SEM Tycoon

**The Fat Boy** · 10-30-2007, 11:14 AM

Its been 18 months since I committed to earning money online. I have built a nice enough site, with a pretty solid following. The site gets noticeably better every day, is a challenge and expands me as a writer and a webmaster, and it is a great hobby.

It is also entirely unprofitable.

My goal from day one has been to grow the site, and reinvest profits into it 100% (sometimes 110%) by having great prizes and contests. My readership grows, the activity grows, but the prizes and profits aren't much better. In fact, since Google has decided to start going after link sellers, the ONE link on my site has dropped me from a PR5 to a PR4, and then recently a 3 and then a 2. All while my SERPS remain the same, and backlinks increase.

What my goal never was, however, was to make money for personal gain. My fiancee and I both have excellent jobs and do not need the extra money. My whole purpose of making a profit was to give away cool stuff and build a huge community of like-minded people.

My site is very time consuming. I am always trying to make new content for it. Looking at stats, noticing what advertising is producing results. But making $150 a month isn't getting me where I want to quickly enough.

I'm asking you, the big guys, what I should do. Do I cut my time invested in my site to focus on things that are more profitable (but not really rewarding in any other sense)?

What should I put my effort and time into? Everyone and their mom is doing CPA with ring tones. I'd like to do something different. But what? Spamming MySpace is not an option, though I do have a couple thousand friends who enjoy getting my occasional bulletin because they like my content.

What is the answer? Can anyone help me out?

**handsome rob** · 10-30-2007, 12:37 PM

-If your community is growing, SERPS aren't falling, and backlinks are increasing... why do you care about pagerank

-If your intention is to build a community of like-minded people (not to get rich) and your community is growing, what's the problem?

Don't let the people coming on here and claiming they make a million dollars a day punting ringtones sway you. Most are either lying or exaggerating, and many of the rest will be out of business by the end of the year.

If you're not hurting for money, then focus on what makes you happy. There's a reason why so many of these "5 year old earning a billion dollars an hour with his blog" stories in the media start out with the person saying how they never intended for their hobby to make them money.

**The Fat Boy** · 10-30-2007, 02:07 PM

I guess I've never been a big fan of the "slow and steady wins the race" way of thinking.

I've used guerrilla marketing tactics and very little of my own money to run the site.

One of my members bought the vb license because he likes the site. I've probably spent $100 since inception, mostly to prizes. My hosting is $3.99/mo. I go down once in a while, but I'm not making enough to go dedicated. I guess I want to get to that level, so I can afford the $90 a month or so to get a better server for my site.

I've been hovering around 2300 members for a while, but then again I delete someone after 6 months inactive (with plenty of warning).

I've tried CPA with Azoogle and MaxBounty, the ads have failed miserably. I was using Adsense reasonably well, and got banned because someone didnt like pictures of women in swimsuits. I'm using Adbrite now and making about $1 a day.

I'm missing something here. Not sure what exactly.

**Elemak** · 10-31-2007, 01:18 AM

I'd say automate the site, pick two or three community members to handle the administration and moderation of the site and to pick content creators from the community (maybe a dozen? depends on the quality of the community and how fast you want content added and what the admins/mods can keep up with). Basically totally automate the site so you don't have to do anything AT ALL except check on it once in a while, maybe a couple times a week.

Once you've gotten to that point, then you can start website #2 and let the first one grow on its own. =)

**JP Sauve** · 11-01-2007, 10:50 AM

Girly websites are unfortunately notoriously difficult to monetize.

Beyond that though, for your attempts at CPA.... if you're just putting a banner up in place, no wonder the results are slim. You need to presell your CPA ads a little to your surfers before there'll be any interest. The people who earn the most in CPA rely the least on banners.

**The Fat Boy** · 11-06-2007, 07:01 PM

Thanks for the interesting feedback.

I guess I picked the wrong niche. but they say to go with what you know and what you are passionate about.

**xboxundone** · 11-06-2007, 11:21 PM

Yes girly sites from what i hear are tough to monetize and need a ton of traffic. I think you have to look at where you are and what you are doing look for new ways to monetize the site as you have users... Maybe offer a PREMIUM membership where they get perks larger pm boxes etc.. or whatever would appeal to your users... you would be surprised if you offer somethign decent at how many people will signup to be premium to support the site.

**sakura** · 11-07-2007, 01:36 PM

Time seems to be the biggest issue for you. I would recruit some help among your active community members and give them some of the responsibility.

I would poll your members and ask what they would like to see and what they would be most interested in. Take it from there.