Amazon on a forum. Am I wasting my time?
My forum gets approx 80,000 unique visitors per month and yet I cannot get anyone to click an ad even when they know it will help me with site costs.
It is just dawning on me that there is no way to monetise this site. I have been running it for the past 20 years and for all that time information has been free and I have paid all the costs.
Over the past couple of years, I have been struggling to not only absorb the costs but to cover my time working on the site. I still answer a lot of the questions myself. I write reviews and I help people with their product issues using my contacts in many of the companies that make and supply those products.
I have tried the subscription model. £15 per year for an ad-free forum. Not a single person has ever subscribed.
The only time the site started making money was with Adsense but as soon as that happened I got banned. No explanation. No opportunity to correct whatever it was that was wrong.
I am now realising that the reason I cannot monetise the site is that people come looking for information. They find it then move on. There is no incentive at all to click an ad and buy something?
There is a front end WordPress site by the way but traffic there is only around 4-5000 visitors per month and yes, I have tried monetising that too but with the same results.
So I have now decided to concentrate solely on Amazon.
I have accounts for Amazon USA, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Australia. All linked via OneLink. Total revenue this month? $2.00
Question is can this be turned around or am I just flogging a dead horse?
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