2000 unique visitors a day - how to monetize?

[dunker]

Dear Warriors,

for the first time I'm in a position where I could start making some money on the internet. Two months ago I started a website in the "guitar" niche. Since I've been an active web developer for 4 years now, I was able to add a lot of unique functionality to this website and as a result of that it's becoming quite popular.

Google Analytics tells me that I get roughly 2'000 visitors per day. In the last 30 days, I've had over 30'000 unique visitors on this website. So, now it's time for me to find out – how to monetize?

I think I should tell you as well that my visitors don't come to the website with the intention to buy anything, they are just looking for different bits of information.

So far I've only been using some AdSense, but totally unobtrusive, getting a CTR of 0.4%. It makes me $1 a day. Ouch. So I got to thinking and I've come up with a bunch of questions that I hope some of you will help me with:

1. Are there any good CPM Ad Networks and how much do they pay for 1000 impressions of 120x600 banner in my niche?

2. Would you implement an affiliate program promoting some guitar-related products or should I be promoting some generally-appealing products like "easy money on web", "dating", stuff like that. Let me remind you, my guitarists don't intend to buy anything in the first place.

3. Should I start creating a list and offer some freebies for joining it?

4. Does anyone of you use paid surveys as an additional revenue stream? Which ones? What's the $$$?

5. Is there any good sistem for donations that accepts a lot of different ways of payment? Maybe PayPal?

Generally, I really only have two questions:
a) How would YOU monetize a website like that?
b) How much can this website make me (per month) in your opinion?

Thank you all so much in advance, I really appreciate everything I get on this forum, you are the best!

Yours truly.

[jonparker83]

While I'm not new to internet marketing, I'm new to making money with it so feel free to take my advice with a pinch of salt...

I would consider doing the following:

1) Create a squeeze page offering a free download of PLR content
2) Build your list
3) Give them more free stuff in exchange for a survey on possible products
4) Delivery those products either yourself or through affiliates

[sparrow]

I did not see you mention are you building a list?

This is the biggest cardinal sin in Web Marketing.

All those uniques gone, while you are trying to figure what works to monetize.

Ed

[Easy Cash]

$1 a day with 2000 visitors.....your kidding right????

[Carl Henry]

Hi Dunker,

I would strongly suggest you continue with the guitar theme, if they are coming for your information anything which fits in with the area of interest will be a good candidate for a potential sale.

Can you promote a supplier of guitars, music, learn to play courses (books, video, cd etc) plectrums (fancy ones), guitar customising kits.

If you do a deal to supply leads and sales you could negotiate a commission and the supplier would do all the delivery side.

What's the address of your website? I'd like to have a look so I could suggest more specific ideas.

Best regards,
Carl Henry

[edpudol1973]

Wow that's great traffic why not search for high paying cpa programs in your niche

[Sirius Lin]

List building will be a great way to monetarise the traffic that you're getting. Entice them with a few freebies for signing on, then ensure that you send out quality information on a regular basis to your list (preferrably, this info shouldn't be on your site so your readers will be more keen on getting onto/staying on your list). Once you've built a relationship with your list, you can start sprinkling a few affiliate links into your emails.

~ Sirius

[macchiavelli]

Definetly build a list!
Out of those 2000 UV's a day 200 or more could end up subscribing to your list.
Then you know the drill, market to them, and offer them good stuff, maybe even cpa related...the possibilities are huge!

Or you could sell me the site for $300 hehehehehe.

[Lady NaNa]

I am just goin to repeat what everyone says..BUILD A LIST! and do it immediately...

[jaiburn]

building a list is definately a good idea, because you get targetted visitors. Make a downloadable ebook report of some sort, and offer it to your readers to start your list up.

With 2000 visitors a day, you should be making heaps more then $1, even without a list. Adsense shoudl make a lot more then this (I mkae more then $1 a day with sites with only 100 visitors a day or so). You should work on your positioning with adsense.

The other thing is to promote products. Find an ebook on clickbank, like learn guitar or something. Even if they aren't looking to buy when they land on the site, people still buy things.

Put it in your sidebar, or write some posts up and include the affiliate link. You don't have to be really obvious about it. For example when I write in my make money online free blog, I write something like:

To make my websites I use <link>productX</link> which provides these really good features. A free alternative thats not as feature rich is freeProductY.

It's there, but not bluntly, buy this product. Do the same kind of thing on your blog.

hope this helps.

[kittyluver]

This is really fantastic to get 2000 UV per day within three months of start. why don't write an e-book on this topic and sell the same to us? we won't start a Guitar themed website. we, the warriors are really so good....(lol).

Try to sign up with few affiliates like Never Blue ads, Pepperjam Ads, etc. If your visitors are from US, you can sign up with chitika to get more money...

[avc]

Hi Dunker,

Here are some other ways to monetize your site besides Google AdSense:

- Offer Cost Per Sale or Cost Per Lead affiliate programs such as ClickBank products, PayDotCom, or Amazon products. An easy way to integrate ClickBank and PayDotCom products into your website is to create AdSense-style ads with the same look and feel but where you can earn more money on a per sale basis.

- Offer a paid newsletter. Start by offering a free newsletter and then have a way that people can upgrade to a paid newsletter or eZine. Your paid eZine for example could be in PDF format and look more like a magazine than your free newsletter which could be a simple email. You could also offer your affiliate products in your newsletter and eZine to earn extra money from it.

- Sell advertising space on your site. Many people are looking for places to advertise their website or blog and if you have a popular blog pulling in good page views then they will be prepared to pay you something to have their website advertised on your blog.

Hope this helps.

Albert

[Lance K]

Do you know anything about your visitors demographics? Psychographics?

What types of information are they most often looking for?

[zach2393]

What you HAVE to do is simply make a list. When the customer opens the webpage you should have a pop-up window that says somehting along the lines of : "Want more guitar tips and tricks? Join the newsletter that is helping guitarists worldwide!"
And ask for there name and email.
Simple right?
Use an autoresponder like aweber for this ofcourse.
And than hopefully you can build a big list. I wouldn't doubt you COULD get 200 people signed up for your newsletter each day if in fact you have 2000 visitors.
Now simply send out great content to them about once or twice a week. No more.
Than they will gain a trust and comfort in you, than go to clickbank find a GOOD product and than tell them that you used it with amazing results and you highly reccomend it.
Since they have a trust in you they will take your word for it and buy it.
Do this as many times as you feel comfortable.
Also make a banner add that has your clickbank nickname encoded in it, place these banners anywhere you used to have adsense! And than when they click the banner hopefully you make a sale.
Adsense is for losers to be quite honest. Even sites that get 100 000 clicks a day I would still recommend have banners for clickbank products instead.
Try these I would expect you to make near 500 dollars this month from it. Than it will only grow my friend.
Zach

[dunker]

First, thank you so much for helping me with ideas, you truly are the best!

Thanks to your answers, I have pretty much decided what to do - at least, how to begin with the monetization of my website.

I will replace the 120x600 AdSense banner on the left with an appealing banner, promoting a good ClickBank product. On the top of the content I will put one unobtrusive AdSense Link Unit (468x15).

Then, on the left side, after a few seconds another banner will appear (again, unobtrusively, I don't want to annoy my visitors). This banner will be promoting a free guitar course with some encouraging text, so that I can start building my list. Based on your responses, the list seems to be the holy grail of internet marketing.

I just need to take a day or two to write all the software (autoresponder software and a nice DHTML pop-up banner). I always write all the software by myself - because I want full control over everything and because I can (I've attended some European programming competitions).

So, what's your opinion about this plan? Should I be making a revenue, worth mentioning in a couple of months? The number of daily visitors currently still rises for 100+ every day.

Once again, thank you so much and I am still open for all suggestions!

[bluesguy]

Have you considered setting it up as a review page for affiliate products?

If you'd like to hook up, drop me a line. I'm in the same niche as you.

Click out my signature (clickbank product) and let me know if you'd be interested. I could work out something extra special for your visitors. :>

Zack

[MikeLantz]

Originally Posted by dunker

I just need to take a day or two to write all the software (autoresponder software and a nice DHTML pop-up banner). I always write all the software by myself - because I want full control over everything and because I can (I've attended some European programming competitions).

This could be the biggest mistake you ever make in your business - Don't Do It.

Coming from a fellow programmer (I have been doing web programming for 10 years now), I can tell you that what you said above will limit your ability to do business significantly.

Seriously, writing your own Autoresponder software? Signup for Aweber of GetReponse and you will see much better results from your email marketing, and you will save a lot of time/money in the long run.

The same goes for scripts. Why write your own DHTML banner when there is an abundance of free scripts that you can use and modify.

I am not saying that creating certain sites from scratch is a bad idea, I do it sometimes myself, but it is often not the best way to go. In this case, it is NOT the best way to go.

Take my advice, and you will go much farther in this business.

Mike

[Jen McVey]

Thanks so much for the original post and all the feedback. I'm in the same situation, with nearly 2000 visitors a day to a dog web site I have. But they're all looking for a freebie so I'm far from making a killing with it.

I've been lazy about building a list, so this was just the kick in the arse I needed!

[Internet Income]

Build a list and a relationship with the people and they will buy from you - guaranteed.

