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Is My Website Worth Continuing With?

by Majora
13 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi all,

I have a blog in the iPhone and iPad niche which is currently averaging around 250 visitors a day, 75% of which come from organic search. I don't think this is that bad, but the problem is that it's making almost no money. My clickthrough ratio is around 1%, and the average CPC is 26 cents. This makes my monthly profit from Adsense only around $20, while affiliate sales and my YouTube channel for the site add another $20 or so.

No matter what I try, I can't seem to make any decent amount of money off of the site. My question is, did I simply pick a bad niche, or is there anyway of actually making money off of this website? I've been considering abandoning this site and starting a new one in a more profitable niche, but I've put a lot of work into this site over the past year and really believe I should be making more.

I'd appreciate any suggestions or advice you may have. Thank you.
#continuing #website #worth
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Your in a low paying niche when it comes to Adsense. Phones & tablets are already cheap to purchase so you're only getting a low percentage (CPC) of a low end product.
    • How much traffic do you get per month?
    • Have you considered selling apps., or giving away free apps. that are monetized (ex: Flappy Bird)?
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    • Profile picture of the author Majora
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      Your in a low paying niche when it comes to Adsense. Phones & tablets are already cheap to purchase so you're only getting a low percentage (CPC) of a low end product.
      • How much traffic do you get per month?
      • Have you considered selling apps., or giving away free apps. that are monetized (ex: Flappy Bird)?
      Thanks for your response. I'm getting 7000-8000 visitors a month on average. I do have a few applications under production, but ironically, they're only being released for Android systems. As far as affiliate marketing goes, I've mainly been trying to promote accessories for the iPhone and iPad, although the majority of my posts have been purely informational (leaving Adsense as the only monetization method for those posts).
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  • Profile picture of the author Slin
    Create a forum for people to post on and stick around on your website. Do you collect emails? That can help a lot too.

    Try reviewing products against each other, this can boost conversion rates, and I've noticed that people tend to share these types of articles more.

    I would focus more on affiliate sales as well, since that's where more money is, Adsense seems to only be a good choice in specific niches.
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    • Profile picture of the author Majora
      Originally Posted by Slin View Post

      Create a forum for people to post on and stick around on your website. Do you collect emails? That can help a lot too.

      Try reviewing products against each other, this can boost conversion rates, and I've noticed that people tend to share these types of articles more.

      I would focus more on affiliate sales as well, since that's where more money is, Adsense seems to only be a good choice in specific niches.
      Thanks for your suggestions. I did actually have a vBulletin forum on the website for a few months. I promoted the heck out of it, yet it was never very successful. Few people stayed around and it kept getting hacked, I figured most people would prefer bigger forums with more active users.

      I will try to focus more on affiliate sales, although I'm a bit concerned because most of the sales are for products that are less than $20. Since most of the sales are on Amazon, that doesn't leave me with very much profit.
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      • Profile picture of the author Slin
        Originally Posted by Majora View Post

        Thanks for your suggestions. I did actually have a vBulletin forum on the website for a few months. I promoted the heck out of it, yet it was never very successful. Few people stayed around and it kept getting hacked, I figured most people would prefer bigger forums with more active users.

        I will try to focus more on affiliate sales, although I'm a bit concerned because most of the sales are for products that are less than $20. Since most of the sales are on Amazon, that doesn't leave me with very much profit.
        Sad to hear about the forum, I've had success in the past but I guess it isn't for every niche.

        I would still do the affiliate sales through amazon. I guess I don't know too much about your website without seeing it, but in all of my experiences affiliate sales help me make more money then adsense.

        People trust amazon, and obviously they trust you because you get traffic, I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to gain sales. How do you get your traffic? You could always see if you can't lower your costs, or look at other traffic avenues.

        It's a site that is in a good commercial niche, and one that is making a bit of a profit so I wouldn't give up on it yet.
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    • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
      I see two options:
      - Adsense route would require both traffic and optimizing CTR. But traffic above all. You're going to get only a small percentage to click so you need a lot.
      - Affiliate marketing. If you're good at writing and can find products with good payouts this can work much better. Apps might be a good ankle, because physical products tend to have fairly slim margins and thus low affiliate commissions.

