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Awful monetization

by MathewMaso
11 replies
Hello there, I started a tech blog in spanish in December, I did my homework and found some good keywords, started posting about new technology, smartphones, console, robotics, etc, (about 3-5 posts per week).. and right now the blog is reaching 1k unique visitors per day. (Im really laughing at people saying that SEO is dead).

Ok that said, here come's the sad part:
Im making $1 daily with it (in good days).

Monetization:
2 google adsense banners (rich media banners) (best day I got 6 clicks and made about $1.2 that day)
infolinks text links: (just started trying this 2 days ago) and its making me around $.03 - $.05 per day (im having a hard time choosing the color of the new audi TT I'm going to buy with this income source, lol)


In a previous post I asked for some advice to monetize this blog, and most people told me to build a list and sell them tech related products... or my own products (I don't have any) ... but writing 30 follow up emails seems like a lot of work, just to test if I can get decent money with this... or maybe not?

Others told me to promote clickbank products (I did a test for 3 days, and the product page got some clicks but obviously nobody bought).

Others told me to use CPA offers, but this is latin america/spain traffic.. and offers in spanish usually have very low payrates ($1.5 at max)

Amazon products: Again latin traffic is not buying online stuff as people from united states. and there are no amazon stores in latin america.

.... Ok.. so what could I do?
Maybe try to tweak adsense banners placement, maybe using text type with similar colors than the site and placing those in a very prominent place... I could try that.

Selling ad space to local companies, I guess this would work... I just need to find customers (any idea on how much I could charge for this ad space?)

What else?

Also if someone has a great idea and is interested in a JV, please PM me, I think 1k uniques a day, is a decent amount of traffic...

Thanks a lot!
#awful #monetization
  • Profile picture of the author JohnV88
    What about becoming an amazon affiliate & selling same product you reviewed ?
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    • Profile picture of the author MathewMaso
      Originally Posted by JohnV88 View Post

      What about becoming an amazon affiliate & selling same product you reviewed ?
      Good idea, but as I said in the original post, this is latin traffic, and buying from amazon in the US.. is just too expensive because of the international shipping costs, everybody prefers local online stores.

      Also I'm not reviewing products.. just writing news and stuff about them.. anyways having an amazon affiliate link for that product could work... the problem is the latin traffic.
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      • Profile picture of the author konakid
        Originally Posted by Prodak View Post

        Good idea, but as I said in the original post, this is latin traffic, and buying from amazon in the US.. is just too expensive because of the international shipping costs, everybody prefers local online stores.

        Also I'm not reviewing products.. just writing news and stuff about them.. anyways having an amazon affiliate link for that product could work... the problem is the latin traffic.
        Can you get affiliate partnerships with these local businesses that everybody buys from? That seems like it would be a good way to go.
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        • Profile picture of the author MathewMaso
          Originally Posted by konakid View Post

          Can you get affiliate partnerships with these local businesses that everybody buys from? That seems like it would be a good way to go.
          Probably, any other options?
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  • Profile picture of the author WordpressManiac
    You could try buysellads.com to earn from advertising. Best way beside building a list could be to find a dropshipper and sell those products yourself or make an agreement to be an affiliate for a local shop in your country.

    It's even possible to create your own infoproducts to sell on your site like buying guides, review ebooks, tutorials etc.

    Hope that helps ;-)
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    • Profile picture of the author MathewMaso
      Originally Posted by WordpressManiac View Post

      You could try buysellads.com to earn from advertising. Best way beside building a list could be to find a dropshipper and sell those products yourself or make an agreement to be an affiliate for a local shop in your country.

      It's even possible to create your own infoproducts to sell on your site like buying guides, review ebooks, tutorials etc.

      Hope that helps ;-)
      Buysellads.com looks interesting.. I'll check it out.
      Do they accept ad space for international traffic? guess I have to read the faqs or something.
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  • Profile picture of the author IceMustang
    Your ad placement sounds less than optimal. I would do a leader board at the top of the page above the title, and then a 300x250 next to the content, and then a 336x280 or 300x600 next to the lower part of the content. Three different ad sizes for advertisers allows for differences in how they target ads thus leading to a higher cpc in my experience.

    Also, I like to make the bottom ad real gaudy looking (red URL, green link, blue text) because pretty much everyone is usually ad blind by the end of a page.

    That said you're still looking at 3 to 4 dollars a day for a best case scenario. You really need to up the traffic. Also, what does your Infolinks setup look like now? Text ads, tag cloud, search widget, are you using double underlines or dots, etc.
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    • Profile picture of the author MathewMaso
      Originally Posted by IceMustang View Post

      Your ad placement sounds less than optimal. I would do a leader board at the top of the page above the title, and then a 300x250 next to the content, and then a 336x280 or 300x600 next to the lower part of the content. Three different ad sizes for advertisers allows for differences in how they target ads thus leading to a higher cpc in my experience.

      Also, I like to make the bottom ad real gaudy looking (red URL, green link, blue text) because pretty much everyone is usually ad blind by the end of a page.

      That said you're still looking at 3 to 4 dollars a day for a best case scenario. You really need to up the traffic. Also, what does your Infolinks setup look like now? Text ads, tag cloud, search widget, are you using double underlines or dots, etc.
      Thanks a lot for this info, I'll try it for sure.

      About my infolinks: its only text ads with dots (in the same color than my site's links). I will try different things I guess.
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  • Profile picture of the author Marc Rodill
    My unprofessional opinion is to start a new site but target better keywords by figuring out who you want to market to first. But that's the obvious answer.

    Other than that, since it's tech stuff, you're probably going to have to try to sell related tech stuff as an affiliate. Or you can try a mass market offer like weight loss.

    Like a Spanish weight loss offer. But I don't think it will work because your traffic is probably all dudes. In which case maybe you should try Spanish dating sites or dating products.

    But this is a good point to anybody who's paying attention. You don't just want to drive traffic, you want to match the right people up to the right offers. Traffic for the sake of it eats up your valuable time.

    One thing to keep in mind when you start promoting affiliate products again...

    You need drive enough clicks to the sales page to get enough data. Don't throw out the idea with a small sample size. I mean 2% is a good standard conversion rate to shoot for in any industry, for cold traffic.

    (Aka. traffic you haven't pre-sold)

    Which means if you get 100 people to arrive at the sales page, you would get 2 sales on average. So you need to drive at least 300-500 people to the sales page before you write it off as a flop. You dig?

    The trick then becomes figuring out "what" the ad you place on your website has to say, so more people will actually click on it in large enough numbers, go to the sales page, and make you money.

    Marc

    PS. If you can do SEO, or drive quality traffic in general, I'm a very good copywriter who is currently interested in a new "pro bono" mutual partnership for fun and profit. PM me to schedule an appointment if interested.
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  • Profile picture of the author Stuart Walker
    Sounds like your blog is trying to cover too many different topics, I mean smart phones, robotics and consoles means it's pretty untargeted. Go smaller and master your niche not wider and try and cater to anyone.

    Im really laughing at people saying that SEO is dead)
    No one is saying it's dead. We're just saying it's a fools move to focus all your efforts on SEO traffic when it's so unpredictable and out of your control.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sushiman1111
    If you go over to the JV forum there's an ad there specifically targeted to people who are looking to do Spanish language JVs. Sounds like it might be a good fit in your case.
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    Got a health/fitness niche list? Become an affiliate for something new and different here.
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