How To Best Monetize 5,000 Pageviews

[RyaninZion]

We run a news and commentary site from Israel on the Middle East. We currently have about 5,000 pageviews/day, which I know is not a great amount, but should be enough to monetize.

However, with Adsense, despite the fact we are getting well over 100 clicks/day, we are making well under $20/day. Each click is worth a very, very small amount - which I have heard is common with politics and religion sites, since the content does not draw ads on tangible products.

So my question is - on a politics site with 5,000 pageviews/day (2-3,000 visitors), what is the best way to monetize our traffic?

Oh, for those interested, the site is www.jnewswire.com

[Chris]

The main draw for your site is that it is geographically targetted. I think the best may to monetize it will be to approach local Israeli companies about sponsorship. Charge them a single monthly fee.

I don't know if there are any Israeli specific ad networks out there, but if there are, try them as well.

[RyaninZion]

Our traffic is not Israeli though. Our traffic is 90% from North America.

[Chris]

I still think that you likely have a geographic or cultural audience that would be best served with a private advertiser, atleast if you want to maximize your earnings. Even if it is a mostly North American audience I'm sure they're mostly Jewish and I'm also sure that most of them have family or friends living in Israel.


Other than that... have you considered some heavy adsense optimization (http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/contextual-optimization/)?

btw, nice design on the site. Its close to what I want this site to look like after it is redesigned.

[Cutter]

Chris is right, one of you big problems is that Adsense is contextual to the topic on the page.. and the topics on your page may not have a very strong ad market (I am seeing books and DVDs)

There are really two types of advertising, one is contextual targetted directly to a site or page's topic. This works great for search engine traffic. The other is advertising targetted at the viewer. The problem is Google's ad algorithm doesn't really make targeting a viewers audience rather than the on-page topic easy -- which means you have to sell your own advertising, more or less.

One alternative is to crank up the pageviews (a forum is usually best) which means CPM advertisers will start targeting your site more. This should push your CPMs and overall revenue up a bit.

I would say, add some monthly sponsors on the side where that adsense skyscraper is now. Relocate Adsense to boxe sizes (250x250 maybe) within the content, wide Adsense banner at the bottom to capture extra CPM revenue. Consider alternatives that will also add revenue with your e-mail list. Do all of this and you should see a nice boost in your overall revenue. I'd say it would be conservative to double to triple it, but you can do better than that if you are also willing to expand the site.

[RyaninZion]

Thanks for the responses. And thanks for the compliment on the site design, Chris.

I will hunt about for some local sponsors and see what I come up with.

Cutter, what do you mean by "expand the site"? Just adding forums in order to gain more pageviews? I am not against doing so, though we had a forum in the past, and it was a real time consuming pain to moderate and keep the thing clean of spam.

[jonnyhilfiger]

100 clicks for $20 is good, don't knock it, I wish I was averaging that.

John

[webmoney]

I think also that 100 clicks and $20 is good. Your page looks good and it seams that banners are placed well on the page. You should ask question if 100 clicks is enough with 5000 visitors for this type of site. I wish I had such site like yours :)

[dustin676]

If you want to make more money with that site just put cj ads on there from this catgory : Books/Media
Audio Books - Books - Magazines - News - Television - Videos/Movies

News! .. I'm tellin you.. try it. - Dustin www.cj.com

let me know what happens..

"whats up, i am a cj publisher. made 600.00 from one little 3,000 dollar keyboard sale. payed my rent for that month. - Dustin"

[Cutter]

You could try CJ.. it wouldn't be on the top of my list. Whats more important is that you continue to build your audience.

There are so many ways to do this (yes, like a forum), some things may work better for your audience than others. Different audiences respond better or worse to different things. Its not just the demographics but their own mindset when consuming your media. Forget the theory, you just have to continually be testing and measuring different new ideas. Don't reject or judge something in your mind before testing it out.