Need advice: 4 year old site getting 2,000+ unique visitors daily, but only making $1-2 / day

[Skribblez]

Hi there, I have a 4 year old site that is presently getting 2,000+ unique visitors daily on autopilot.

Link is http://www.pimpmywalk.com

I also have a forum on the site with 32,000+ members, and ~100 active users online at any one time: http://www.pimpmywalk.com/forum

It teaches people how to cwalk, a popular "dance" worldwide, but mainly in the US. The number of daily unique visitors has been pretty steady these past few years without much work on my part.

I have currently monetized the site with Adsense, which brings in about just under a dollar a day, or $1-$2 on some days. I just want to be able to make enough to not have to worry about the VPS (hosting) anymore, which costs about $76.50 per month. Adsense currently only brings in $50-$60, and even if I do manage to earn enough, adsense payment is pretty slow (NET-30) and the payment threshold is pretty high - $150 AUD for me. Not sure how much that is in USD.

Other things I've tried:

- Selling banner ads on the site/trying to find advertisers. No luck

- CPA. No luck. Got $1 leads here and there, but nothing compared to what I am earning with adsense now.

- Selling Clickbank products. No luck, only ever made a sale for a "hip hop instrumentals" product once in a 3 or 4 month period.

Any advice?

Does anyone have any advice for me? I don't want to annoy my users with popups though or restrict access to tutorials using CPALead.

What would you recommend for my situation? I also have another site that teaches a different dance, which gets about 400 unique visitors a day. Have monetized the site with adsense, but only earn about 10 cents every other day, lol.

[jamespitt]

Why don't you just put together a short ebook/course about this dance and sell it on the site? Just (say) $5?

[EastEnd Eddie]

Hi,

Firstly, have you linked the two sites together? Will help, for sure. What about putting some highly relevant Amazon or Ebay products on there as well?

Main thing is knowing what you want to do with the site and how much effort you want to put in. You haven't said anything about your rankings, keywords or how you promote the site.

[badboy_Nick]

I got a hunch that not that many people are interested in C-Walking and the niche being very, very small. It's kinda like selling "pink designer wellies for dogs", if you know what I mean.

What you could try is list-building by offering free tips, and then start cross-selling different type of offers that would work to that list (dancing lessons, cool t-shirts, ringtones, etc). That could work.

[Kevin_Hutto]

what else is the average C-walker into? Find that out and sell them that... I have a golf site that I sell cigars on...

[cellcom]

Well - #1 - I would first try and reduce my hosting costs if possible. Why do you need such an expensive hosting package ?

Now - there are some "niches" that are a little harder to monetize than others and this one is a little tricky.

With 2,000 uniques per day you should be able to make a few bucks though.

Since I do not know much about the niche - you need to find out what visitors to your site may be interested in - I am just guessing but ringtone offers may be one that comes to mind - also, possibly dating offers.

You may want to make a post in the CPA forum as well to find out what they suggest for specific offers and networks.

Chris

[Ken Reno]

Very interesting site - thanks for the clarification between cwalking types, I never knew they were 2 different forms.

Sent you a PM regarding your site - get at me!

[ImHot]

C walkers are not just interested in dancing, they also like things like ringtones, shirts, music, electronics, celebrity stuff (tv shows), etc. But you should also build a list. Get the emails of these people. 1 subscriber can easily be worth $1. If you can get just 10,000 people on your list, then you could possibly be making $10,000 a month.

But perhaps the majority of C walkers are teens. This is not good. Teens do not have credit cards and cannot buy like adults can.

In the end, if nothing seems to be working, just sell the website.

[Jesus Perez]

Put up "Basic" dance videos for everyone to see. At the end of the free videos, tease them with the "Advanced" members videos content. Charge $5/mth or $10/lifetime membership access.

Make sure free videos are LOW quality on YouTube. Member videos are high quality.

Ditch the VPS for Hostgator ($7.95/mth). You don't need a VPS for a site of that size.

Done.

[Allen Payne]

Don't give up cpa just yet.It's all about selecting the right offer.Try to test with different offers( like email submits) and see what's working for you.I have a website with about 1k visitors/day and makes me $30-60/day with cpa.

