Is This site good?
Submitted by Di on Wed, 06/18/2008 - 20:33.
Hi everyone,
I run a information site about Vienna / Austria.
Look here: http://www.your-friend.info/vienna/map.html (in English)
The site is in 5 Languages (DE, UK, IT, FR, ES)
At the moment the site generates in total about 1000$ a month.
At the contrary to what Jeremy says, the most income (about 60%) comes from AdSense.
I think it is great content also regarding the videos. And... it really was a lot of work.
Some questions:
+ How does my site rank in USA? Type in: Audio Guide Vienna , or Audioguide Vienna or Guide Vienna Austria in google.com (In Europe only google exists, yahoo or msn is nothing) Typing in that in Austria in google.com I am Nr. 1, but that doesn´t mean that I am Nr. 1 in the USA too.
1+ I have some Affiliate links on the site. The affiliate links work worse than AdSense. (hotel page, hostal page...) Do you have any suggestions to improve income from affiliate links? Do I make something wrong?
2+ Audio Guides are currently not a very profitable niche, because people dont search for that term frequenty. But I think in future they will. Would you use an Audio Guide to get to know a city?
3+ 1000$ is fine for additional income but too less to quit your day job, right? . Do you have suggestions to improve the monetisation of the site?
I do not want to promote my site here in this forum, but also in the lessons of Jeremy I found that the most interesting things were when we could look at specific sites and talk about pros and cons. See it in this way.
Best,
Johann
Hi Johann - I took a quick look at your site and will put in my 2 cents:
(1) To view how your site ranks in a different country (including the USA), download the Google Global Firefox Extension:
http://www.redflymarketing.com/blog/google-global-view-results-different...
This browser extension "allows you to view organic and paid Google search results as they appear in almost any location on Earth". I use it to see PPC ads for a particular keyword in various countries. It's awesome.
(2) What do you mean when you say that the affiliate links "work worse" than Adsense? Does that mean that no one is clicking on the affiliate links, or that they are clicking on the links but not converting to a sale? Those are two quite difference challenges.
(3) I personally wouldn't use an audio guide to learn about a city. For me, travel is very much a visual experience. I go to travel websites to see what a place looks like, and would prefer to look at pictures and read text.
(4) Before thinking about other opportunities to generate income, I would ask my site visitors what they're looking for. Only then can you determine if there are other products you could offer your visitors (affiliate products, information products that you produce yourself, etc)
Hope those comments are useful.
Moe
Thanks a lot for your tips. The Firefox extension is great. It will save me a lot of time.
(2) Here some data from my affiliate statistics:
Last 2 Weeks I had 17.000 impressions from affiliate links, 275 clicks and no sale! (Products are travel related...flights, tickets, My affiliate links do not convert.
The same clicks on AdSense would have generated at least 30$.
With 275 clicks and no sale I think its the best to delete an affiliate link, right?
Best,
Johann
That's certainly a poor ratio.
If the problem is with your merchant's landing page (which is something you have little control over), I would look for a new merchant with a better-converting landing page. Ask them if they'll give you the conversion stats.
Moe
One suggestion is since you have the capability to show your affiliate ads in multiple languages, why not do the same for your prices, if that is possible?
If someone is viewing the rooms in Japanese, they may be able to relate better if the prices were in Yen, for example. Maybe some sort of button that allows toggling. When I was looking for trips to Amsterdam, there were a few sites that had prices in guilders but I did not buy from them since I needed to know the prices in dollars.