Monetizing A different blog?

Hi guys, I am new to this forum = so go easy on me.

Anyway, I've owned a blog about skateboarding for two years now, I haven't been as active as possible on it as I'm not really getting enough return. I've had 15,000 views and earned about $22 from Google Adsense.

I do think I need another way to monetize it, I was wondering if you have any suggestions.

I can't post links yet, but if you write 'iskatedaily' into google it's the first link.

To be honest, although that keyword "skating" seems to get a bit of traffic, I don't think that is really a market that will be spending a lot of money or looking to spend a large amount at once or in the long run, which may be leading to your problem of not making much.

When I was skating, I didn't have very much money, and my parents weren't willing to give me much either. Thus I couldn't spend much, nor was I interested in what people might want to sell to me...

I think your problem is basic economics... Not a problem of passion, nor desire...

Look at things on the internet through the lens of money... i.e. who has money, who can get money, who will actually spend money, and who CAN actually spend money (15 year old's usually don't have credit cards)...

If you line all of those up, along with not having much competition, you will be a very happy internet marketer.

Man why do people with established sites in such obvious money making niches keep having to ask this question. Just the other day I answered a pretty similar question for someone getting traffic for computer modding.

OP, go look at the posts I made in this thread Legit Blog site, what do you guys think? because they pretty much apply the same for your situation.

OK, a lot of people searching in the skateboarding niche will actually buy things. They're looking for everything from boards to parts to clothing, etc. Even decals and things like that for their boards.

Instead of just posting ads for adsense, a blog like yours is perfect for actually selling things. Why take fifty cents to a couple bucks for someone clicking an ad when you could have your own add and make $20-$50 for getting a sale?

Start searching for ecommerce sites that sell skateboards, boards, wheels, and other parts and find some that have affiliate programs. Do the same for anything else that skateboarders like, tshirts with cool graphics, decals, ramps and jumps, etc. Then add some posts to your blog promoting some of the better products you find. Change your adblocks to display your own ads linking to the various companies.

Adsense is best used for niches in which you can throw up just enough info to get a good google serp, and just enough quality to keep the visitor from hitting the back button. But still not quite giving the user all the info they need so that they'll be likely to hit an adsense ad trying to find better information. For most people the way to make an income with it is to make many of those type sites that only make a few bucks a day each, but all the sites combined make a decent amount of money.

A site like yours is much better suited to actually create your own targeted ads and send those visitors to sites you'll get a commission from when they make a sale. Some of those visitors that made you the $22 by clicking on adsense ads, probably bought something from the advertisers you sent them to. If you would have been getting a commission on those sales you probably would have made a lot more. Also adsense uses an algorithm to decide what ads to display on your site, it's pretty efficient, but they still aren't always the best ads for a page. If you select the products to promote and the ads to display yourself, you can probably get an even better ctr than the adsense is getting now. You won't get paid directly for that ctr like you do with adsense, but your likely to make much more money in the commissions from whatever percent of that traffic actually makes a purchase.

Along with looking for actual product sales, you could probably find some digital products as well. How to do certain tricks, how to mod your own board, etc., check clickbank marketplace to find something is there and promote those products as well.

Once you've done all that you can even write a similar ebook of your own and get it listed in the cb marketplace. Promote it from your own site to make some money from it yourself, but even more important is if other cb affiliates start selling that for you as well.

So there's some ideas for you. Hope that helps. :cool2:

DebtFreeMe said:

I don't think that is really a market that will be spending a lot of money or looking to spend a large amount at once or in the long run, which may be leading to your problem of not making much.

When I was skating, I didn't have very much money, and my parents weren't willing to give me much either. Thus I couldn't spend much, nor was I interested in what people might want to sell to me...

Click to expand...

I think your actually wrong about that.

While it might have been hard for you to come up with money, for a lot of other people into skateboarding that isn't always the case. The thing is that for a lot of people really into it, they get REALLY into it. Plus this is often a passion sport. So even if they don't have a lot of money a lot of them will devote whatever they do have to stuff for their sport.

It's not a matter of it being a bad niche, it's more a matter of how and what you market to them.

I agree it is passion, but what has more money to back it, a 30 year old that likes snow boarding, or a 15 year old that likes skate boarding...

Make the call from there...

A 30 year old that snow boards and can afford to go to the ski resort is doing well, a 30 year old that goes to the local park to skate is a freak, and the 15 year old that is at the park is broke...

I like money, up front and clear, no need to ask mom and dad... You make the call...

Can you monetize a blog with a $1,000,000 market behind it? Of course? But, rather than be the very best marketer in that market pulling 20% of the market share, I would rather be a mediocre marketer in a $100,000,000 market pulling say 2.5% of the market share...

I'm all for 8 times less market share to make 25% more money... How about you?

DebtFreeMe said:

I agree it is passion, but what has more money to back it, a 30 year old that likes snow boarding, or a 15 year old that likes skate boarding...

Click to expand...

Well there's a lot of market research that shows marketing to kids will make a lot of money, they might not have much of their own, but a large percentage have better resul;ts than you did at getting their parents to shell it out. Kids are also a lot more likely to spend their money on things they like rather than things they need. lol. Besides that, 15yo aren't the only ones that like skateboarding. There's a lot of 18yo+ adults that do have some money that are passionate about it as well. lol

But more importantly... this isn't a niche he's asking if he should enter. It's a two year old site that's already built up and targeted to that niche.

So the question isn't "what kind of niche he should go into", it's "how can he better monetize the existing blog he already has".

edit-
So really it comes down to which would you rather be in a position to monetize, one in which you already get targeted traffic, or one in which you'll have to start from scratch.

He could still start another site targeted to snowboarding and when it starts getting traffic then you're right that it might be a bigger money maker, but why wouldn't you want to take advantage of the site you already have as well. I think economics doesn't play as much a factor in the problem he had making money with his existing site, so much as he only tried to make money on it with adsense. I think adsense just wasn't really the best choice for his particular blog.

The snowboarding example is still really good though because there is a crossover between skateboarders and snowboarding. It would probably be a good idea for the OP to consider adding some occasional posts about snowboarding and target products for that as well. If he gets good results from it then he could start building backlinks targeting that niche too and scale that up even more.