[Skribblez]

Reason for high hosting costs:

The reason the hosting costs are high is because of the forum. I have about 32,000 members on the forum and about ~100 or so members online at any given time: PimpMyWalk (Powered by Invision Power Board)

And I am also hosting all of my sites on the same VPS.

Linking the two sites:

Yep, I have linked this site to my other site that has 400+ unique daily visitors. It works out pretty good I guess, but still doesn't change the fact that I'm not earning enough from these two sites to pay off the VPS.

Offering premium content:

I can't really offer any premium content or advanced tutorials, because I am already offering everything on my site.

Tutorials section: Learn how to C Walk

I have created beginner and advanced tutorials. If I take down the advanced tutorials (hosted on youtube) I get rid of one of my big traffic sources. The tutorials I have on YouTube bring in the most traffic for me.

And even if I did take down the advanced tutorials, most of the advanced moves can be found on YouTube uploaded by other people.

Selling things:

Yep, cwalkers are teens for the most part. I haven't had much luck selling stuff on the site. I tried selling "instrumentals" as an affiliate once, and only ever made one sale in the period of 3 months.

I honestly don't know if selling anything on this site is going to work to be honest, just with all the issues with money, paypal, credit cards, etc. If I'm going to make anything, it's probably going to just be a sale here and there, or once in a blue moon. I've tried selling to teens before, just doesn't seem to work out.

Selling the site:

Sorry, I am not really looking to sell the site. It's the only site that I've owned for this long, and it has sentimental value to me. I personally cwalk myself and have been doing so ever since I started the site. To help keep the site going, I upload cwalk videos from time to time and link to the site and mixtape (compilation) videos featuring members from the site cwalking.

CPA:

Hmm, Allen007, I'll see. I just applied to MaxBounty, I'll see what they have.

What about ad networks that pay for every 1,000 impressions?

[JayYamada]

One of the fastest way to earn +$3 to $5 per day, if you are really getting 2000 unique traffic.

Ask for donations to substain the site, $1 each. Even if only 5 people donate, you wil still have enough to cover the server cost.

[Jesus Perez]

Create C walking contest to create a logo and tshirt.

Then use the designs to create merchandise and place it for sale using CafePress.
Go buy stickers and sell them too.

Make it very clear that purchasing the merchandise supports the website.

Put ads all over the site and forum for the merchandise.

Teens love to show off "what they're into" by wearing tshirts. This should help out.

[Dexter007]

Why dont you mix some special C dancing videos with CPA Lead? Ask them to fill up a survey to see the video which is released only at this place on the internet. I hope you get the point. By the way, if your site has some PR, then you might even sell some of the links.

[SurviveUnemployment]

Dude, with that many visitors you should be making <i>at least</i> $20 a day off AdSense. Before you go switching everything up, work with what you've got.

Try changing your ad placement. Put one right on top of the content area and blend it in. Put some link units in somewhere -- again, blended so they don't pop out as ads.

[Marhelper]

Simply laying out the Ad Sense better will probably increase your profits 10 fold.

[czilbersher]

Originally Posted by badboy_Nick

I got a hunch that not that many people are interested in C-Walking and the niche being very, very small. It's kinda like selling "pink designer wellies for dogs", if you know what I mean.

What you could try is list-building by offering free tips, and then start cross-selling different type of offers that would work to that list (dancing lessons, cool t-shirts, ringtones, etc). That could work.

"Pink designer wellies for dogs" ? Thanks, badboy_Nick! You just gave me my next brilliant idea for a $7 eBook!

[Rod Cortez]

If this were my site I would make C-Walking just one category of many different types of street dancing styles. There are affiliate programs out there that you could market and get commissions from. You could put up CPA offers. You could also put up Adsense.

I would go to dance studios and find some great dancers and make my own street-dancing DVDs and I would market those. C-Walking is a good start, but I would add other styles of street dancing. With 2,000 unique visitors a day you should be making at least $50 to 150 a day.

RoD

[fasteasysuccess]

absolutely---get rid of adsense.

You're making people click off you site for change versus keeping them on your site.

2000 visitors a day is great if targeted and if there coming for the dance-don't send them a away. You could easily throw up a autoresponder on a site say get your must have or whatever xyz tips for improving your style so you can be capturing interested people to raise their hand.

