Monetizing a 10 year old site? Just acquired. 600 daily visits in a rare niche

[StealthA00]

Greetings

I was just 'handed down' a 10 year old website that is on the front page of Google for many keywords. The homepage sees 600 uniques daily, and the Message Board (on a different host) gets about 8,000 page views daily.

the url is:
Dwarfcarracing.com - Dwarf Car Information Since 1999

Currently, it earns money through advertisements. Each ad pays $50 for 3 months of advertisement. So, 16 ads*$50 an ad*4 billing cycles a year = $3,200 a year. The ads are on the top of every page.

My father registered this site 10 years ago. He's never put much effort into creating content or designing the site. He's done no SEO. Yet, he sees high traffic because he entered a great niche, and he hosts the sport's most popular Message Board.

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So, How can I monetize this site a little better?

Am I wrong to think, that since I am in a very rare/specific niche, that Google Ads are would be fairly ineffective for my audience?

Also, do you think Google Ads, CJ Ads, or eBay Ads would upset the small businesses that currently advertise on the site?

I would like to start building a list on this site. I really would, however -- and here's my biggest hangup:
I have a year-old website in this niche that sees about 1/10 of the traffic. However, I was hoping to use my 10-y/o site to redirect traffic to my 1-y/o site. And then put the mailing list on that 1-y/o site. If I put the mailing list on the 10-y/o site, I would feel wrong advertising products on my emails that are not current site-advertisers.

What I've done so far:
First thing I did was redesign the site (it hasn't seen an update in several years). I tweaked a nice Wordpress Template and cleaned up some other things. I am going to install the all-in-one-seo plugin, and create some more blog posts/articles. I don't know what else I can do, considering I am pretty much the No.1 site on the net for this niche.

I would appreciate ANY comments. Thanks everyone!

[getsmartt]

I would not redirect the traffic, the 10 yo site will rank better than the 1yo site with the same optimization. Start a list on your 10yo site and offer the current advertisers a chance to bid for spots in the news letters.

[RevenueRabbi]

do you have an opt in of any kind? you should!

[lexilexi]

This is awesome! It's funny, this is a topic I just wrote about - the fact that sometimes web sites are "abandoned" and then surprise their owners by continuing to build links and traffic.

With a highly focused niche within this one, I definitely agree that generic advertisements might not be the best.


Seems as though you've already done some of this - but see if you can identify other "key players" within the niche - the product manufacturers, the publications, the drivers, the sponsors, the mechanics, the key contributors to the existing forum - offer them opportunities to expand their presence within your site - whether it is through a column, advertisements etc.

Adsense might be worth a whirl though, you can always make it fairly unobtrusive i.e. in the footer or something to start with.. and see what ads get served. You'd be surprised at how well adsense can match your content. One thing I noticed is that the part of the URL after the main domain name can make a huge difference to which ads actually appear; once I made a version of a free mp3 page which featured a "tiger" colored background. I called the URL something/tiger and all the adsense ads that were served were about tigers, regardless of the fact that the word tiger did not appear in my page content. Anyway, something to experiment with, and you can always block individual domains from appearing if a few irrelevant ads are showing up.

What are the other web sites that your users go to?

I know that people like to post a lot of motor sport videos on youtube. Maybe you could post on the forum asking people to suggest youtube "classics" from the genre which you could embed.

It's interesting, with a site like this... it's already working and forum communities often like things to stay the way they are... make sure you observe the boards and stay closely in touch with the site's users and keep them happy.

Anyway just a few ideas, hope that helps!

[lexilexi]

Another thought - re: other advertisers getting upset a) what's the agreement with them concerning the number of ads on the page b) how were those advertisers found in the first place, did they approach the site or were they approached? You could build a database of more advertisers, also see if anyone's willing to bid more for a top placement.

[StealthA00]

I would not redirect the traffic, the 10 yo site will rank better than the 1yo site with the same optimization. Start a list on your 10yo site and offer the current advertisers a chance to bid for spots in the news letters.

You understood me incorrectly, what I meant to say is I wish to refer traffic from my more popular site, to my less popular site. So both sites could potentially see 600/uniques a day. I suppose the best way to accomplish this, is to create a feature that is unique only to my newer site.

So I was considering using Ning! Social Networking software. Creating more of a community, outside of the Message Board that is widely popular.

I've never published a newsletter. I know it would be a great thing to do, because there aren't any currently circulating the web. Finding content for my niche is very difficult, though. It's all mechanically-based, pretty technical information.

see if you can identify other "key players" within the niche - the product manufacturers, the publications, the drivers, the sponsors, the mechanics, the key contributors to the existing forum - offer them opportunities to expand their presence within your site - whether it is through a column, advertisements etc.

Which is probably my best solution. Kind of recruit the popular message-board posters to create articles, in return for recognition on the site? Or maybe get a batch of t-shirts made, with a chance to win one if you submit a worthwhile article.

I will likely try Adsense out for a month. Because, why not?

The sponsors don't really sign any kind of contract. It's just an understanding between gentlemen The site consistently has had 10-20 advertisements on the site for the past several years. No issues. But every ad has been related directly to my niche (and profits made stay within and progress my niche).

Lexilexi, thanks for your comments.

[internetmarketer99]

BE CAREFUL!!!

If you don't want to lose your indexing, you must maintain your exact URL's. If you move to Wordpress and use All-in-One, MAKE SURE that the currently existing pages maintain their URL's.

In other words, don't let All-in-One re-write the URL's for those pages!

mark

[StealthA00]

Originally Posted by internetmarketer99

If you don't want to lose your indexing, you must maintain your exact URL's. If you move to Wordpress and use All-in-One, MAKE SURE that the currently existing pages maintain their URL's.

In other words, don't let All-in-One re-write the URL's for those pages!

Hm, thanks Mark.

I think understand what you're saying.

So I can expect my rankings to drop? (Is that what you mean by 'indexing'?)

Before I changed the website over to Wordpress about 2 weeks ago, the pages were all done in the html extension. However now, the pages all use php.

So for example, domain.com/pictures.htm is now domain.com/pictures/.

So, I guess what I'm saying is the URLs all had to change anyway.

I haven't installed ALL-IN-ONE yet, but probably wouldn't have let it rename my pages anyway. I named them all with SEO in mind to begin with. Perhaps I added some clarity? Thanks for the suggestion, Mark.