Monetisation Ideas for Viral Site?

[James664]

Hey BuSo,

Just launched a website (spur of the moment) that is focused on a trending/upcoming niche, on the first day it has got 16k page views (not joking), and growing. Most users are on mobile, so I think adsense is not really a worthwhile route for monetising the traffic, what are the alternatives for monetizing a high-traffic website where most users are on mobile?



Does anyone have any experience with capitalising on viral websites? It is a niche where there aren't really any direct products associated or that can be sold - so will need to get creative. T-shirt designs/Dropshipping merch?

Any advise will be much appreciated!

 

[Sutra]

Why do you say Adsense isn't good for monetizing a viral site? It's usually one of the best for viral sites.

People don't go to a viral site to buy stuff, especially on mobile. They go to get a quick hit of entertainment. Then they leave for the next shiny thing. Do test various things but you'll likely end up with a combination of Adsense, CPM networks, and end of content native units like Taboola/Content.ad.

If you don't care about user experience you can ad pop ups, pop unders, exit intents, etc.

When you get enough consistent traffic you can try joining programs like Ezoic that will place the ads and test them automatically (I don't know if they allow viral sites though).

Few tips to increase your page views, in case you don't already know:

1. Test pagination. Find the sweet spot where you get extra page views without pissing off your visitors.
2. Make your internal links open in a new tab
3. Link your in-article images to the most related category page. People click images all the time. Instead of letting that go to waste, link them to the category page and monetize the category page with ads. You get extra page views, plus they may flow through to other articles = more money.

 

[James664]

Thanks for that, will check out those now. What is a typical CPM for mobile viral sites? I imagine very low? Also thanks for tips on page view optimisation - here are my current stats:



Also update on current active users (growing faster than i could imagine)!

 

[Sutra]

No typical CPM, depends on your niche and traffic. If you're in gossipy type of entertainment you will get low CPMs, but if you found a way to create a viral site about something like investing stocks, you'll get a higher CPM.

Also depends on the ad unit type. For example, pop unders and exit intents usually get high CPM's, $5 - $12 or more, whereas standard display units, say 300x250, get much lower. But you'll need to test. Because in the short term maybe you make more money with instrusive units but anger your visitors and they don't come back. But if you use only standard 300x250's, maybe you make less money short term but your visitors come back more often thus you earn more.

Before I say the next thing I'll preface it with this: don't think about this part too much right now - keep focusing on what's working and do more of that. Just keep the following in the back of your mind:

Consider any potential SEO traffic you may get long term. Even though you're not going for organic, does your content contain enough relevant info that it may attract organic visits a year from now (this may be hard for you to answer right now, so like I said, don't worry about this too much now, keep doing what's working)? If the answer is yes, then having a balance of monetization/good user experience will be a huge benefit. Because a year from now when it's ranking 1st page for some weird long tails you'll naturally get links from other sites...IF your content isn't over monetized and hard to navigate.

 

[MrMedia]

good page views per session - are you paginating?

 

[James664]

Thanks for the advice, Sutra! Appreciate it, and will keep it in mind. Do you recommend any CPM networks for mobile in particular?

Seem to be getting alot of organic traffic, about 20% of total traffic.

good page views per session - are you paginating?

Thanks, yup i am.

UPDATE: Grown again.

 

[Ryuzaki]

CPC and CPM ads are generally what works on these sites. It's a viral site and the traffic is coming from social networks when people are goofing off, and you have nothing to sell. Nobody is really "engaging." They want a slice of entertainment real fast before they're off to the next slice. CPM ads guarantee you'll get paid for each visit. CPC ads is the gamble that maybe they'll click and maybe they'll be from a first world country so you get more than a fraction of a penny per click.

I'm not generally a fan of any kind of pop ups, unders, or auto-play video ads. Most browsers are taking care of that stuff these days anyways. The only niche where people seem to be willing to put up with that crap is adult.

I'd say to get CPC ads in place and use something like Ezoic to optimize the placement, then bail on Ezoic and change to that layout yourself. Then I'd find a few slots for CPM ads and sign up for every network I could. Then I'd get into a network that can handle, or I'd have an ad server set up for me (there's open source options) that can handle header bidding. This way you're not working with a waterfall. The ads will load faster, less HTTP requests, and you'll get the highest paid ads visible each page load.

That's what I'd do if I wanted this site to have a long run. If I didn't care and wanted to milk it for all it's worth, I'd go to town with pop ups, unders, Zergnet native ads, auto-play video ads. And once I knew my CPM, I'd hammer it with PPC on all these native ad networks and Facebook.

Edit: There's also networks offering ad units that are little quizzes that seem like they do okay.

 

[James664]

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated!

Does anyone have any recommendations for CPM/CPC networks that aren't adsense and have fairly good payouts - researching a good network is difficult as all the reviews are pretty much guaranteed to be sponsored or affiliated. I can't get into adsense at the moment as the content is fairly image-heavy and doesn't contain much text. Should I go through the content and add more text or apply for a different CPM/CPC network?

 

[Sutra]

Have you done a search? There is quite a bit of info about this on this forum. I know I've posted about it several times and given specific recommendations. Ryuzaki and others have talked about it too.

 

[Ryuzaki]

As far as networks that are easy to get into with low traffic requirements, there's:

- Media.net, that's a mix of CPC and CPM. They auto-optimize the ads and will end up showing more image and animated ads if you aren't producing clicks. 100% fill rate here. SSL compliant and async if requested.

- Sovrn, which I bailed on because I'm not using header bidding right now. They load as many as 200 - 500 HTTP requests per ad sometimes. I think they're allowing the collection of tons of data. With header bidding it'd be fine because you'd get it asynchronous. All CPM ads here.

- Amazon CPM, this is invite only, but you might be able to request getting in. Not sure what the requirements are to get in. They were my favorite with decent CPMs. It's completely CPM ads. I used them at the top of my waterfall until I went HTTPS. They aren't compliant yet, sadly. They aren't Asyc either, but load fast enough to not have mattered. Made quite a bit of money with them, and backfilled with Media.net.

- Ad Thrive, I've not used them but wanted to. Apparently their CPMs are fantastic. They're built for the mommy blogger crowd, which means you need to be in a certain niche to really be served well, like home design, food, parenting, fitness, gardening, arts & crafts, teaching, etc.

And depending on the type of viral we're talking, there's the Taboola, Outbrain, Content.ad style of native ads. If you're into movies, gaming, TV, and celeb gossip, ZergNet gets me in their web nearly every time I see them.

There's a ton more but a lot of them have pretty hefty traffic requirements. The ones I bolded seem open to most anyone with a credible site and are actually responsive to the customers. Once you start rolling, you'll get a million of bottom rung options emailing you wanting to get into your ad server or waterfall. Some of the bigger ones are so bad with their customer service I never got in, they'd just email me again in 2 months and say "oh no you fell through the cracks." I suspect once you do get in it's set and forget though.