and 82.9% returning visitor.
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  • Profile picture of the author JC Web
    Hey Dan. Unfortunately, I know nothing about this niche so I'm not a good person to help you. I'm just responding because I didn't want to leave your reply unanswered. I do like the traffic you are getting from what you detailed above and I hope someone familiar with this niche can advise you.

    Your audience is younger than I would like but the sources are good. I just don't know how to evaluate ad sells for that niche and I don't want to give you bad advice. I don't know how much of a market is or isn't there or what people are willing to pay.

    Are there related or similar games you can advertise as an affiliate or sell ad space to a vendor of those games? Don't know if that is who already is buying your ad space.

    Do you have a mailing list? Since you have a lot of return visitors, I assume you could get a good sized list going. Does this game have any accessories other than the trading cards that you can sell? Is it possible for you to sell the cards themselves on your site?
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    • Profile picture of the author DanParker
      I appreciate you answering regardless. Makes me feel like my time wasn't completely wasted.

      I have one of the games vendors advertising, but without knowing what my space is worth, I only asked for $200 USD a month. I do have a google adsense ad set up that pays about 500 a month, but these numbers combined aren't enough to sustain me from just the site, and I've heard nothing but countless stories of people who live off their 1m+ views a month websites.

      I do not have a mailing list, I'm not sure how such a thing would even help. I am a complete novice, I can't emphasize that enough. I simply had a good idea and have been winging it the entire time.
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