[Jarod Lam]

Hi dunker,

Here's what I would do:

1. Conduct a survey using SurveyMonkey.com - Powerful tool for creating web surveys. Online survey software made easy! and ask your visitors what products and information they're looking for.

2. If they're looking for guitar lessons or playing tips, find a professional guitarist to create a DVD home study course (or a series of courses). Depending on your financial situation, you can split the profits with the guitarist or pay him a one-time fee.

3. Set up a sales page to sell the guitar course. You can sell it as a digital download first to test the response and once it's a proven seller, sell it as a physical product at a higher price.

4. Add the link to your sales page on every page on your site. Make sure you test and track the sales page link to obtain maximum clickthru and conversion rates.

Hope this helps...good luck!
Jarod

[Lance K]

Originally Posted by Jarod Lam

Hi dunker,

Here's what I would do:

1. Conduct a survey using SurveyMonkey.com - Powerful tool for creating web surveys. Online survey software made easy! and ask your visitors what products and information they're looking for.

2. If they're looking for guitar lessons or playing tips, find a professional guitarist to create a DVD home study course (or a series of courses). Depending on your financial situation, you can split the profits with the guitarist or pay him a one-time fee.

3. Set up a sales page to sell the guitar course. You can sell it as a digital download first to test the response and once it's a proven seller, sell it as a physical product at a higher price.

4. Add the link to your sales page on every page on your site. Make sure you test and track the sales page link to obtain maximum clickthru and conversion rates.

Hope this helps...good luck!
Jarod

Yes do that, BUT also give away a kick ass guitar (and ship it free) to one lucky winner chosen randomly from those who participate in the survey.

[alexanderberson]

Build list.
Offer them free ebook about whatever your website is about. Collect all those emails. Then once you build the list, you can email affilated promotions to all of your contacts.

How do you make $1 a day with 30,000 a month traffic. It doesnt make sense. You probably placed your ads incorrectly. There is a way to increase that by changing where you put the ads. Your specific niche may not be competative, so therefore it is possible to low per click pay.

I would strongly suggest to get cpa. Find sponsors to put their banners and charge them per 1000 impressions.

Also you mentioned affiliate products. I think it is a good idea to place products that suits the website the most.

Hope that helps
Good luck! You doing really good!

[dunker]

Thank you all once again!

I have really taken some time to think about all of the suggestions and I'm starting to get a clear image.

Could you recommend me a good CPM ad provider for my niche? How much could I expect to get per 1000 impressions? Actually, I think I will just create a shiny banner and promote some related ClickBank products.

I also have two questions about e-mails that you are sending to your lists:
1. Do you send HTML or plain-text e-mails?
2. Do you write all the content inside the e-mail or do you simply give a link to a pre-set page on your website?

@MikeLantz: Thank you for your suggestion, I will have to think it through. Well, the DTHML pop-up is really an absolutely positioned DIV with 2 JavaScript functions (onload trigger and onclick close), 10 lines of code maybe. Besides, I have some very specific demands about this pop-up, so it includes a lot of messing around with cookies.

When it comes to the Autoresponder software, once again it's simply a cronjob, running a script, connected to the database of e-mail addresses. This way I can add all the fields (age, hobbies, whatever) to every database entry I want and later invite my subscribers to participate in a survey and stuff like that. As I've said, I love to have the control. And not only that - first I would like to see if I can actually make some profit with this approach.

Obviously I'll have to improve my monetization methods, because the stats for last 30 days were 36'700 visits, 31'900 uniques and I made $18. Well, actually my site was practically ad-free, because I wanted to build an audience first.

So, I will get to work now ... and I would be really grateful if someone answered the 2 questions above. Thank you once again!

[MikeLantz]

Originally Posted by dunker

@MikeLantz: Thank you for your suggestion, I will have to think it through. Well, the DTHML pop-up is really an absolutely positioned DIV with 2 JavaScript functions (onload trigger and onclick close), 10 lines of code maybe. Besides, I have some very specific demands about this pop-up, so it includes a lot of messing around with cookies.

When it comes to the Autoresponder software, once again it's simply a cronjob, running a script, connected to the database of e-mail addresses. This way I can add all the fields (age, hobbies, whatever) to every database entry I want and later invite my subscribers to participate in a survey and stuff like that. As I've said, I love to have the control. And not only that - first I would like to see if I can actually make some profit with this approach.

The popup is easy, but there are some nice scripts out there that do quite a bit more than a few lines of codes.

Its the autoresponder where you will be making a big mistake. Its not about how "easy" you think it might be to create, it is about what kind of deliverability you get.

Services like aweber, getresponse and others spend lots of money on teams of people who make sure their email messages are getting through for their clients. If you plan on building a list of any size, this will make you more money in the long run.

