Monetizing social bookmarking sites

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BlueYonder

BlueYonder

Flaming panties
Aug 13, 2008
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I'm starting a social bookmarking site based on Drupal, and would appreciate a bit of advice on monetizing. I imagine sites like these get a lot of traffic, so I am thinking about how to best monetize a high traffic site.

Adsense came to mind first. Then CPM when there's a boatload of traffic. Anything else to suggest?

It's been an expensive, arduous, uphill climb getting the site done, and need it to be effectively monetized for my efforts. And I need to make teh monies real bad.
 


Do nothing for the first 2 years or so and once it's busy offer premium services for a monthly fee. Go take a look at addthis.com for example.

Edit: I think I may be confused you talking bookmarking shit as in delicious or bookmarking widgets? Either way I would get VC funding and not advertise or charge anything until you get huge.
 
BrynYoungblut said:
Do nothing for the first 2 years or so and once it's busy offer premium services for a monthly fee. Go take a look at addthis.com for example.

Edit: I think I may be confused you talking bookmarking shit as in delicious or bookmarking widgets? Either way I would get VC funding and not advertise or charge anything until you get huge.
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I was talking about a site like Digg, but one that employs links of a whole different variety (will post more details here when it's ready). I hadn't planned on charging at all. It's a simpler business model just running ads.

To answer my own question, I will probably run an Adsense link bar somewhere and test different banner ads. Once it's highly trafficked I'll apply to a CPM network. I will be marketing to people who spend a lot of their time online, and do most of their socializing on the 'net.
 
The greek social sites, that are small even compared to the smallest english site, simply have some cpa banners. Rotation is the key, and keep the ads fresh, everything new in "Win a ps3" etc.
 
You can take a start with adsense but you have to work real hard if you want to monetize your site with adsense as it is going down now adays
 
Kenlinks said:
You can take a start with adsense but you have to work real hard if you want to monetize your site with adsense as it is going down now adays
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Really, is this a fact? I checked it out and people have been saying the same thing since 2004.

Rotating ads based on content might be a toughie for my site because of the way it's going to be set up. The site is different than the others because it's to be less topical and more personal. Details later.
 
glowleaf said:
That is even easier. Demographic targeting is the new trend. Hire up a coder at some point to make you a script that rotates relevant ads.
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Maybe I'll ask to have the script built into the site now because it isn't finished. Also, I was looking into ways people have been able to monetize the user database, and wondering if anybody would care to comment on the companies who do the buying of the demographic info, and how the info is used.

Until very recently, I totally ignored social bookmarking, and only now coming around to see the possibilities.

I have a second site planned that is a much more targeted niche: Hollywood professionals and their relevant trade news. (I write screenplays.) I'm wondering what kinds of ads they would respond to.
 
sB sites are notoriously hard to monetize - users tend to have short attention spans and high bounce rates. Still, if you build up a good user-base, then there will be plenty of opportunities for upsell.
 
keynes said:
sB sites are notoriously hard to monetize - users tend to have short attention spans and high bounce rates. Still, if you build up a good user-base, then there will be plenty of opportunities for upsell.
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Perhaps you're right, but I have something different planned that will keep people around gossiping and arguing. We shall see. :D
 
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