Monetization ideas needed for my niche site

aaronanderson22 · 18th Feb 2015, 01:10 PM

I have a website that I put together quite a while ago and I'd love to get some feedback on potential monetization or CRO ideas you may have.

The website is located at Hiking the Y - The Symbol of BYU on Y Mountain in Provo.

Right now, the only monetization technique I have is selling shirts. I only have one design that I sell, and not too many people that go to the site actually go check out the shirts. I average around 40 visitors a day, which isn't a lot, but I think I should be able to better monetize this traffic.

Here are some of my stats:

Total sessions for 2014: 14,466
Total visitors to my spreadshirt shop since March 1st, 2013: 2004
Total transaction in spreadshirt shop since March 1st, 2013: 23

I have a few questions, and I'd love any feedback or insight any of you can provide:

- Do I have enough visits to even do CRO, and if so, what are good benchmarks for testing(ie amount of visitors before making a decision)

- As far as better optimizing the sale of shirts, what improvements could be done? Better design? More designs? Better integration of spreadshirt?

- Perhaps there are other monetization techniques that would work better for this site? Any thoughts or ideas?

Thanks so much for all your help in advance! I'm definitely not an expert, and have a lot to learn!

- Aaron Anderson

savidge4 · 18th Feb 2015, 02:48 PM

Originally Posted by aaronanderson22

Here are some of my stats:

Total sessions for 2014: 14,466
Total visitors to my spreadshirt shop since March 1st, 2013: 2004
Total transaction in spreadshirt shop since March 1st, 2013: 23

Here is the thing. your numbers are not as bad as you might think they are.

#1 I would assume you are not specifically targeting the shirt design in your methods to draw traffic.

#2 your session total ( 14,466 ) and the total visits to your shop ( 2004 ) indicates that 13.85% of your traffic actually went to look at the shirt. ( 2004 / 14466 )

#3 looking at your sales percentage of interested visitors would show you converted / sold 1.14% ( 23 / 2004 ) Actually all things considering.. not a bad number.

You don't have a conversion problem, you have a traffic problem. In THEORY if you doubled your traffic, you would double your sales. If you brought your visitors up to 400 a day, you would sell 10x the shirts.

Once you get in the 3x + area with traffic you can start to look at creating a better conversion. right now your traffic is just to sparce to make any educated changes

aaronanderson22 · 18th Feb 2015, 04:49 PM

Thanks a lot for your input!

#1 Yes, you're right that I'm not targeting the shirt design in my methods of drawing traffic. All of my traffic is organic, and very little of that traffic comes to the t-shirt page first.

#2 The numbers I posted were a bit off since I didn't keep my time line consistent. The total visits to the shop in 2014 were (1549), which means about 10.71% of the traffic actually visited the shop.

#3 Ok great, it's good to hear an outside perspective on this.

This really helps me, as sometimes I just get tripped up and I'm not sure what is the best thing to focus my time and effort on.

Thanks a lot for the insight!

18th Feb 2015, 01:10 PM	#1
aaronanderson22 Warrior Member Join Date: 2013 Location: Washington DC Posts: 4 Thanks: 0 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts	Monetization ideas needed for my niche site Share on: I have a website that I put together quite a while ago and I'd love to get some feedback on potential monetization or CRO ideas you may have. The website is located at Hiking the Y - The Symbol of BYU on Y Mountain in Provo. Right now, the only monetization technique I have is selling shirts. I only have one design that I sell, and not too many people that go to the site actually go check out the shirts. I average around 40 visitors a day, which isn't a lot, but I think I should be able to better monetize this traffic. Here are some of my stats: Total sessions for 2014: 14,466 Total visitors to my spreadshirt shop since March 1st, 2013: 2004 Total transaction in spreadshirt shop since March 1st, 2013: 23 I have a few questions, and I'd love any feedback or insight any of you can provide: - Do I have enough visits to even do CRO, and if so, what are good benchmarks for testing(ie amount of visitors before making a decision) - As far as better optimizing the sale of shirts, what improvements could be done? Better design? More designs? Better integration of spreadshirt? - Perhaps there are other monetization techniques that would work better for this site? Any thoughts or ideas? Thanks so much for all your help in advance! I'm definitely not an expert, and have a lot to learn! - Aaron Anderson

18th Feb 2015, 04:49 PM	#3
aaronanderson22 Warrior Member Join Date: 2013 Location: Washington DC Posts: 4 Thanks: 0 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts	Re: Monetization ideas needed for my niche site Share on: Thanks a lot for your input! #1 Yes, you're right that I'm not targeting the shirt design in my methods of drawing traffic. All of my traffic is organic, and very little of that traffic comes to the t-shirt page first. #2 The numbers I posted were a bit off since I didn't keep my time line consistent. The total visits to the shop in 2014 were (1549), which means about 10.71% of the traffic actually visited the shop. #3 Ok great, it's good to hear an outside perspective on this. This really helps me, as sometimes I just get tripped up and I'm not sure what is the best thing to focus my time and effort on. Thanks a lot for the insight!