The key here is mindset. Just because you can do it yourself, doesn't mean that you should. And, another big mistake is thinking that no one else could do as good of a job as you. Let all that go an think like a business owner. Learn this now, and you will waste a lot less time on your learning curve.

And, just a note on your numbers... With 30,000 uniques in a niche like yours, you should be at least making $2,000/mo by now, possibly more. Find out what your visitors want, and give it to them, and then give them option to pay for more.

Good luck.

Mike

[CDawson]

Well I guess you have done the hard part, I know their are some guitar e-books you can promote on clickbank, and I would look into adsense / ppc ads

[Simplweb]

Its all about the list....

Originally Posted by dunker

I just need to take a day or two to write all the software (autoresponder software and a nice DHTML pop-up banner). I always write all the software by myself - because I want full control over everything and because I can (I've attended some European programming competitions).

To add to the shouting crowd, that would be insanity. You can't possibly gain the deliverability of the whitelist relations that services have with ISP's

My preference is icontact.

ps
Have I seen you on the TS member forums ?

[dunker]

@MikeLantz: Mike, obviously you will get me to change my mind. I've asked my hosting provider 2 days ago about deliverability and they said it should be 99%, but on the other hand I really have heard about issues with that. Look, what bothers me is this: If I somehow really get anything close to 200 subscribers per day, I will soon have a large list, which means I will pay quite some money. But my visitors come to the site without any intention of buying, so conversion rate might be appalling and I won't earn anything. And if I make my own script, it doesn't cost me a dime and I can try many different things.

Where could I read more about the delivery rate of AutoResponder providers and various hosting providers? Which AutoResponder would you recommend me anyway? AWeber?

@Simplweb: I have no idea what TS stands for, so I kinda doubt it. But it is still possible.

@everybody: I'm now finished with my fancy pop-up invitation and now it's time for me to find out how to actually sell something through all those follow up messages. Have you found a really good pattern and you just stick to it? How do you usually approach your readers?

I was thinking about telling a bit about myself in the first e-mail and giving some tips ... Then there is a lesson on a particular subject in the second e-mail, on another subject in the third one and so on ... The problem is - when and where do I actually sell something?

Do you always establish yourself as a professional? I'm not a professional guitar player, it's been my hobby for 7 years now. I can give a lot of advice, but I don't really know the stuff they teach in guitar schools.

How would you approach the subscribers on my list? Thank you for your tips in advance!

[MikeLantz]

Originally Posted by dunker

@MikeLantz: Mike, obviously you will get me to change my mind. I've asked my hosting provider 2 days ago about deliverability and they said it should be 99%, but on the other hand I really have heard about issues with that. Look, what bothers me is this: If I somehow really get anything close to 200 subscribers per day, I will soon have a large list, which means I will pay quite some money. But my visitors come to the site without any intention of buying, so conversion rate might be appalling and I won't earn anything. And if I make my own script, it doesn't cost me a dime and I can try many different things.

Who cares if you are spending money when you are making a lot more?

I personally use aWeber, but they have recently raised their rates for new customers. I am really happy with their service.

But, with that said, GetResponse has better pricing. I think they are still at $20 for 10,000 subscribers, and $10 per extra 10k.

I don't think you will be getting anywhere near 200 subs per day, at least not for very long. But, if you do, great! Just monetize the site effectively and you are all set.

Mike

PS: Trust me when I say you won't be able to create any autoresponder script that comes close to what the big boys offers for a low cost. These guys have many full-time developers building their service. Give them a try (they both have free trials) and see what I mean. Good luck!

[Michael Oksa]

Originally Posted by Jen McVey

Thanks so much for the original post and all the feedback. I'm in the same situation, with nearly 2000 visitors a day to a dog web site I have. But they're all looking for a freebie so I'm far from making a killing with it.

I've been lazy about building a list, so this was just the kick in the arse I needed!

Hi Jen,

Not sure if you are using any CPA offers on your page, but these can be a great way to get income through freebie seekers. You won't get the money from them, but rather the CPA network.

Just a thought.

Now, go build that list!

~Michael

[Simplweb]

Email Marketing & Surveying Software - iContact

[Jen McVey]

Originally Posted by Michael Oksa

Hi Jen,

Not sure if you are using any CPA offers on your page, but these can be a great way to get income through freebie seekers. You won't get the money from them, but rather the CPA network.

Just a thought.

Now, go build that list!

~Michael

Michael, thanks for the tip! I've just started with CPA offers and seeing some response...just not much from this group yet. Will see how the list building goes!

