Ideas for new directions on an existing project

[br4in]

Hello BuSo,
I have this project I've launched close to 4 years ago, it mostly consists of presenting scraped information in new useful ways to the users. Obviously I clearly state that I do not own that information and am not affiliated with the source whatsoever.

I was only using one affiliate offer to somewhat monetize the site, it wasn't bringing in anything major and I hadn't focused much on monetization. The project was just chugging along in the background as a useful resource to others.

One day Ezoic reached out via email offering to sign up the site with their platform. I replied to the email and they didn't get back to me. Anyway, a little while later I signed up with them but the site was rejected because it mostly consisted of scraped content.

My question is, what new directions can I take the site for it to be considered "original enough" that I can monetize it?
The site shows movies, titles, synopsis, cast, trailers, and where they're available to stream.

The site is still pulling in decent traffic, so it has potential. And there's much more I can do, SEO-wise to gain some extra traffic. Just not sure how to monetize it better.

Thanks!

 

[CCarter]

How much monthly traffic do you have?

 

[br4in]

How much monthly traffic do you have?

Averaging about 35K pageviews / month, trending upwards in the last 3 months

Traffic is mostly UK, US, EU

 

[BakerStreet]

JustWatch is a 1.7 million USD/month affiliate site that uses scraped content from IMDB, TMDB, and Wikipedia. You can monetize like how they do: You tell people where they can watch the show/movie and receive a commission from Amazon, Apple, Netflix, etc.

They receive 25 million hits/month however. So maybe you can make 1,700 USD/month in earnings if the traffic/earnings ratio is the same. Also, no original content required for these affiliate programs.

 

[br4in]

JustWatch is a 1.7 million USD/month affiliate site that uses scraped content from IMDB, TMDB, and Wikipedia. You can monetize like how they do: You tell people where they can watch the show/movie and receive a commission from Amazon, Apple, Netflix, etc.

They receive 25 million hits/month however. So maybe you can make 1,700 USD/month in earnings if the traffic/earnings ratio is the same. Also, no original content required for these affiliate programs.

Yeah, I tried to reach a similar agreement with the streaming platform I'm targeting back in the day, didn't go anywhere. But then again I had just launched the site.

Either way, I'm trying to diversify the income from this site and not rely solely on affiliate income, so I was hoping you guys might have some ideas or point me in the right direction.

 

[CCarter]

Here are some quick bulletpoints (I'm in the middle of some coding so I can't flesh out all I want, I'll return and go over anything you want in-detail):

• Sign up for all Video Streaming affiliate programs for start (You can google all the ones that have them - you'll need them down the road).

• Collect emails of your audience - Any new content pieces need to get emailed to them everytime you post (Inside the Digital Strategy Crash Course on Day 21 there is a section called "Permission Based Marketing" That goes in-depth about the potential of newsletter and constantly collecting emails of your users. Also check out The Money Is(n't always) In the Email List

• Make sure you are recommending your audience follow you on social platforms

• Any new content pieces need to go to ALL social platforms. Some people like Twitter, others TikTok, Others IG, and other Pinterest.

• This will help with your brand awareness on these platforms as your followers recommend and "re-tweet" your content. Creating a "Social Engine" that will bring you back users.

• Since you are in the entertainment industry - you can create new content like pitting celebrity against celebrity in a "hotness" contest. This will create engagement on your platform. There is so much content around celebrities you can create it's literally endless. "Best Dressed", Talk about award shows and viewerships.
  
  You can even make a chart of celebrities and the amount of money they've generated aggregated and see who is the actor with the most revenue generated. I am saying this because people aren't just going to come to your site and read - they need to do something.
  
  If they engage on the site then they'll stay longer AND recommend it more. You are driving up engagement time and traffic. (Even some voting stuff like RottenTomato does and then allow people to post comments and critics of movies and individual TV shows). Boom more engagement.

• 35K a month is pretty low so it is no surprise you were rejected by Ezoic. You need to get your numbers up and the above starts you on a path to not relying on Google and one-time visitors. You are creating an audience for your BRAND.

• Day 9 of the Digital Crash Course is "Monetization". It teaches you there are 4 types of websites: Lead Generation, eCommerce, Brands, and Informative/Entertainment.

• You have an Informative/Entertainment site: Those types of sites employ advertising, affiliate marketing, and even lead generation / data collection. Remember when I said to collect emails above?
  
  Guess what your growing newsletter can now have sponsors on it and charge them according to amount of people on your newsletter. Allowing someone to send a full email AD to your audience will cost more than just a sponsorship link (Advertorials - talked about inside Day 9). Now you got new source of revenue.

• The way you make money is the way Facebook, Wikipedia, eHow, WebMD and similar information based sites make money.

• I strongly suggest you start with the crash course: Digital Strategy Crash Course

• A lot of the questions you WILL eventually ask are already answered, in-depth, within it.

• Also consider you can eventually evolve to becoming a Celebrity or TV Show news or gossip website. Not only are the celebrities and easy target to generating content but so are the shows. Think of the controversy and the action around when Game of Thrones was on. Constantly articles and theories about characters will get you traffic for a long time.

• Eventually you can create a product/service that revolves around the engagement you have. I would try to model your site off of RottenTomato and study how they are monetizing their platform and how they've evolved.

--

 

[br4in]

@CCarter Thank you so much for such an in-depth response. This gives me plenty of directions to explore.

First I'll start by going through the Digital Strategy Crash Course, this will give me a better framework to go off of.

35K a month is pretty low so it is no surprise you were rejected by Ezoic. You need to get your numbers up and the above starts you on a path to not relying on Google and one-time visitors. You are creating an audience for your BRAND.

Now that you mention it.. I did double check with my GA3, it used to average 100K monthly page views quite consistently. I wonder if I messed something up when I switched to GA4 or if "Page Views" from GA3 and "Views" from GA4 aren't the same thing? I never kept an eye on it tbh. I'm just now getting back into the project, it's been running mostly automated.

Sign up for all Video Streaming affiliate programs for start (You can google all the ones that have them - you'll need them down the road).

Do you think this would fit my site's audience? Given that it's mostly people already signed up to the streaming platform I'm targeting and my site serves as a way to explore the platform's catalogue basically

Collect emails of your audience - