My site gets 3 million page views monthly - how to monetize better?

Hey everyone,

First post here. I've been reading for a few days and I'm intrigued by all the info offered here.

To give you a quick background on myself, I own and operate a community-type site that does over 3,000,000 page views monthly. My unique count is relatively low (about 90,000) considering the page views but I have a huge engagement factor and the average length of visit is about 18 minutes.

This site has been a technology play but the financing well to support our continued growth has run dry and it's become increasingly harder to find investment money in this environment.

I need to come up with better ways to monetize the site as I'd like it to become self-sufficient ASAP. We're launching a section that'll involve the sale of a premium product - and will attract buyers - but even this requires more resources (programmers' salaries, etc.) to complete the buildout.

With the metrics I gave you, what kind of money do you think I have the potential to pull in monthly through affiliate deals and anything else that may generate revenue? All I currently run is CPM ads and the CPMs aren't what they used to be. It's just not enough. :confused:

I KNOW there's a better way to do this...and I know that if there's anyone with an answer, it's you. Would love to hear about all of the great opportunities I must be missing out on because of my passive approach to my user base. Hopefully some insight can help me turn this around.

Thanks, and I'm happy to be here!