Jen

[Mark Brian]

Just a quick tip for Adsense: If you decide to focus with marketing affiliate products, I suggest completely removing Adsense from your website. They will only drive users away from your site and possibly result in to a lost sale. Replace them with banners to the affiliate product your are promoting.

On the other hand should you decide to focus on Adsense, a basic tip is to place a 1 or 2 huge square Ad (perhaps 250x250 or higher) above the fold just below your headline. I would expect $10-20/day or $300-400/mo minimum Adsense earnings (probably higher) based from your daily UVs. And then like all others have said, you can maintain a list to market affiliate products via email.

[dunker]

Well, I have decided to use just a little of AdSense on the bottom of my pages - and even for that I have a really stupid reason. I just don't want to risk losing my position in SERPs - and if I have AdSense on my sites, Google benefits by keeping me up there. I know it's stupid, but I just don't want to risk it, because I'm really satisfied with how I rank in Google after such a short time.

I will open an account at AWeber today, you have convinced me ... I find GetResponse's website a bit confusing, there are no prices / subscribers, there is no live help (for non-users), ...

But I still really need you, guys ... Please, help me with that:

I have no product of my own, so I will need to market affiliate products to my list ... Could you please give me some hints on how to do this most effectively? As I've asked before: Do you always establish yourself as a professional? I'm not a professional guitar player, it's been my hobby for 7 years now. I can give a lot of advice, but I don't really know the stuff they teach in guitar schools.

I don't want to struggle with that when I know that some of you are professionals when it comes to selling aff products to your lists. So please, give me some advice on marketing affiliate products to my list. In exchange I can register AWeber using your affiliate link or something like that.

Thank you very much!

[Terry M.]

With 2000 unique visitors per day, it would be pretty
easy for your to monetize on them almost instantly,
but I would recommend against this, as this is not the
most profitable way to monetize on the traffic.
(I understand you had mentioned they don't come to
your site with a buying mentality.)

Anyway, I would also recommend against using
a squeeze page, as your site is providing free
content, meaning they will want to come back
to your site over and over again, surely some of
them would bookmark your *insider page*, but
a part of them will just type in your URL every
time back, and if they see your squeeze in the way,
it might just make your visitors leave your site
before they bother to get back in again.

Instead of a squeeze, use a Hover Ad in the
most unobtrusive way that pops up in the corner
where they won't interfere with your visitors.

Finally, you need to offer something that doesn't
cost you anything, yet compelling enough (high perceived
value) to give away to make your visitors to subscribe
to your Hover Ad form.

This is done mostly by giving away a 10 to 30-page
free ebook.

But don't stop there, after they had claimed your
ebook, don't expect all of them will read your ebook,
many of them won't.

This is where the vital role of the follow up emails
kick in. Set up an auto-responder (for example,
a consecutive 7-day follow up emails) to continue
giving the similar quality information in the ebook
that you had given away for free. In the follow up
emails, point them and remind them to read
your ebook to make sure they will benefit.

Apart from the 7-day auto follow up. You should
also send out newsletter with quality info on
guitar from time to time to bond with your subscribers
so they remember who you are.

And all these are just BUT the beginning!

I still haven't gotten into even 10% of all the
profitable ways that you can monetize on your
list yet!

"2. Would you implement an affiliate program promoting some guitar-related products or should I be promoting some generally-appealing products like "easy money on web", "dating", stuff like that. Let me remind you, my guitarists don't intend to buy anything in the first place."

That wouldn't be targeted, you may be able to make some
money from promoting a dating book to your guitar list,
as they are mostly consist of male (I assume?) and could
be interested in learning to be better with women, BUT
the money that you can generate from this will have absolutely
NO COMPARISON to what you can generate if you focus
back into promoting/selling your related products. Since
they will be much more targeted.

My reply seems a bit too long now, if you had read
all of what I said and am interested to listen to more,
more a reply and let me know...coz I want to make
sure what I typed had been read, don't like to talk
to myself.

Cheers,

Terry

[Sarah Harvey]

If you were situated in the UK I would have said contact Bloodstock.uk.com and become an affiliate. I am not affiliated to them, but I go the festival regularly. You would make quite a bit of money doing that anywhere though...contact local festivals in and around your area and team up with them. They sell merchandise so you will make a profit if someone buys through your site. Why music festivals....well its obvious- music!

[dunker]

@Sarah Harvey: Thank you for your tip!

@Terry M.: Terry, I've thoroughly read everything you have written. Twice! And I am eager for more. My plan is to offer a free guitar course using a pop-up box (that is only shown once a day, so it does not annoy visitors who visit more pages). When someone subscribes to my list, I was planning on sending them some guitar lessons every 4 days or so.

What I do not know is how to approach them so they will WANT TO buy the products? I don't want to be intrusive, I want to make them feel that they need them. If you could tell me more on that subject, I would be really more than grateful.

