I created a chat site with an open chat. Very basic. Additionally I added a profile system. Also very basic. Now I have about 3K visitors a month, make about $30 dollar a month through adsense, but I dont have any clue on how to make it more profitable.
Ask HN: What to do with 3K visitors a month?
1–10 of 42 posts
Re: Ask HN: What to do with 3K visitors a month?
#2Dont.
We haven't monetized hackernoon.com at all and have instead focused on good content and we are now well into the millions of monthly uniques. Its not worth the time to monitize 3k visitors
Re: Ask HN: What to do with 3K visitors a month?
#3Aside from having ads on the site, your only real option is a paid plan. In that case, just start marketing the project as "beta" and add a pricing page that says the pricing is "coming soon". Continue building out features and once you get a good enough product to charge for add a paid plan and flip everybody else over to the default "Free Plan" that's limited in a way that users can still use the site, but have enough reasons to upgrade to the paid plan.
Whatever you do I'd try to listen to your users and see exactly what they want. 3,000 users really isn't very many and it would be really easy for them to disappear. Talk to your users, find out why they're using your site/service, keep that in mind when building out your feature set.
Edit: Keep in mind, building out the service and keeping it free is also an option, especially if you enjoy working on and running the site. If you listen to your users and keep improving the product, it's very possible to turn 3K monthly users into 300K. I run an API that has a front end site which gets around 175K monthly hits and brings in about $1300+ (CAD) a month from the ads. The site costs peanuts to run so I'm happy to serve the 35 million API calls for free and fund the project 100% via adsense. It just depends on how far you'd like to scale it and what your users are like.
Re: Ask HN: What to do with 3K visitors a month?
#4What to do with them ? Do right by them. Try to figure out why they are using your site instead of some other one (slack comes to mind), figure out who your audience is, talk to them to try to find out who they are (not necessarily "what they want", because people will tell you all kinds of things), and give them what they need.
If, at the end of all this, you don't have a clearer idea about how to help these people to happily give you their time / money / eyeballs, then maybe just leave it be and enjoy $30 worth of beer each month or something.
Re: Ask HN: What to do with 3K visitors a month?
#5Why would you want to make it more profitable? The alternative is giving your users a better, ad-free experience. What makes you happier:
1) Getting $100/month in revenue
2) Having a fast growing group of users who love your web-app?
Re: Ask HN: What to do with 3K visitors a month?
#6I work building tools for ad optimizers, next step they take is to get an account for DFP and Ad exchange(Google) which offers better revenue, there are also other ad networks you can configure on DFP to boost revenue like PubGalaxy the thing is you need to take time to test each one or get help for a pro ad optimizer and these days all big publishers are using Header bidding, you can reach me alejandro [at] ialex.org if want more details.
Re: Ask HN: What to do with 3K visitors a month?
#7As a chat service, you may have some options for adding premium emoji, premium avatars, or other digital displays of wealth. Digital gifts can be another option. Ok Cupid is rumored to have made a lot on digital roses. Premium services like private rooms may have value as well.
Re: Ask HN: What to do with 3K visitors a month?
#8You need to provide more information about the services you provide.
How specialized are you, maybe if you're incredibly specialized and have the right crowd, you can start having premium accounts, in exchange for special features.
3k is pretty low, for a chat service (in general, maybe for extremely specialized services it isn't).
If possible, try to expand your userbase, advertising? Social sharing? Affiliate programs?
The possibilities are endless and you live and die by the specifics of your niche.
Decide if you want to aim for massive, or niche, ads, premium features, freemium?
If you want more specifics, I think you need to be more specific in your question, but then I'll gladly expand.
Re: Ask HN: What to do with 3K visitors a month?
#9It's awesome that you made it this far, but to be honest 3k MAU just isn't enough. If you're making money through ads, you'll want more eyeballs on them so try getting more users! Depending on how far you want to take it, your username may unfortunately become very relevant.
Re: Ask HN: What to do with 3K visitors a month?
#10Why would you want to make it more profitable? The alternative is giving your users a better, ad-free experience. What makes you happier: 1) Getting $100/month in revenue 2) Having a fast growing group of users who love your web-app?
I don't think that's really a fair comment. There's lots of reasons to want to monetize a project, including to pay for servers, fund future development, and fund future projects. All it takes is a few small sites/services that are making >= $500/m via ads or paid customers to be able to quit your job and focus your time on said projects.