[damage]

Anyone got any tips on turning website traffic into cash??

I have my own website, and get about 20 unique hits a day. Hardly a big cheese, but having nurtured it for over a year, this marks a significant improvement.

What levels do you think are required to translate to a tiny bit of dosh. What is the clicking rate on random (or site related adverts, such as adwords). Should I be expecting 1 in 100, 1 in 20 of those who stay over a minute etc?

Anyway, basically any tips I can scrounge for free. Obviously getting a well populated forum is a greaet key to rolling in the bucks, and I could if I wanted, but wouldn't want to put av forums out of business if I did!

[pixelpixel]

what about joining an Associate option with a site. Say amazon and then telling ALL your friends that if they get anything from that site to use your website first. That way they will generate a little bit for you in the same time.

+ Note being an Associate will work when YOU buy something as well. So if you used a site that offered Associates then you would generate income for yourself!!! +

http://associates.amazon.co.uk/gp/as...join/main.html

Not sure what the content of the site is but I would say if AV related sign up to
google adwords for 2 reasons

1 - it looks cleaner
2 - You will probably make more than alternatives as it will be specific advertising related to your content as oppose to "Congratulations you are millonth visitor to this site"

Google Adwords pay on a cost per click basis, so everytime someone clicks on an ad you will get paid

Other alternative is sign up to an advertising network, same idea as above but they will mainly be graphical ads, so they will work paying you around £0.30 - £0.50p for every 1000 impressions that the ads generate as well as some ads which will be on a cost per click basis.

UK wise 2 of the biggest networks that do this are http://www.advertising.com and http://www.vcmedia.co.uk (whose main publisher site is http://www.valueclickmedia.com)

Both pay on time and give you lots of control on the ads you will display, and are both worldwide companies, one owned by AOL the other listed on the Nasdaq so not mickey mouse companies you cant trust

For every 1000 impressions on ads from a network for a 468x60 average click through rate is around 0.15% and for a skyscraper (120x600) is between 0.2% - 0.35%

For adwords as they are showing related content can be much much higher as the ads are related to your content. Without being intentionally vague it really can be anywhere from 2% - 10% +

A nice thing with Google is you can implement a Search box and if anyone searches and clicks on one of the paid ads you earn money


For the number of uniques you have best bet is to go for google and also sign
up to amazon. If it works with your site dont go crazy but maybe have a 468x60 or 728x90 at the top of your site and a 120/160 x 600 down the side

With Amazon they have lots of flexibilty with how you can serve offers so you can include them without looking like overkill. Amazon with pay you a % of any books/products that are sold from your site

With your number of uniques you will probably make £15-£40 a month. Most companies I have mentioned wont pay you until you have earned $100/£100. But they will roll any money earned into the next month

My 2 cents on a few different options, and I am giving the advice based on working in online advertising networks for a number of years

So you wont be buying the island just yet but should get enough to pay for your hosting

Hope that helps

[damage]

pixelpixel, cheers for that advice and link.

Looks as if amazon give you a rate of 4% ish, with a few more percent if you generate high enough sales. I don't think I will be asking my friend to click through, as I'm more interested in the concept of having a website in the public domain and jsut seeing what the potential profit from people I don't know.

However I might well use a link to click through my own sales, presuming its easy to cash out or spend the money earnt, its money for nothing.

pacq, fantastic advice also,

so you think on average btw 1 and 4 people click on random links, and maybe ten times that on themed/ related links.

Most of my traffic comes from a sudoku solver i made and host. At the moment i have the potential to make a bit of loose change from a gambling/poker school, so the attempt is to try and drive people to this site.

But if as you say the click through rate is less than 1%, and even then, I need that person to get sufficiently interested in the gambling school to take the next step whcih earns me money (so introducing another order of magnitude) then i guess at the moment I shouldn't be surprised that 20 visitors a day isn't translating into cash.

So maybe I should take up your adwords advice, leave this sudoku site as just a standalone venture perhaps paying for its hosting, and think of other means of drumming up interest for the gambling site.

Most of my traffic comes from a sudoku solver i made and host. At the moment i have the potential to make a bit of loose change from a gambling/poker school, so the attempt is to try and drive people to this site.

Not sure if I'm clear but these are separate sites right?

With gambling avoid the main affiliate networks commissionjunction, tradedoubler etc... you will make far more money going direct and working with these sites direct as they all have there own inhouse affiliate schemes and have better payment terms. The big ones are listed on the stock exchange so they cant really afford to mess around

Poker and Sports Betting lots of money to be made if you work on a pure revenue share. Starting off tends to be about 20-25% of lifetime revenue.

Poker and Sports are good as lots of loyalty, same sort of logic as why does a person walk past Will Hill on the high street to the Ladbrokes 3 doors down. But with the loyalty factor people stay at a poker room, betting shop so can be nice regular income

With casinos a lot of players are bonus hunters who jump around after they ultimately loose so fluctuates a lot

Probably will end up sounding like some sort of jack of all trades but I quit my job to live in Asia for a year and just do gambling sites full time to pay my way

Happy to give any advice if I can. Might be easier starting a PM or we could have one very big thread