How would you approach a list of guitarists? What would you promote? How would you do that? Thank you once again!

[Terry M.]

Originally Posted by dunker

@Terry M.: Terry, I've thoroughly read everything you have written. Twice! And I am eager for more. My plan is to offer a free guitar course using a pop-up box (that is only shown once a day, so it does not annoy visitors who visit more pages). When someone subscribes to my list, I was planning on sending them some guitar lessons every 4 days or so.

What I do not know is how to approach them so they will WANT TO buy the products? I don't want to be intrusive, I want to make them feel that they need them. If you could tell me more on that subject, I would be really more than grateful.

How would you approach a list of guitarists? What would you promote? How would you do that? Thank you once again!

I'm glad you had enjoyed my writing.

I would love to help you out Dunker.

Ready for more? Okay, here you go,
all I had been doing (or telling you to do)
so far, are but sequences to sell your
list a product for you to make money. (Or
an affiliate's product.)

However, there is one thing in the step
above I had literately left out, which, if
implemented correctly, can easily explode
your sales. (I left it out, because right
now you are still not in the position to
execute that part, when you are, I will
point you to go back, and add that little
trick back to your sequence above, and
you will see how powerful this trick can
be. You can also email me if you want
unlimited one on one access to me. Don't
worry, I am not going to plug **** out
with an Internet Marketing related product
and sell to you. Obviously it's not worth
my time to type so much just to sell
a $37 ebook. So feel free to email me.)

But I digress, anyway, it always boils
down these 3 ways to make money
online. (There are more but these
are the most popular.)

1. Earn PPC. (Adsense, YSM & Adcenter)
Or banner ad.

2. Sell your own product.

3. Sell an affiliate product.

The sequences I had layed out for yous
are focused only on the 2nd and 3rd option.

Since I have realized that you are
having problems coming up with your
own product, so I will focus on the
3rd option.

Right now, if you haven't, I want
you to do two things.

(I know you have asked me to show
you about "how to" actually approach
your list to sell them products, but
bear with me, if you don't get his right
(set the stage right), the tactics won't
be able to work at their full power)

1. Think of all the products/services that are
related to guitar that your list will be
interested (or better yet!) already spending
money on.

Write down a list of them (You won't promote
them all though), do some research on their quality,
their reputation and ofcoz, prices and how much
commission you will get.

Try to think outta the box here.

For example, you might promote an information
about how to play guitar better (ebook, audio,
dvd etc...) Or you can actually promote a
guitar store, selling guitars, these would be
the most general products most people would
think of promoting.

However, if you want to stand out with less
competition, you can also promote something
that most people can't think of.

For example: When the computer business
boomed in the mid 90s, and when many tried
to jump on the bandwagon to claim a share
by selling computers, a small group was making
a truckload by selling the simplest service
on teaching people to use Windows or fix
simple Windows bugs. I wish I can give you a specific
product idea to promote in your guitar niche,
but I haven't spent enough time to know
too deeply about guitar yet (though will soon
in the future), so unfortunately, you will
have to come up with this yourself, but
since you know your market, I am pretty
sure the example above should stimulate
your creativity.

So, if you can come up with something
not many people are promoting in your
niche, yet! Your list will buy them, then
you will have much less competition, thus
much bigger chance to sell them to your
list.

But you if can't come up with something
rare, then just stick with the two general
things I had pointed out above.

2. Now that you had decided what products
to promote to your list. Here is a vital step.

Spend some time to do research on the
quality of the products. I know many
may be tempted to just look at how fat
the commission the affiliate pays out
when promoting products. PLEASE DON'T!

That is actually a lose-lose situation.

Instead, spend some time on them, if
it's an info product you promote, contact
the owner and show him your website,
tell him you are receiving a large amount
of traffic and would like them to give
you a free copy of their products for
you to review before you decide to promote it.

If it is a physical product, this will
be harder as you can't get your hands
on the product. In this case, if you
are gonna promote a guitar, I assume
you will probably know what brands
and models are good. But you can
try them in your local guitar shop anyway,
so the other thing that is important
would be the customer service
of the company you decide to promote.

After you had spent sometime,
and had chosen your winner
products. We're about 30%
done here to monetize on
your list.

You have done so much work
so far, and with $0 in return,
you might be tempted to
promote the products as
soon as possible to reward
yourself with the work that
you had just done.

Well, you can do that,
but again, the results, the
amount of sales and the bottom line
of what you will really earn
would only be a fraction of
what it can be if you had
done all the work before
you try to squeeze a cent
out of your list.

