Suggestions for high-traffic, low-income site?

[electricfox]

I have a customer that's been with me for about 2 years. He hasn't made any money off his site, virtualboatshows.com, and now wants to close it down. I was the original site developer.

He started it out by charging for a listing. This didn't pan out because people simply did not want to pay for their listings. But when it was free he got lots of listings, and today he still gets about 300 hits a month - certainly not huge, but not bad for not advertising at all. At one time he was getting 1000 (around April).

Anyway, I've offered to take over the site for him, and he has agreed. He was going to close it down anyway, so he said he'd like to see it continue.

So now I'm wondering if I should do it. I never honestly thought the idea of an online boat listing site had much merit, but 300 hits isn't bad. It's a fully-automated site, so the problem is not with workload. I guess my only issue is not knowing how to get money out of this thing. I don't really want to charge, though I have the ability to, if it comes to that. Does anyone have ideas on advertising strategies or other ways of getting income? Had anyone had success with "tip-jars"?

Thanks.

[Vixen]

Maybe you could get in touch with other sites that are boat related and have visitors that may be interested in the site and swap banners with them to get the traffic up. Once you get the traffic up, I would say look into charging for banner ad space and impressions. It doesn't hurt to try.

[mfennell]

Vixen is right on here.. contact related sights and manufacurers.. get adds all over that thing. Make some money

[mresell]

second that.

[Light Speed]

Third!

Boat related ads like Marine Supply, boat accessories, boat trailer manufacturers, regional fishing or sailing info companies etc....

You've got a target market so you already know what they are interested in seeing

[dpyers]

I've had a couple of small sites with very specific audiences do well enough with google ad-words to at least cover their costs.

[mresell]

Heck, I got a customer that teaches sailing and he may be interested. Altho, I don't think that reasonable yrly fees are a big deal either depends on the features of the site. But advertising does make money.

[dpyers]

Amazon also has a web services API and also an afiliates program that you can join to sell sailing related books from your site, or earn referral fees from sending them to Amazon. They pay squat, but some audiences are more prone to buying books and gear than others.

[nhdonny]

My little site, www.mygolfouting.com, gets about 50 legitimate visitors a day and a hundred or so drive by.

I make an average of $125/month off Google adsense. Once I saw $50/month coming in I allocated $25/month towards Google adwords advertising which drives more visitors and more clicks.

This pays some bills and helps me work at finding more dollars in the site. My sign shop is now getting biz that I attribute to the Google dollars I invested in a merchant account.

[generic]

charge something like .99 cents per listing, payable via paypal, net result is about 80 cents per listing. If you get 10 a month it pays for the hosting. As word spreads, you will get more!

[generic]

also thanks for the info about google ad sense, never knew that existed, thought they only had US pay them.

Just signed up and I have one site that should make me a few $$$ on.

[newmem]

I wouldn't go for it just bcos it receives 300 hits per day........unless I was really interested in boats. If I am not more than 200% interested in the website that I am running than the visitor, then I will only end up making a loss in it. Even if it is break-even, I would better invest the time in a project that I am enthusiastic about.

It's not that difficult to bring 300 visitors to your website, many marketing techniques available. So why not just bring a 1,000 more visitors to your existing profitable websites rather than divert your time and attention to another one?

didn't wanna spoil your mood, but I didn't see anyone taking the other side in this discussion. But if you wanna go for it, then have fun! Let us know how it works out.

[awen]

Originally Posted by tracewebspace

also thanks for the info about google ad sense, never knew that existed, thought they only had US pay them.

Just signed up and I have one site that should make me a few $$$ on.

Ditto, thanks for the Tips!

[mresell]

newmem,
That is a valid point, however, probably one reason that electric fox probably wants to keep it is he designs. So once you have invested time and this is an example of work done, giving it up is hard. So it is, in a sense an investment. Getting it to pay for itself, then is a bonus.

[awen]

Originally Posted by mresell

newmem,
That is a valid point, however, probably one reason that electric fox probably wants to keep it is he designs. So once you have invested time and this is an example of work done, giving it up is hard. So it is, in a sense an investment. Getting it to pay for itself, then is a bonus.

Besides, if everyone only cared about the fastest and biggest profits the world would be covered in Wal-Mart's and 7-Elevens.

Oh wait, it is.

You never know when a little site could pay off big. This one has focus, self-running, and established already. A little inspiration and effort and it could be a oil well. The hard part is already done, and it probably only costs a couple of bucks a month to host (at cost).

At the very least ElectricFox could put a banner on it then write it off as an advertising expense. The quick and easy isn't the only way.