SEM Tycoon

**mikeboy** · 10-16-2006, 11:43 AM

Hello,
The title is very open, that is why I must give some more info on my inquiry.

I have a Tech related online community, that at the moment, has forums, downloads, daily news, reviews, member blogs and few other things.

The site has about 500-650 uniques daily and about 1.200 visits, its a very new site, been online for just about 5 months and has had enormous growth in the last 3 months or so. Have PR5 and alexa of less than 60.000 (it goes down all the time, so I wont post a number because it will be outdated soon)

I have spent, so far $0.00 in advertising, just affiliation with other related sites and companies.

I am now entering the world of media, and by media, I mean, doing videos for reviews and tutorials on general pc usage and maintenance, also, our very own online radio station, all this will be launched later on this week as a BETA.

So, as I was saying, the site has almost 1.000 registered members and has had an enormous growth in the past 2-3 months, but that growth has slowed down, at first, there was about a 4-5% growth in traffic daily, and now, its gone down to a 2-3%.

The growth is due that this site is one of the very few that focus on tech for the Latin American audience, so it generates great interest.

The site has a monthly income just below the $100 mark, thus I was thinking, what would be the best way to advertise my site?

adwords? purchasing banners? text links?

I would like to be above the $500 mark within 6-8 months.

here is the address, latinforo.net (I don't make it a link since I don't want to freeload from EF's PR)

I would really appreciate your sincere commentaries and tips on how to improve my site.

PD: I am selling text links and banners on that site, also, is that a good idea? or should I stick to google?

**imported_WillB** · 10-16-2006, 03:05 PM

I don't think advertising should be your main concern. With 600 uniques every day you have plenty of visitors - you need to figure out how to monetize your traffic more effectively.

AdSense is not the only way to make money from your site. Oh, and you might get a higher CTR if you blend the ads into your site a little more (ie, use the same colour schemes etc).

**mikeboy** · 10-16-2006, 08:43 PM

you mean, like not making the ads so visible, put making it feel like less of an ad. Ill play around with that, see what I get!

and by monetize your traffic? what does that mean?

**imported_WillB** · 10-18-2006, 05:33 PM

Monetizing your traffic is making money from the visitors to your site. 600 people a day is a decent number, and you could make plenty of money from them.

As I said - AdSense isn't the only way to make money online.

**Geiger** · 10-19-2006, 03:03 PM

Check out www.johnchow.com, this guy owns www.TheTechZone.com and makes a killing off of it. If you articles are orginal, then you should be digging them as well and having specific items for sale (via eBay/Amazon) that target these people directly.

**sector0** · 10-21-2006, 02:13 AM

You may also want to go the way of CPM ads once you get more traffic. At your current stage, if CPC isn't working for you, then there's not many options except for get more traffic.

Also I see bidvertiser ads on that website. Why not just go with Google Adsense?

**mikeboy** · 11-02-2006, 04:08 PM

well, I was apparently banned from google adsense, that was ridiculous, I have no idea who might have clicked my ads, but someone gave like 50 clicks/day for like a week, untill they banned the site because of "invalid clicks"

I emailed them, but they say they have "reason" to suspect invalid clicks and they will not answer another email...

**imported_WillB** · 11-04-2006, 06:43 AM

It might be worth sending them your server logs and pointing out the invalid clicks. If the IP address of the clicker is not known to you (ie, isn't the same or even similar to your personal IP or your web server's IP), Google may reconsider.

Don't get your hopes up though.

**mythikal** · 11-06-2006, 10:17 AM

Thanks, as a new member here, I m trying to learn here..

I expecting good informations like the one in here.

Hope to post my own article someday...

thanks