However, if you are tight on
the budget and really need
to generate some cash flow
to survive now, then by all
means, promote them now. Otherwise,
keep building up the Power,
it's kind of like how Goku
gathers the energy for the
spirit bomb, the longer you
hold, the more Power you
gather. (Don't over cooked though)

Sorry, I am too tired now,
I am not sure if you still
want to keep listening
to me after all that work
I had appointed you to take,
I must get away from my
computer now. Post a reply
if you'd like more.

[Simon_Sezs]

Originally Posted by dunker

I also have two questions about e-mails that you are sending to your lists:
1. Do you send HTML or plain-text e-mails?

Why not do both? I don't really know the reason why but if you do both, the "spam" score lowers.

Originally Posted by dunker

2. Do you write all the content inside the e-mail or do you simply give a link to a pre-set page on your website?

Test both. In different niches, you will get different reactions.

As far as adsense is concerned, your CTR is WAYYYYYY too low. You won't be breaking the bank with adsense at any rate, but I wouldn't be surprised if your site is smart priced by google (are you making .05 cents a click?). Also, ask yourself this, do you get a lot of repeat visitors? Is there a primary keyword that is driving traffic to your page?

If so, google it and check out the ads for the keyword query. Monitor them for the next couple weeks to see if they are changing or if it is the same ad from the same company day in and day out. If it is, check out their page.

Do they have an affiliate program? If so, join it and promote it.

Feeling adventurous? Create a similar product. Purchase their product, study the backend (is the product a loss leader? what else are they promoting?, ect), sign up to their list and analyze what they are doing (USP, ad copy and the psychology they are using, ect.)

Now, go out and create something similar BUT either better or cheaper.

Just my 2 cents on this.

[pydy9916]

With less than 200 visitors per day I am currently making $2-3 per day on Adsense..I followed some great guidelines on placement...and by the way I would kill for 2000 visitors per day!

Place a banner at the top of the page..at the beginning of content should be a 250x250 block. This size seems to perform best. All ads should be above the fold..you had mentioned putting some at the bottom of the page. I tried that and it bombed.

Use only the standard blue for your links but blend the background to match your site. Use only black for text on ads.

Do not place ads on every page..tends to irritate the readers..go for the pages with the most expensive keywords.

I made these simple changes in May of this year and went from zero to .50 per day to above numbers...now all I need is the traffic!

Good luck
Mary Kay

[dunker]

@Simon_Sezs: I've learnt that autoresponder service providers such as AWeber allow you to use both types of e-mails, HTML and plain-text. So I guess I will be using both types, yup.

@pydy9916: After I was told here by some guys that my website should be making about $2000 / month when marketing to my list, I kind of lost interest in AdSense. Because it's just as you've said - if you want AdSense to really work, it needs to be obtrusive as hell to the visitor ... I prefer giving some good free info to my visitors via e-mail and if they end up buying something, even better for me.

@Terry M.: Terry, I can't really thank you enough, you're obviously telling me the A-Z of list building ... I will absolutely do everything you've told me to do and since I don't really need the cash right away, I would love it if you could tell me the last part of your story. So - how would you approach the subscribers to make the most money in the long run?

As I've said, I was thinking of sending them a lesson every 4 days or so ... and then slowly start including some affiliate links, then a review of a guitar-related product from time to time and so on.

I really can't tell you how much I appreciate all the time you've taken to help me. Thank you SO MUCH!

[dunker]

Now I've come across another problem. I can't decide which product to promote ...

I was thinking about promoting something like Jamorama, but this approach with red titles and the yellow highlighter kinda feels cheap to me. On the up side: You do get your $25 every time you sell something.

And then I came across JamPlay.com, which seems to be really amazing. They have a professional website, 18 teachers, 160 hours of high-definition video material ... The only problem is that it's a membership site. So you get $20 when you refer someone, but you get nothing from that same person later.

So, if I recommend Jamorama after five e-mails to 1000 subscribers, I might make 10 sales and get $250. And a month later, I could recommend them something else and make some money again.

But if I recommend them JamPlay.com, I might as well make $250 in the first month. But then they will be paying their membership fee to JamPlay and I will not be able to sell them anything any more, because JamPlay pretty much has everything for that fee ...

So, what do you think I should do? Do you see my problem?

Please, help me with this:
1. Are there any great guitar membership sites that pay you a part of membership fee every month for the people you have sent them (read as: recurring affiliate program)?
2. Which guitar products do you promote with a lot of success?

Thank you!

[BlackTactics]

Heres my idea:

Since you have what appears to be a content site I have an idea.

Redesign your landing page to a sqeeze page. Why don't you create a "free membership" site that that they get access to after they join your squeeze page and the "free membership" is your original content.

