Monetizing a .ie website with decent traffic

Flipper

I built www.PigSty.ie about 18 months ago and the traffic has been building steadily since then but now, I want to monetize the site. It is currently getting circa 300 unique visitors every day and ranks well on Google. I am looking for suggestions as to how to make some money from it! The obvious thing is to charge the advertisers (it's currently free with a paid option) but I'd love to hear any suggestions - regardless what they are

mneylon

Adsense and affiliate marketing stuff might work

Depends on what kind of traffic you have (ie. not the volume but the "who")

Flipper

Blacknight wrote: »

Adsense and affiliate marketing stuff might work

Depends on what kind of traffic you have (ie. not the volume but the "who")

I already have some AdSense banners running on there and they perform OK. I don't have a lot of information about "who" browses the site but they are mostly homeowners and professionals who can afford to hire a cleaner. Have you any suggestions with regard the affiliate marketing?

mneylon

Links to the main affiliate networks: http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com/affiliate-programs/2920-useful-links-affiliate-networks.html

Pablo

You could also offer your own type of cleaning service. i.e. white label it under another brand and source the staff via your PigSty website. Seeing as you have the contacts in the industry I'm sure you could offer a solution where someone says "I want a cleaner in Cork". And you go off and do the offer and processing, and you provide a certain level of service. So you would but some level of a quality guarantee behind it. Some people are happier to deal with companies rather than individual cleaners (AFAIK).

You might have to be careful about whether you are directly hiring these people or if you are just supplying their service.

millymash12

How about a featured listing. Check out sites like whatclinic.com for ideas and there is a very buggy Wordpress theme by Templatic to make your own geo directory. It has some good ideas but very flawed execution for make money from a directory, you can get customers to pay for featured listings per category on a monthly basis and provide different packages.

irishd

The thing about affiliate marketing is that its success can vary massively depending on how well the products/service being advertised matches with your audience (tune this per page or category).

Given your site visitors would be mostly cleaners or those looking for cleaners, you should either look to get specific sponsorship from a janitorial supplies company, or else join the relevant affiliate programs of on-line suppliers like Viking Direct or JML Direct ... AFAIR both work through Trade Doubler.

Shad0r

I'd encourage you to test various monetization strategies to see what works best.

I'm with irishd on the affiliate marketing comment. In my experience the people who do really well with it are people who are constantly building a relationship and trust with their audiences (i.e. bloggers). Your site is more about solving an immediate problem your users have, so I dunno that you would have any rapport/trust built up there. Of course that's something you could work on building up with an active email list (Mailchimp) or perhaps by writing an ebook that helps cleaners in some way or the employers (or both!).

What about building in a small fee for the cleaners to list on the site? Or, let any cleaner sign up for free account but offer a premium listing that has benefits (better placement in results etc). The other option is selling ad space directly or using one of the ad networks to serve ads. In the case of the latter you are going to earn either on a CPC or CPM basis which may not serve you particularly well at your current size.

Anyway just my tuppence worth of ideas/thoughts, in the hope it helps

condra

It's a great little site in my opinion.
Nice colour scheme, cool logo, user friendly layout... etc.

Don't ruin the website with crappy Adsense please!

I admire you for setting up such a site, because the main problem with these sort of services is that to start off, you need to have the listings in place to get visitors.

Monetization:
I think you should have a 3 or 4 tier listing scheme, where any company/individual can submit their info for free, but they might choose to pay a small annual fee for extra promotion, such as a featured listing, a "recommended" star, a piece in the newsletter, their own private info page, or whatever.

I really hope you're not giving your clients those email listings for free. Either way, you should do the old mailto subject trick to make sure your clients know it's you bringing in the business, eg:

<a href="mailto:test@example.com?subject=pigsty_listing">

On much the same note, I think you should subtly encourage visitors to mention your website when making inquiries. If Rodger the Roofer from Raheny has a free listing and gets enough extra nixers that he knows are from Pigsty, he's more likely to upgrade his listing.

Other things, now that my minds on it:
I think once you have a good solid monetization method in place, it's going to be a matter then of expanding to get more traffic, and more listings. The listings can come from contacting some cleaners by email and letting them know that you can get them more business, for free.

I think you should splash out a bit and promote the website with some local print advertising, such as in small local magazines or papers, or form some strategic partnerships with vaguely related, (non-competing) Irish websites, such as those about property, retirement, weddings, tourism, pet-keeping, etc.

On the register page, "Why advertise your services on PigSty.ie?" ... I think you should talk about TRAFFIC. Nothing gets people wetter than the idea of thousands of website visitors.

Finally, I know you have Twitter and FB pages, but a Share button could be really beneficial too.

Good luck with everything.

vikashmundaa

your website is about window cleaning which is a good topic as there are lots of compertition between window cleaning companies you can easliy get ads from them so private ad selling would be best option for you.

You can use adsense but why paying some other company 68% when you can earn 100% some other monetizing method you use doubleclick or some cpm ad networks.

Marty_McFly

You have built a really good site there fair play! I would agree with the other posters about getting rid of the Adsense and using a featured listing model. I think that could work really well for you.

Bit off topic here but you want to watch those spam listings from "we love to clean". They are all over the site.

The Apprentice

I work with these guys in some respects.. I,d give them a vote anyday - and its right up your street

www.chemicaldirect.ie

Flipper

Hi guys, really sorry that I've taken so long to write back. Many thanks for the kind words about the site... It makes running a free site feel a little better :-P

I've been racking my brains on this and I do see now (after playing around with it a bit) that adsense isn't the way to do this. I have also spoke to several cleaners that advertise with me and they get so much traffic from the site - some, so much so that they said they can't handle all the enquiries. From that, I think that a €3-€5 per week charge on your ad would suffice and would mean that I could reinvest all this into Adwords etc. what do you all think of this price point?

The Guvnor

I think €3-5 is very fair as it appears they get genuine results from your site.
It also shows you are fair and when they learn the reasoning for the charge is to reinvest in getting bigger traffic how can they be upset.
Hardest issue might be how to get the money on a regular basis?