My baby steps to creating a 'proper' content site to monitise.

[grynge]

I have no idea what this means

I think Mike means an iframe (I could be very wrong not looked into FB for a while)

[moshthepitt]

Thanks for posting this - I'm taking the opportunity to learn along.

Question: how do you plan to monetise?

[JJMcClure]

Question: how do you plan to monetise?

Not sure at this point. The initial goal is to get some decent traffic and establish a reputation in the niche. Since this is a new/learning experience for me I'm prepared to be patient and see what happens and who turns out to be interested in it. Once I have (hopefully) decent traffic and I'm sure what the demographic is I'll be able to figure out how to monetise it.

One idea I have is to get an Amazon affiliate ID, or similar, and make blog posts on why you shouldn't buy, for example, a new Eco-kettle because it's horribly efficient, won't produce as much Co2 and won't screw the environment as much as an old kettle. The word 'buy' will be an affiliate link in the hope that greenies who get that the site is ironic will buy the goods through the site, or I can say something like 'If I can't stop you buying it anyway then shame on you but here's the link...'. It won't matter if Google thinks I'm a 'thin content' affiliate site either since I don't plan on needing much search engine traffic.

I'm trying to avoid being reliant on Google (thank you EP....) so Adsense isn't an attractive option either although I might stick a few Ads on there just to see how they do. I had Adsense on the original version of the site and there are some surprisingly good keywords in this niche.

Should I get enough traffic, I'll sell advertising space too. I'm sure other things will occur to me further down the line but for now it's about building the traffic.

[JJMcClure]

By the way, if anyone wants to donate a little time and make comments on the site or Digg the posts or something to help get this kick-started that would be appreciated Right now there are tumble weeds blowing across the home page....

I want to encourage debate so don't worry about being controversial.

And, if anyone has suggestions on how to drive more traffic, also appreciated!

[monty]

And, if anyone has suggestions on how to drive more traffic, also appreciated!

If you want articles that bring visitors/comments etc, climate change is one of the most contentious topics online and always generates discussion wherever its covered, so well researched posts on this might do well.

[JJMcClure]

If you want articles that bring visitors/comments etc, climate change is one of the most contentious topics online and always generates discussion wherever its covered, so well researched posts on this might do well.

Thanks for the suggestion, I happen to know a thing or two about that I used to be an environmental consultant in a former life.

[succor]

A couple of suggestions since you asked.

You talked about Facebook and Twitter, have you thought about Google+?

You mentioned using igoogle to receive rss feeds. I got tired of roaming all over the net looking for space news. I had bookmarks and such but it was still a pain to do. I created this blog http://tnoseae.blogspot.com/ on google. All it consist of is rss feeds and a couple of custom google news searches at the bottom. Maybe you could do something similar and add the rss feed from you website. You could continue to use the rss feeds as you currently are too.

Have you considered creating or contributing to a TWiki page somewhere and provide a link to an article on your website as an information source? This might also work for the right .edu discussions.

Try Q&A websites maybe? What about sites like flickr or pinterest? I don't know enough to know if these are legitimate avenues or not; maybe someone else can chime in.

[Clinton]

You mentioned using igoogle to receive rss feeds. I got tired of roaming all over the net looking for space news.

You don't need to any more. There are some great free content curation tools around. One of them is CurationSoft which has a free trial download. It's quite neat even if a bit basic with only eight monitoring channels for the paid version (I know because I was looking to buy the company behind curationsoft last month and took the software for a ride).

[JJMcClure]

You talked about Facebook and Twitter, have you thought about Google+?

No I hadn't. I think Google are playing catch up with all the 'real' social media outlets so I was going to focus on those first.

Have you considered creating or contributing to a TWiki page somewhere and provide a link to an article on your website as an information source? This might also work for the right .edu discussions.

Try Q&A websites maybe? What about sites like flickr or pinterest? I don't know enough to know if these are legitimate avenues or not; maybe someone else can chime in.

Great suggestions, thanks. I'll have to make a list of 'routes to market' like these. I'm getting that 'overwhelmed by the possibilities' feeling again.... I'd better choose a couple and just do it before I get paralysis by analysis.

(Love your blog subject by the way, you've missed some great past discussions on this forum about exploring space and how that relates to our future as a species.)

[Matteo]

Yeah I have found over the last few years it is much easier to grow a site with no adverts than one with adverts, people tend to like to share them in the social sites a bit more when there is not an abundance of adverts everywhere. Just my observation.

I agree and it's pointless to try to monetize a content site when traffic is low anyway. Build your audience first and then monetize later. Focus on building quality content and getting it out there for as long as needed. Sometimes years.