How would you monetize my (very useful) non-sales site?
I recently launched a website providing hundreds of Tips and Tricks for dozens of smartphones. If you Google "PhoneTipsandTricks" it will show up because that's the domain name with a dot com!
I am slowly getting an increase in traffic (although I stupidly launched with over 1000 tips, ranked highly and now i'm sandboxed...lesson learned!).
My problem is the site is making NO money. Over 6 weeks i've had about 3,500 visits, 8,000 page views. My visitors stay reading Tips for an average of 3 minutes and my bounce rate is around 55%.
I have an adsense Leaderboard, sidebar Skyscraper and a Large rectangle at the bottom of the List of Tips pages (and a big one on the Google organic search landing page). Then I have a few affiliate banners on my sidebar and I've created an Amazon "Top 5 Cell Phone accessories" sales page, with banners pointing to it around the site. I display affiliate banners based on IP address, so US and UK users see different banners (advertisers selling screen protectors, phone insurance etc). For international users I use a large Chitika rectangle block.
My problem is that NO ONE is clicking on any of the banners and i've had a pitiful 19 ad sense clicks out of 8,000 page views.
I want the site to be a quality authority destination for all smartphone users, so I don't think it should be riddled with ads. But I'm stuck as to how to monetise it. What would you experts do? What ads or banners would you place? Where would you place them? Can anyone suggest any other great ideas that i'm missing?
I realise i'm asking something for nothing, so feel free to point me to some kind of paid service / website / product which might help. Or if you're feeling kind, then I would love to hear your feedback
Thanks
Bryan
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