Monetizeing a web magazine

[jeremycurtis]

Hi,
I'm new to this forum, a reasonably experienced web developer but definitely new to monetizing a web site.

There is a "web magazine" with a PR5 and about 10K unique visits/month. It used to have over 250K/month. It has no ads and used 6 year old technology - it is 100% static HTML! It has an active community of contributors.

I have two major questions:-
1. Does it sound like an opporunity that should be taken up? And I know it is impossible to say, but what sort of revenue should one be able to make from such a site? Or please could someone give me a stake in ground from an tangible example.

2. What is the best way forward technically? Build a solution from the ground up? Use a blog + extensions? Add a BB? Or something in between.

I know it would be easier with a URL, but I can't - sorry. But I can say, articles are written by professionals for professionals; it is international in its reach.

Any guidance or pointing at other good reading would be greatly appreciated.
Jeremy

[Shawn]

We need to know what the content pertains to.

All about the content. Means the difference between $20 per month and $2,000.

[Cutter]

Do you own it? Sorry its not clear from your post.

[Chris]

How does a website drop in traffic so quickly (unless say it's tied to a passing fad like beanie babies and or harry potter or something).

[James]

Let's not forget Pokemon. That managed to go above and beyond 9.8m/s acceleration when it fell off the face of the web.

Why can't you post a link? I can't think of a plausible reason, and you're correct about this being much easier to judge with one.

I'd suggest the way forward is likely to simply convert your website to being dynamic (while still retaining Search Engine Friendly URLs; you could even go about this in such a way as to not have to change any of the articles' current URLs). It may also be a good idea to add a blog or bulletin board; however, you must consider how active the community will be in those sections, as well as whether a blog is appropriate, and would suite the website as well as the operators of that website's schedules (I don't mean sites schedules; it's just weird wording).

[jeremycurtis]

Thanks for help so far ...

"I can't" tell you should have been "I am not sure". Simply because its "ownership" is unclear to me and in a state of flux. So it is not in my domain (yet) to talk as if it is "mine". It is "owned" by the volunteer founders. But the current webmaster who knows little of web publishing is retiring.

Would it help of I PM one of you the address?

The site is for child care professionals - so communitycare (http://www.communitycare.co.uk) would be comparable but a key difference is that our content is all original and written each month. This site is like a newspaper. Our site is more like a professional journal. Some of the articles are their to provoke debate others to raise awareness.

Does this help identify the content and therefor money making opportunity?

In answer to the visitors question ... it used to have ton of free job ads on it that drove the traffic up. But because it is totally static, the management was a tad hard. So the ads got dropped.

I should say the aim is not so much to make money for the sake of it, but to make it self funding rather than the almost totally voluntary nature it has now. So basically, I have been asked to webmaster it at my own expense but granted the freedom to extract revenue from it. So I am doing the business planning bit at the moment to see if it can fund me and potentially a part-time editor.

Thanks again for anny help. If I take up this role, I'll be on this forum a lot, lot more.
Jeremy

[Chris]

Well with 10k uniques a month I would expect less than $100 a month profit from it. So I would worry most about increasing the traffic.

250k uniques a month could be a couple grand amonth.

[jeremycurtis]

Thanks Chris,
That's the first real stake in the ground I've got. Those numbers would come from Ads alone?

I can mention the site now -www.childrenwebmag.com (http://www.childrenwebmag.com/).

I am aware of most of the techniques for building traffic but have no idea what the priority should be? So suggestions welcome.

And would you recommend building it from the ground up, joining bits of opensource up or using a commercial product?

I've also discovered that the archives are posted on another domain. My instant reaction is horror! My guess is that the archives should be on the same domain to make the content mass appealing to the SEs and maximise ad revenue. Am I correct?

Jeremy

[Cutter]

Do you have any of the old stats so you can nail down exactly where the traffic came from before? You should try to get that traffic back besides exploring new traffic streams.

Yes, the archives should definately be on the same domain. The urls of all your pages should remain in tact when archiving old content too.

[jeremycurtis]

Thanks Cutter,
I'm working getting the logs ASAP.

I've just realised that exactly what you say is not happening. I suspect the articles get moved to the archive before Google even gets round to indexing them! So while the home page has a PR5, the main articles have a PR0. The archives get a PR3 after 3+ months.

Jeremy

[Chris]

There is no reason to punish old content by moving it elsewhere.

I think you could estimate $5 per 1000 unique visitors roughly, possibly as high as $10 if each one contributes many page views. And yes, from ads.

[Cutter]

With a good design that matches Adsense I think you could easily pull in $10 per thousand views. You've got good content and a targetted audience so I don't think it will be a problem.

[jeremycurtis]

Thanks for your help and guidance. :) My next stage is to build a machine to monetize it all. I plan to use Joomla + modules.

Would you be able to point me in the direction of something you would say is comparable and you know works. I've read all the posts and articles on Adsense placements and blending in etc but have to implement it now.

Also, any tips on building traffic ... I plan to add RSS but what are the top 3 (say) things I should do to get the traffic up from 10K to 100K/month and fast.

Thanks
Jeremy

[peach]

Thanks for your help and guidance. :) My next stage is to build a machine to monetize it all. I plan to use Joomla + modules.

Would you be able to point me in the direction of something you would say is comparable and you know works. I've read all the posts and articles on Adsense placements and blending in etc but have to implement it now.

Also, any tips on building traffic ... I plan to add RSS but what are the top 3 (say) things I should do to get the traffic up from 10K to 100K/month and fast.

Thanks
Jeremy
review drupal too before going with joomla, now that my website is taking off I feel like I might have made a mistake not checking out drupal.

[peach]

With a good design that matches Adsense I think you could easily pull in $10 per thousand views. You've got good content and a targetted audience so I don't think it will be a problem.
Man is that supposed to be easy? I don't get close to half of that!
And my visitors are very targetted, though in the entertainment>celebrities niche.

[Cutter]

Read this article I wrote for placement tips:
http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/adsense-optimization/

As for the CMS you are using.. make sure its SE friendly. If its not, it will kill your SE traffic. Hell, I would not change a single URL you have already. I don't know a whole lot about CMSs, so I'm not the one to ask any more details about this.

Peach, its all about placement, advertising demand, and traffic quality. I can tell you I have sites that make a lot less than $10 CPM, as well as sites that make many multiples more than that. Of course, the sites on the high end have very targetted and small audiences. For example, there are advertisers out there who are bidding $10 or $20 a click, but they might only be getting 10 clicks a day. Its kind of like the whole mesothelioma thing. Hardly anyone was looking for it until a few people publically anounced how much money they were making from it, now everyone is searching it (and oddly enough, there are something like 75 people bidding for the keyword on google)