Then create a "gold members" area where they can get access to premium content (more videos, courses etc) and you can make even more money from the back end. Ofrcourse you can place your adsense in the "free content" area.

Finally you can send your "Free" subscribers sneak peaks in their email inboxes of your premium content and leave them wanting more.

Anyways thats what I would do.

[dunker]

@BlackTactics: I can't do that because I need all my content to be totally public - I have really focused on SEO and I get more than 90% of my visitors from search engines. Besides, I guess my content isn't the most appropriate to do that.

So, the questions still stand:

1. Are there any great guitar membership sites that pay you a part of membership fee every month for the people you have sent them (read as: recurring affiliate program)?
2. Which quality guitar products do you promote with a lot of success?

[unknowncat]

i see it's been a while since the last post and i'm wondering how things are panning out for you. in my search for wisdom on monetization i found my self here and there are many good ideas and lessons. want to say a few thoughts..

first and most important i want to say to you, with a site like yours you have leverage. don't let the internet trick you into thinking there aren't people out there..

negotiate. find partners, and don't be desperate about it. mostly i suggest you contact these folks at jamplay. you say they seem to be amazing and your summary leads me to believe the same. now clearly you have a site that's amazing enough to be bringing in tons of people who, if they bought anything, would probably like to buy from jamplay. the drawback is that it's a one time shot of twenty dollars right? so here's my advice to you. find their contact form and send them a short and direct message that you own a website with however many thousands of unique highly targeted visitors and would like to discuss a partnership. maybe even find their phone number and ask their phone person who's in charge and tell them you believe your visitors are the perfect audience to market to for jamplay. tell them you think the twenty bucks per shot is not quite what you're looking for and see if they would be willing to work out a special arrangement where you get a recurring ten percent or twenty percent or whatever you can negotiate for the entire life of the customer.

there are affiliate softwares out there for tracking this style of commission and it may behoove you to actually buy that sytem for them if an agreement is reached. an offer to do this may even be part of your negotiation leverage. approach them with a sure and define goal and be prepared for some back and forth pros and cons and haggeling stuff. if you really want to build the relationship you may even want to fly to them and have a proper sit down. after all, this could lead to many thousands of dollars for you in the long run.

short of creating your own video lessons which is a whole art in itself, i think this is your best bet to earn big with your humongus traffic flow.

i wish you the best with your site, seems you've done some good work and deserve to be rewarded. oh yeah one other thing. i've read a few times that it takes an average of eight marketing messages before a person chooses to buy.. so i think the best approach would be a site wide advertisment for 'free guitar lessons by email' or some such, send out regular lessons as you mentioned you were planning, then within those emails place ads for this great new partner at the very top and bottom of the email lesson.

[Floyd Fisher]

Three words:

Build A List

Three more words:

Build A List

Sounding repetitive? Good, now do it.

[Hililuud]

Originally Posted by dunker

Dear Warriors,

for the first time I'm in a position where I could start making some money on the internet. Two months ago I started a website in the "guitar" niche. Since I've been an active web developer for 4 years now, I was able to add a lot of unique functionality to this website and as a result of that it's becoming quite popular.

Google Analytics tells me that I get roughly 2'000 visitors per day. In the last 30 days, I've had over 30'000 unique visitors on this website. So, now it's time for me to find out – how to monetize?

I think I should tell you as well that my visitors don't come to the website with the intention to buy anything, they are just looking for different bits of information.

So far I've only been using some AdSense, but totally unobtrusive, getting a CTR of 0.4%. It makes me $1 a day. Ouch. So I got to thinking and I've come up with a bunch of questions that I hope some of you will help me with:

1. Are there any good CPM Ad Networks and how much do they pay for 1000 impressions of 120x600 banner in my niche?

2. Would you implement an affiliate program promoting some guitar-related products or should I be promoting some generally-appealing products like "easy money on web", "dating", stuff like that. Let me remind you, my guitarists don't intend to buy anything in the first place.

3. Should I start creating a list and offer some freebies for joining it?

4. Does anyone of you use paid surveys as an additional revenue stream? Which ones? What's the $$$?

5. Is there any good sistem for donations that accepts a lot of different ways of payment? Maybe PayPal?

Generally, I really only have two questions:
a) How would YOU monetize a website like that?
b) How much can this website make me (per month) in your opinion?

Thank you all so much in advance, I really appreciate everything I get on this forum, you are the best!

Yours truly.

This must be a prank right? You are asking questions you know the answers too...maybe I'm just being judgemental.

[seobro]

You could use BADsense, but a better idea is to sell a product. If you do not have a product, become an affiliate of someone who does.

The positive of being an aff is no warehouse full of product, the negative is that they can drop you or go out of biz.