Monetize this...

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theprodigy101

theprodigy101

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Jun 18, 2007
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Started this college classifieds network the summer before my freshman year in college. Promoted it hard core freshman year using whatever money I had, and got a registered user base of around 1,500.

There are a couple of repeat users, but not many. For the last two years, it's just kind of been sitting there and I haven't promoted it at all since Facebook launched marketplace. Wondering whether it's worth trying to bring it back to life or if it's better just to kill it instead.

Any fresh ideas to monetize/bring traffic to this thing?


FYI I haven't made jack shit from this site aside from a few users posting premium listings and some adsense clicks.
 
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keep it as a textbook exchange, but start putting in your own ads (with different usernames if you like) for electronic versions of the textbooks. All the publishers are pushing toward moving their titles to electronic versions, so you should be seeing more and more titles to choose from.

The only downside is that most of the big sites are with cj (courseSmart, iChapters) or amazon, so if you don't like dealing with them, you will have to find others.

A lot of publishers offer the first 1 or 2 chapters for free. Link to these in your ad and use an affiliate link; most will either drop the course or come back and buy the rest of the book.

It's pretty much a seasonal business but if you want to be proactive, start scraping .edu sites for syllabi to get the required textbooks. Focus all your promotional efforts on the ones that turn up the most.
 
jryan21 said:
keep it as a textbook exchange, but start putting in your own ads (with different usernames if you like) for electronic versions of the textbooks. All the publishers are pushing toward moving their titles to electronic versions, so you should be seeing more and more titles to choose from.

The only downside is that most of the big sites are with cj (courseSmart, iChapters) or amazon, so if you don't like dealing with them, you will have to find others.

A lot of publishers offer the first 1 or 2 chapters for free. Link to these in your ad and use an affiliate link; most will either drop the course or come back and buy the rest of the book.

It's pretty much a seasonal business but if you want to be proactive, start scraping .edu sites for syllabi to get the required textbooks. Focus all your promotional efforts on the ones that turn up the most.
Click to expand...

+rep that is awesome feedback
 
jryan21 said:
keep it as a textbook exchange, but start putting in your own ads (with different usernames if you like) for electronic versions of the textbooks. All the publishers are pushing toward moving their titles to electronic versions, so you should be seeing more and more titles to choose from.

The only downside is that most of the big sites are with cj (courseSmart, iChapters) or amazon, so if you don't like dealing with them, you will have to find others.

A lot of publishers offer the first 1 or 2 chapters for free. Link to these in your ad and use an affiliate link; most will either drop the course or come back and buy the rest of the book.

It's pretty much a seasonal business but if you want to be proactive, start scraping .edu sites for syllabi to get the required textbooks. Focus all your promotional efforts on the ones that turn up the most.
Click to expand...


Wow that is really good advice. I would've never thought of that...that's freakin clever.

I'm still a student here so it won't be too difficult to find the required textbooks at my school. I think I'm on CJ already, so I'll go test it out. Much appreciated +rep.
 
Google has AbeBooks, which converts well for me. However, it's a very competitive niche 3 times/per year. The odds of you getting enough organic traffic to be worthwhile is small unless you can start bringing in a lot of traffic for other related things. There are so many options for college students and cheap textbooks, that you will struggle to pull them in. See if you can get some well placed links from higher traffic edu sites. Also, you are at a university - see if you can bribe someone in IT to give you some authority links.
 
Unarmed Gunman said:
Google has AbeBooks, which converts well for me. However, it's a very competitive niche 3 times/per year. The odds of you getting enough organic traffic to be worthwhile is small unless you can start bringing in a lot of traffic for other related things. There are so many options for college students and cheap textbooks, that you will struggle to pull them in. See if you can get some well placed links from higher traffic edu sites. Also, you are at a university - see if you can bribe someone in IT to give you some authority links.
Click to expand...


Hm I could probably get professors to blast out emails at the beginning of the semester with a link to my site in addition to getting those authority links. Any thoughts on promoting this site with PPC? I tried Facebook, but never got any conversions on CPA banners. Thanks for the feedback
 
If you are focusing on your school, local marketing is the key, not Google or facebook.

::emp::
 
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