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Ask HN: How can non-subscription based website make money?

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Re: Ask HN: How can non-subscription based website make money?

#21

Post by jasonshen »

richardhenry wrote: post #5
petervandijck wrote: post #4

Yes, you can make enough money from ads if you have a lot of traffic.

You can also make enough money from ads if you have a targeted, niche audience. Don't underestimate that, if you're willing to put the effort in and do ad sales.

Targeted niche sites can do pretty well with direct ads even without a lot of traffic. 50k+ pgviews is a great start.

Quick pitch - I work at isocket, a company that makes it easier to manage your direct sales. We take care of billing/invoices, scheduling campaigns and stats. You can focus on the human part - selling - which we can help advise you on.

Re: Ask HN: How can non-subscription based website make money?

#22

Post by adw »

satishf wrote: post #16
adw wrote: post #8

Everything makes money by selling something, whether directly or indirectly. There are something like five things you can sell via or over the Web: i) sell products which you buy or make yourself (ecommerce) ii) sell services which you generate (x-as-a-Service) iii) resell other people's products or services on commission (affiliate marketing) iv) sell your audience's attention (advertising) v) sell your audience's b…

This will be a niche website which falls into the 'iv) sell your audience's attention (advertising)' category.

Depends on the niche. Have a look and see what typical keywords you expect to wind up on your site garner on AdWords; if you can attract eyeballs for less than, say, 40% of that price (to allow for Google's margins) – including your time or cost for content generation – then you might make some money.

But you'll need quite a lot of traffic in a reasonably high-purchasing-intent niche.

Re: Ask HN: How can non-subscription based website make money?

#23

Post by terra_t »

How much you make on ads depends on your site, your audience, and all that.

Looking at quite a few sites, I see results that are counterintuitive: for instance, you can make more money running ads on a Chevy forum than you can on a Cadillac forum.

You might think that Caddy owners have more money than Chevy owners, however, it turns out that Chevy owners like to trick out their cars with aftermarket parts and Caddy owners (even poor owners of 20-year old Cadillacs) like to have OEM everything... Most of the ad spend is on aftermarket parts... GM isn't going to spend money on caddy forums because the people on Caddy forums know more about GM's products and GM's product plans than the people who make the ads.

I think it's also about supply and demand. Even though people spend a lot on cars, car products and car services, my experience is that there are a lot of topics that pay better than cars. The trouble is that there are too many car sites out there already, so the spend gets diluted Every gearhead and his brother has a web site about cars.

You've got to watch out for "otaku topics" like Anime. Unfortunately, anime fans are weirdos (the kind of ~guys~ who dress up like a purple-haired princess for Halloween) who don't spend a lot of money on stuff, and particularly don't spend a lot on anime because they download it all off bittorrent long before commercial dubbers start negotiating for the rights. 2/3 of the people who like anime already have a website or a livejournal or deviantart page about it, so talk about dilution... Christ, you can't pay for the storage and bandwidth costs for your images...

Re: Ask HN: How can non-subscription based website make money?

#24

Post by devmonk »

Some ideas:

- Bill on a per-use basis

- Hours of usage are prepaid like calling cards

- Ads

- Selling data collected to others (and it doesn't even have to be personally identifying customer info. I worked for a company that did speed tests and at one point a company in another country that knew of our speed tests wanted to buy our speed test result data. We never sold it, but sometimes offers come to you!)

- Donations (via paypal, etc.)

Can it generate enough money from Ads? Not as well as it used to be able to, but yes it is possible. Is it likely without much effort? Depends on amount and kind of site traffic and content of the Ads.

You need to have confidence in what product or service you are selling, though, and have a potential/real customer feedback loop setup from the beginning. You shouldn't rely on Ads alone. If no one is coming to your site, they won't click on the Ads.

Re: Ask HN: How can non-subscription based website make money?

#25

Post by rwhitman »

endlessvoid94 wrote: post #14

I run ThatHigh.com and it pays my rent in SF. I started out with Adsense and it scales pretty well. I now have two direct advertisers paying me monthly. So basically, it's ad-driven. And that model can definitely work.

When did you start the site? At what point did you start realizing that Adsense was scaling well?

Just really curious to hear your story.

Re: Ask HN: How can non-subscription based website make money?

#26

Post by Griever »

endlessvoid94 wrote: post #14

I run ThatHigh.com and it pays my rent in SF. I started out with Adsense and it scales pretty well. I now have two direct advertisers paying me monthly. So basically, it's ad-driven. And that model can definitely work.

This is a bit besides the point but your site is absolutely hilarious. Nice job man.

Re: Ask HN: How can non-subscription based website make money?

#27

Post by endlessvoid94 »

Griever wrote: post #26
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #14

I run ThatHigh.com and it pays my rent in SF. I started out with Adsense and it scales pretty well. I now have two direct advertisers paying me monthly. So basically, it's ad-driven. And that model can definitely work.

This is a bit besides the point but your site is absolutely hilarious. Nice job man.

thanks :-)

Re: Ask HN: How can non-subscription based website make money?

#28

Post by endlessvoid94 »

rwhitman wrote: post #25
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #14

I run ThatHigh.com and it pays my rent in SF. I started out with Adsense and it scales pretty well. I now have two direct advertisers paying me monthly. So basically, it's ad-driven. And that model can definitely work.

When did you start the site? At what point did you start realizing that Adsense was scaling well? Just really curious to hear your story.

I started the site with my friend and my girlfriend back in February while I was still in college. It took off.

Like I said below, I only got direct advertisers in July, so it took awhile to grow. I was making about $1200 / month from Adsense in May/June, and some of the space has been sold to direct advertisers and I still make about $900 / month just from adsense, plus more from the advertisers.

I'm still looking for more, but the project has taken a backseat to my new project: Djangy.com

Re: Ask HN: How can non-subscription based website make money?

#29

Post by patrickaljord »

endlessvoid94 wrote: post #28
rwhitman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did you start the site? At what point did you start realizing that Adsense was scaling well? Just really curious to hear your story.

I started the site with my friend and my girlfriend back in February while I was still in college. It took off. Like I said below, I only got direct advertisers in July, so it took awhile to grow. I was making about $1200 / month from Adsense in May/June, and some of the space has been sold to direct advertisers and I still make about $900 / month just from adsense, plus more from the advertisers. I'm still looking f…

How much traffic do you get monthly +/-?

Re: Ask HN: How can non-subscription based website make money?

#30

Post by endlessvoid94 »

patrickaljord wrote: post #29
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started the site with my friend and my girlfriend back in February while I was still in college. It took off. Like I said below, I only got direct advertisers in July, so it took awhile to grow. I was making about $1200 / month from Adsense in May/June, and some of the space has been sold to direct advertisers and I still make about $900 / month just from adsense, plus more from the advertisers. I'm still looking f…

How much traffic do you get monthly +/-?

It varies between 900k - 1.3M page views per month. Fluctuates between 90k and 110k visitors. Like I said, I haven't touched it in quite some time, as I'm focusing literally all of my energy on Djangy
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