Then like rod said go down to dance studio and pay some people for an hour or two which would probably be pretty cheap or you could even offer them a percentage of sales for dancing and they might go for that so you don't have to pay them upfront. They get paid when you get paid.

Then start giving tips to that list you built and offer your new product. Just don't keep pitching them in emails, provide value and let them know about your product but the focus is getting them to keep opening your emails not unsubscribing.

Not everyone will buy right away, the average person may take up to 7 contacts or more by message, email, phone, mail, tv commercial or whatever. Thats why you see those infomercials keep playing and playing.

To Your Success-

[Skribblez]

Thanks guys for the advice. I'll try signing up for an aweber account to try it out. Looks like they also let you trial the product for $1 the first month and $19 per month thereafter.

[dacoda]

I also have a site, a 3 yr old site but still receiving very low unique visitors.

[dacoda]

What are the most effective technique to increase traffic to my site? anything you can suggest? thanks.

[DonnaLeona]

Why not sell ad space to local dance studios?

Have separate pages for each of the major cities.

LA, NYC, Chicago etc..

Hire some college kids to make some cold calls on commission for you.

Might be serious money.

Good Luck!

[eflo]

With that many visitors, the site has a lot of potential. In regards to a suggestion, I would seriously look at compiling all of the videos and selling a complete DVD set with proper menus - beginner, intermediate, advanced. That way they don't have to be connected online to see them all.

For a really good example of this, one of my mentors worked with the site: tabletennismaster.com

I agree with the other postings, I would also change your adsense layout.

Also, your niche includes a huge backend of shoes, shirts, baggy pants, suspenders. Find out what the top C-Walkers wear and find affiliate programs that match.

Lastly if you're getting that much traffic for the videos, I'd suggest getting all of your videos turned into 300-400 word articles and posted on infobarrel with a re-post of the videos and a backlink to your site for article marketing.


Best of luck with your site. Heck, I'd be interested in taking up C-Walking just to lose weight... hey...... now there's a niche!

[Skribblez]

Originally Posted by DonnaLeona

Why not sell ad space to local dance studios?

Have separate pages for each of the major cities.

LA, NYC, Chicago etc..

Hire some college kids to make some cold calls on commission for you.

Might be serious money.

Good Luck!

Yes, that's another good idea!

Most of my visitors are from the US, and there are plentyyyy of dance studios in the US!

This could work out very well too.

I could have a directory on the site and maybe charge $5-$10 a month to be listed in there. I would only need a handful of advertisers to surpass my hosting costs!

Originally Posted by eflo

With that many visitors, the site has a lot of potential. In regards to a suggestion, I would seriously look at compiling all of the videos and selling a complete DVD set with proper menus - beginner, intermediate, advanced. That way they don't have to be connected online to see them all.

For a really good example of this, one of my mentors worked with the site: tabletennismaster.com

I agree with the other postings, I would also change your adsense layout.

Also, your niche includes a huge backend of shoes, shirts, baggy pants, suspenders. Find out what the top C-Walkers wear and find affiliate programs that match.

Lastly if you're getting that much traffic for the videos, I'd suggest getting all of your videos turned into 300-400 word articles and posted on infobarrel with a re-post of the videos and a backlink to your site for article marketing.


Best of luck with your site. Heck, I'd be interested in taking up C-Walking just to lose weight... hey...... now there's a niche!

Ooh, this is a great idea! That's true, some people would probably learn better by watching the tutorials on their TV, or even on a portable DVD player outside.

Just not sure about the startup costs required for creating the DVD and a custom designed DVD case. I don't really have much money to "invest" - that's the problem with that. But it IS a good idea.

[mikeb209]

The problem is in your audience. Your visitors are mostly kids. I'd say in the 12-16 range. You're going to have a tough time making any real money with them.

Don't make the whole site about c-walking. Now that you have the site established and regular traffic coming in change it to a hip hop or dance related website with the c-walk being one aspect.

[Tomwood]

Your main problem is you have target the wrong audience very few of your clients have credit cards or any other means to pay for goods.

You could try and find some ad clients who are trying to brand there items and add awareness to there product which is then bought elsewhere

[udeze]

Nice dancing moves dude, you should consider selling some ad spaces or some dancing/music CD's, just figure out what your visitors might, If I were you, I will consider adding some affiliate links to CD and Video downloads, you never can tell what will happen when you experiment one or two things