Am i being stubborn or lazy

Why not try something other than content locking? Maybe presentation of the content as an e-book or auto responder series? Are you building a list?

You should definitely look into other ways of monetizing the site. Getting 700 daily visitors is a good thing. You just need to put the right thing in front of people. Start split testing.

The main thing is you need to start capturing all your sites traffic and build a list if you haven't started already.

Keep plugging along by the sound of it you're website is doing a lot better than many others.

What about adsense? I liked content locking because my audience are highschoolers (mostly) and i wanted a way to earn without making them pay for anything. I'd have to pay for copy to sell the ebook because i don't think i could sell it well enough.

I'm not making a list, but really don't know what to do with one, i'm very new and have only just scraped this system together.

Does anyone think should just wait longer and keep splittesting

"A week after content locking went live I've got 11 clicks 2 downloads for a grand total of $2.20, its not the content locking is converting badly, which i could do something about, it that people just don't seem anyway interested in the premium content. "


You are getting 700 average readers to your site, and I assume that they are targeted enough to buy your products. Please make sure your site description on SERP do justice to your site content. Check the traffic bounce rate.

And, you should give away a sample part of your content free of cost if you think they are really beneficial to your visitors. I am not sure if you are collecting leads on your site, but by giving away 1000-2000 words of your premium content is a god deal if you get those leads in exchange. Later, you can convince them to buy the full version with email follow up. It makes sense even today.

Thanks.

okay you guys have convinced me to start list building, i'll get reading about it

3500 visitors a week and only 11 clicks on your monetizing system? Seems like people are not interested at all in it, but why? Are you giving too much info away for free? The paid info should be of much more value than the free content, and you should sell it that way too IMO.

Not too long ago, i read an article here on WF about someone who tested these kind of systems against systems that give everything away for free and instead monetizing those sites with advertisements, and he got much better results with the advertising method.

How is your locked content monetised if you're not charging anything? CPA / free trial offers? Please elaborate.

I suppose the predictable suggestion would be to open up all premium content and leverage that in any way possible for increased traffic, build a list, provide ongoing value and begin promoting stuff (either your own product(s) or other people's as an affiliate), but that might not work too well if your main audience haven't the ability to make online purchases themselves.

Nevertheless, it can't get much worse than ~$2/week. I would think that on ~700 daily visitors, even AdSense would far outperform this.

Yeah CPA, email submits, for $1.10 each, at this point is doesn't seem to matter, it could be completely free and it seems no one would notice. I think the content locking isn't the problem, it my copy directing people to that page. I'll work on that...and start list building

couldn't hurt to throw adsense on every page thought right?

Hey Matt. I'd love to take a peek at your site and make some suggestions. PM or IM me (maxbountyjess on Skype or AIM).

For what it's worth, I don't think you are being stubborn or lazy. You are smart enough to see the issue, listen to advice from your fellow marketers, and keep tweaking things until you see the profit you want.

Stick with it, everyone has blips in confidence. You have go this far, step back, take a break from it for a week and let the fresh ideas flow in.

Yeah i think a break couldn't hurt. I;ve made so many tweaks to the site and i'm expecting them all to change things instantly. Maybe if i just let them sink in for a week I'd see i was on an upward curve, and if not i'd have more data in analytics to find out exactly whats going wrong.

If you're still not feeling it, flip it.

i really like the niche, its something i don't mind making content for and i think its genuinely useful to people, i just can't seem to monetize it. Anyway I doubt I'd sell it for much with an earnings history of $2 a wekk

thanks bguk73
more worrying that anything else, i was hopping to make around £800 from this site and yet yours is much better placed to make money (aimed at teachers with credit cards not students with empty pockets) and makes £400, well i can always make 10 more sites i guess.

You have an interesting paradox there students with money! We get more parents than teachers who purchase from us.

Learn all you can about your visitors ... in example .. demographics . They will come for the info but may not be willing to pay for it because it is not an urgent need ... but I am almost positive there is something out there your crowd is collectively interested in that is sell-able

so i should try and cross sell them something, that they're also interested in?

Try other ways to monetize your site, 700 visitors a day is a good thing. Why not make the content public and have ads on the site?.. textual ads within the text?

Whats your website? You said it's educational... what are you trying to sell?

You are just in the beginning of your adventure why not take it as a challenge instead of failure? The catch is, if you want something you need to work for it. Internet marketing is like a game, for you to win you must know how to play with rules.

Do several testing - work out a plan that you think might be effective and test it. If not, move to the next plan until you figure it out. You are already there. You get lots of visitors already. Take this as a challenge!

I'm not selling anything at the moment. I give away a load of information, there is also some premium content that is locked pending completing a CPA offer. Giving that stuff away wouldn't give me a huge boost in traffic i don't think but I'll give adsense a try on my content pages.

I'm having some problem split testing as well. I started an experiment on google website optimizer but its been a few days and its telling me the experiment has collected no data, despite analytics telling me hundreds have people have seen both versions of the page.

Is there another free service i can use to split test.

Oh and currently i@m on a .co.uk domain, how much of a bump in google .com can i expect to see if i get the .com version of my adderess

I think just a traditional CPA offer might work better- not content locking.

Also- what are the demographics of the audience coming in? do they have money to spend? Or are they looking for free information (so free that they wont even fill in a CPA offer)?

The demographic should be highschool (maybe college) students, they don;t have money to spend but should be computer literate enough not to be scared away by content locking. I don;t mind filling in a CPA if i come across something i really want but i won;t pay for almost anything.

I don't know how Pure CPA would be better than content locking, why would people complete it without the incentive?

I think my problem is a) the premium content isn't advertised or sold well enough, people either don;t know its there or don't think they need it. b) the content locker looks a bit...spammy I have hundreds of views on the pages where the content is locked but only 27 clicks, so it pops up and people just click away. Of those 27 clicks I've only had two conversions (to be honest I'm thinking of changing my ad network, i went with a pretty new company and I don't think its working, i tried to unlock the content myself and couldn't, none of the offers where the quick email/zip submits i want)

So change add network, write better copy, split test adds to see which drives the most people towards the premium content. Guess I have lots to do.

Stop focusing on locking.... why not try something to make it more better and to monetize it in a way that visitors will buy it.

bounce rate on my home page is low 20's%
I am giving away loads of free content at the moments and only locking a fraction. I am now giving a way a little bit of the premium content as well as a kind of teaser.

I've decided my ad network needs to change, i tried to complete one of the offers myself and couldn't and the gateway looks really bad and i can't change it. Applied to blam adds but apparently they take a while. Can anyone else recommend a network that allows incentive trafic?

Only you know the answer to that my stubborn lazy friend.