      Originally Posted by Slin View Post

      Create a forum for people to post on and stick around on your website. Do you collect emails? That can help a lot too.
      Other pieces of advice from Slin are good, but this forum comment isn't. There's probably a better forum out there, and people wont start hanging on yours for no reason. Getting a forum off the ground is going to take luck, existing crowd of fans/supporters, interesting topic, and/or a lot of hard work.
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      Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
      Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

      What's your excuse?
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      • Profile picture of the author Majora
        Originally Posted by nettiapina View Post

        I see two options:
        - Adsense route would require both traffic and optimizing CTR. But traffic above all. You're going to get only a small percentage to click so you need a lot.
        - Affiliate marketing. If you're good at writing and can find products with good payouts this can work much better. Apps might be a good ankle, because physical products tend to have fairly slim margins and thus low affiliate commissions.
        You're right, I could keep building traffic, although at this point I don't see what use it would be. Doubling my current number of visitors would only net me another $30 or so dollars a month, I don't even know if it's worth the effort which is why I'm considering selling this site and starting a new one.

        As far as affiliate marketing goes, it's hard. Apps are generally only $1 which means I get about 5 cents per sale. Nobody generally looks up information on the apps, meaning only return visitors really read the articles. Only a very small number of visitors return to the website regularly, making it near useless. As far as physical products go, there aren't a whole lot of options. People generally don't buy more than one accessory for their phones or tablets. 75% of my Amazon sales have actually been for products I haven't been advertising at all.
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  • Profile picture of the author PBScott
    The internet is a much more difficult place to make money than most think it is, as I am sure you have found out. Having said that, if you stay the course your traffic should continue to increase as well as the payback.

    If you don't think the website itself is worthwhile, you could try and leverage that websites traffic into another similar niche, that is a decent amount of traffic if you could up your ROI.
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  • Profile picture of the author promo87
    Banned
    Originally Posted by Majora View Post

    Hi all,

    I have a blog in the iPhone and iPad niche which is currently averaging around 250 visitors a day, 75% of which come from organic search. I don't think this is that bad, but the problem is that it's making almost no money. My clickthrough ratio is around 1%, and the average CPC is 26 cents. This makes my monthly profit from Adsense only around $20, while affiliate sales and my YouTube channel for the site add another $20 or so.

    No matter what I try, I can't seem to make any decent amount of money off of the site. My question is, did I simply pick a bad niche, or is there anyway of actually making money off of this website? I've been considering abandoning this site and starting a new one in a more profitable niche, but I've put a lot of work into this site over the past year and really believe I should be making more.

    I'd appreciate any suggestions or advice you may have. Thank you.
    Well, it seems that you're really low on the earnings from the Adsense but still I would say that as you're having 250click and getting most of the organic traffic means you're in ranking among the eyes of the search engine. I would say keep on continuing with it you're recognised, just keep the fresh content coming and don't wonder about it so much ! And if you still feel that there is no use of going forwards with it why don't you give it me I am happy to get onto it ! let me know if you're ready to transfer it's rights
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  • Profile picture of the author gsinfovision
    Banned
    Originally Posted by Majora View Post

    Hi all,

    I have a blog in the iPhone and iPad niche which is currently averaging around 250 visitors a day, 75% of which come from organic search. I don't think this is that bad, but the problem is that it's making almost no money. My clickthrough ratio is around 1%, and the average CPC is 26 cents. This makes my monthly profit from Adsense only around $20, while affiliate sales and my YouTube channel for the site add another $20 or so.

    No matter what I try, I can't seem to make any decent amount of money off of the site. My question is, did I simply pick a bad niche, or is there anyway of actually making money off of this website? I've been considering abandoning this site and starting a new one in a more profitable niche, but I've put a lot of work into this site over the past year and really believe I should be making more.

    I'd appreciate any suggestions or advice you may have. Thank you.
    Why don't you throw in some CPA email submit offers. There are some good ones for iPhone/iPad on Peerfly.
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  • Profile picture of the author dejaone
    You just need more traffic. You'll make $200 a month if the site averages 2,000 a day (which isn't that hard).

    1) have more content
    2) get more visitors for the content you already have. Forums related to iphone are good places to get some instant free traffic.

    If your content is really good, you'll gradually build more and more repeating visitors.
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  • Profile picture of the author fritzferdinand
    Hi Majora,

    It will likely depend on what your motivation is for having started your business

    If it is to develop yourself and keep up to date on the latest Apple developments, then your site may be satisfying your requirements

    If it is to generate $1,000,000 p.a. then it's very likely you would need to change up what you're currently doing as if you keep doing what you've always done you'll keep getting what you've always got

    No niche is necessarily a bad one, it is more a question of how big a particular niche could potentially be
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  • Profile picture of the author Dokemion
    Try a different Internet Marketing approach.. Lie!! That's the best way to earn a lot of money! Sad but true most internet marketers use "White Lie" approach to be rich and probably be famous too.
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    Contact me for any SEO Services you need I'm glad to be of your service.

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