Sitting on a Potential Gold Mine?

Hey Guys,

So I am currently working for a website which is in the food magazine industry and most of the content is user submitted. We get around 55,000,000 total pageviews / month. However, only 390,000 of it is in the US while most of it is in Russia and Ukraine.

Currently our only source of revenue is through AdSense & Yandex Direct. We also have a mailing list, but I do not think that it is being monetized at all.

One of the downsides is that the design is extremely outdated and the owner of the website does not want to invest money in creating an up-to-date version. Even though we have a large user base, would the outdated design of the website significantly affect if big brands would want to advertise with us? Or is having a big large page volume the most important factor here?

If anyone has any ideas, or would even possibly be interested in participating with this project - let me know!

I dont understand really, youre getting some good traffic and using adsense as your monetization method. How much are you making that the owner cannot even afford someone to update the design?

I would keep pushing for it and explain him the benefits such as what you said which is getting more companies to advertise on the website but the design is making them hesitant to do so.

Unless the owner hates money, A custom design won't cost you more than 1k

If the website is intended to be around for the long run then you will need to keep the design updated and fresh.

most people dont like website changes because they will need to relearn how to navigate.

Traffic > Design

55 million page view sand you are complaining that design is not good. As far as I can see users dont have problem with your design. Your cpc is low because visitors are from Asia, not USA/UK

You can definitely modernize and clean up the layout without doing a complete overhaul. Check your ad placement too, make sure you're maximizing your space.