How to get this site making a decent profit? Pet Related.

Hey Sally,

You have a nice looking site. Growing traffic to dog properties is relatively straight-forward. You'll just need to familiarize yourself with socials.

Dog lovers love to share dog pics, dog memes, dog videos, dog pretty much anything.

A few areas for you to research, just to get you started:

1. FB Marketing.
2. FB Fan Pages.
3. FB Groups.
4. Pinterest.
5. Twitter.
6. Viral Marketing.
7. Memes.

Do this:

1. Grow platforms and accounts.
2. Syndicate viral images.
3. Syndicate viral blog posts.

Pinterest alone is good for XX,XXX uniques a day. And, actually, Pinterest in the dog market is very good.

Some food for thought!

Tom

P.S

After that, concentrate on an improved monetization strategy for your site. Then you'll have traffic + a site engineered to earn.

Tom

Start a PPC campaign, I suggest Google Adwords and Facebook Ads to start.

Open a free page on some social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) and share contents related to your activity (photos, status, posts, tweets)

My advice...

Ignore ZanyWhatever. Pitiful advice.
Winnermarketing mentions socials - thumbs up.

Take a look at this:

https://www.facebook.com/dogsworld.me?ref=br_rs

Nice numbers?

Tom

Hey there. Not a bad looking site but might do better if you can shorten up your menus some, add your picture with a dog and a short introduction for how you got started and what you like to do at the top of your site, put your facebook widget underneath, having some links for cheap ebooks to help train your dog or something and having widgets direct to amazon. You might also want to change your adsense ads as they have to be 300x250 to be optimized for any mobile users that you have and they could probably be a good source of income if you already get some decent traffic. Most people won't spend more than a couple minutes looking at your website and unless you can have something that can really capture their attention or at least get them coming back later on like Facebook, you might lose them forever. Most people probably shop for their pet supplies at Amazon, eBay, or Wal-Mart but best of luck!

Write up a quick report on how to save money on dog products.

Give it away for free and collect emails.

Then mail out affiliate products related to the dog niche

To help monitize the site look into some recurring products you could market. There are many lines of pet foods that are shipped to the customer on a monthly basis. They know how much they need and set up auto orders and get it delivered when they need it. Very convenient for the pet owner. They do not have to run to the store because they have run out of dog food.

They are several programs doing this. Also be sure to build an emai list for your marketing purposes.

Why don't you contact manufacturers and ask for cheap sponsorships?

On top of everything, they'll give you free content

Win Win situation

Wow thanks for all the replies everyone! Looks like I've found the right place to ask for advice!

I was going to reply to each individually, but it may be easier to just summarise below;

A lot I notice are mentioning social media. I've been mainly focusing on this all along. I have a twitter account with almost 7k followers at https://twitter.com/TheHouseOfDogUK and a Facebook page with over 1k at https://www.facebook.com/thehouseofdog (added the links so you can see the style of posts I'm adding and tell me what I'm doing wrong, but please delete if not allowed).

The problem I seem to get with Facebook is that despite having over 1k followers, only about 25 people seem to actually see each post I make, unless they're meme type posts and they get shared. I'm trying to create content which others will want to share such as the top 10 national trust places for dogs post, but sharing is few and far between. I've made absolutely no nat trust membership commissions whatsoever through this post, despite getting quite a few clicks.

I created the interactive toys post, again no commissions, a few clicks.

The only commissions I've ever earnt from this site so far are from groupon - a total of 2 sales on dog related products!

I've made a small amount of directory listing sales which have helped to pay for the hosting etc, but even that seems to be very quiet lately. Yesterday I added the coupon code section, but have had few clicks and no sales from this as yet, despite sharing on social media.

I do have a couple of pinterest boards, as someone suggested, https://uk.pinterest.com/thehouseofdoguk/ but don't seem to get a lot of interaction on this. Perhaps I should try to get more followers somehow? I confess I know little about pinterest and have been instead concentrating on the more popular Facebook/Twitter pages, although the lack of interaction from Facebook fans lately has made me wonder whether Facebook is becoming a bit of a waste of time.

One thing which I'm not doing at all, which I'm aware I probably should be is email marketing. I do have a way of collecting mailing lists on the site, and have about 190 email addresses collected via that, but I'll be honest, I have absolutely no idea what to do with regards to email marketing. It's not something I've ever done before, I don't know where to start and I can't afford to pay for special software right now to do it, not while the site's not bringing any in Is there a free option which won't upset my home internet supplier and will look professional? Maybe I should research this more.

Tom, I'd love to know what you mean by syndicating viral blog posts/images? Do you mean create my own? This sounds interesting. I will also work on the Pinterest - I have a lot to learn there about how to even get followers!

Zanythingy, when you say my site appears 'poor', I'd be interested to know in what way? I guess I need honesty, if it's not user friendly I need to know. Just not sure how to make it any more user friendly. I've been doing this for 18 months yes, but I really set out wanting to create a directory which would become a household name and genuinely useful to UK dog owners, so I havn't just thrown a load of random clutter at it, I've tried to give it some structure and have asked dog trainers for help with contributing articles etc. The site's now getting around 3k visits a month and has a 75% average bounce rate, is this bad? I don't know a lot about bounce rates.

Needbucksnow - Some good tips, will get to work on those today, thanks.

When you say 'grow platforms and accounts', do you mean simply grow the number of followers, fans etc to my social media pages?

Interesting idea with the sponsorships tip - what should I offer them and what price should I charge? I've never done this either! Although I have sold banner space on other sites in the past, but I feel that leaving these spaces for affiliate products may be the best way to get a recurring income long term rather than selling them for £40 a year to a sponsor? I may be wrong or barking up the wrong tree!

Thanks again to all for the suggestions, I really do appreciate the help. Some days I just feel like giving up on the whole site. Earning 60p a month and paying out £15 in hosting fees a month really isn't a sustainable business model to me and I really would like to earn a nice income on the side with this site if possible. Does anyone think it really is possible to get even a few hundred £'s a month from a site like this if I can get more social fans?

Thanks!

Thanks Tom

I really do appreciate the input from someone who has some idea of what they're doing, because right now I feel like I've wasted 18 months of my life trying to get a site working which just never will

Some days I feel like selling it and going to get a job in Tesco! It's making me zero profit these days, it's not even paying for itself anymore (hosting fees), I'm having to dip into my own pocket and I don't earn a lot as a dog sitter as my main business. But I'm putting so many hours into this a week, every spare minute I get, and it's just coming to nothing. It's quite depressing! Clearly everything I'm doing the way I'm doing it is wrong and ineffective. Sigh....

I'll work on what you've advised above, but I have to admit, I'm just feeling kind of hopeless and lost these days.. anyone want to buy a website? lol

Thanks for the advice anyway

Sally