Over 10K Visitors Per Month Still No Money, What's Wrong?

yinka

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Jun 17, 2009
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I run a growing blog in the music entertainment industry. For the past three months I've been getting on average a little over 10,000 visitors each month, but I'm making little to no money. The most I've made in one month has been no more than $5 from Google Adsense. I also have Linkshare ads, CJ ads, used popup domination, and I've done press releases pointing to affiliate postings. I'm good with getting traffic to the blog, but converting is the problem. What am I doing wrong? How do I convert?

It's a blog that's getting more and more popular everyday according to GA but I'm not seeing any success in sales. Please help! Any advice appreciated. Thanks.
 


I run a growing blog in the music entertainment industry. For the past three months I've been getting on average a little over 10,000 visitors each month, but I'm making little to no money. The most I've made in one month has been no more than $5 from Google Adsense. I also have Linkshare ads, CJ ads, used popup domination, and I've done press releases pointing to affiliate postings. I'm good with getting traffic to the blog, but converting is the problem. What am I doing wrong? How do I convert?

It's a blog that's getting more and more popular everyday according to GA but I'm not seeing any success in sales. Please help! Any advice appreciated. Thanks.

You're wondering why you're not making money from a blog in music entertainment? When you find out how to get people to pay for music, go ahead and let the RIAA know too.
 
post a link to your blog

the blog in question is streetdose[.]com


You're wondering why you're not making money from a blog in music entertainment? When you find out how to get people to pay for music, go ahead and let the RIAA know too.

you may have a point because i've been able to make money in other industries, but i don't only promote albums or mixtapes.
 
I have never had problems monetizing a Music site :-) , with Adsense.

In the Website title, add words like Mp3, Ringtones and Download. Let these words appear in your meta keywords. Drop these words naturally in your content. Also in your sidebar. They should be natural (not required, but gives better UX). This will start google to send you some higher paying ads. Hint: Drop these keywords in a perfectly Legal Way. Link links to a good ringtone site.. Links to Itunes for download and MP3. Nothing should be illegal, in case google pays you a visit.

Check your adsense placements. Link units under the Nav bar.. Square Blocks under the Post title etc.
 
I have never had problems monetizing a Music site :-) , with Adsense.

In the Website title, add words like Mp3, Ringtones and Download. Let these words appear in your meta keywords. Drop these words naturally in your content. Also in your sidebar. They should be natural (not required, but gives better UX). This will start google to send you some higher paying ads. Hint: Drop these keywords in a perfectly Legal Way. Link links to a good ringtone site.. Links to Itunes for download and MP3. Nothing should be illegal, in case google pays you a visit.

Check your adsense placements. Link units under the Nav bar.. Square Blocks under the Post title etc.




1 suggestion

1) remove the adsense banner from your footer and put it in the header area instead. will get you more clicks and impressoins.


Thanks for the great advice and suggestions, both of you!!
 
Couple of things:

1. Try a 300x250 ad block. These generally get more clicks.

2. Understand your visitors:
- How do they come to your site? Search, links from other sites, links from email, etc.?
- What do they want? Is there something else they want that you might be able to advertise?

3. Look at competitor sites. How are they monetizing? Can you replicate?
 
Geo Target the visitors and find a way to sell tickets to concerts in their region :p

Check for travel agents who arrange trips to concert events etc. and speak to them how much they pay for each lead.

offer some sound devices from amazon. I like the Sonos S5 for example :p

optimize your other campaigns as mentioned by others before.

But

Get more traffic once you set up a good way to monetize :p
 
what analytics are you getting the 10k uniques figure from? google analytics?

Yes Google Analytics. It's hosted on GoDaddy so I also have web stats from there as well, but I mainly rely on GA.

p.s.
thanks everyone for your suggestions and advice!!! All your voices are being heard! Please continue to share advice or suggestions. Thx.
 
You're wondering why you're not making money from a blog in music entertainment? When you find out how to get people to pay for music, go ahead and let the RIAA know too.

Amen, seriously it's tough, I myself was running a music blog and the only revenue I was able to scrape was from adverts. I only managed to get around $200 over a span of two years or so, not worth the time my friend unless you're able to pull those monthly views every day
 
I noticed few things after I visited tour blog. Of course some already mentioned ad placement and size of your ads. You can do it way better.

You have to customize your template to reduce black spaces in the middle of your blog. Of just change it to something different.

My attention stops at category section. Why do you need so many categories with artists? Check your analytics data if someone is even using those categories. And Google doesn't love this kind of linkage and it takes time to load as well.
 
Amen, seriously it's tough, I myself was running a music blog and the only revenue I was able to scrape was from adverts. I only managed to get around $200 over a span of two years or so, not worth the time my friend unless you're able to pull those monthly views every day

I think the site has potential to do 10K visitors or more per day, cause the site has been online only about five months and growing everyday. Hopefully, I can start monetizing way before two years. I of course want to make money, but I'm also concentrating on growing my subscriber list so I'll have a medium to promote, so hopefully my efforts aren't wasted even though no money being made (yet). Thanks for the feedback.


I noticed few things after I visited tour blog. Of course some already mentioned ad placement and size of your ads. You can do it way better.

You have to customize your template to reduce black spaces in the middle of your blog. Of just change it to something different.

My attention stops at category section. Why do you need so many categories with artists? Check your analytics data if someone is even using those categories. And Google doesn't love this kind of linkage and it takes time to load as well.

I'm considering getting a complete redesign, too bad my area of expertise isn't in the design. I am more of the backend hosting guy and SEO marketing type, but lack design capabilities, but I'll probably head over to elance, getacoder, or freelancer to get something custom done. I'll focus on the ad zones and spaces. I'll also collapse the categories and make it expandable. Thanks for the suggestions.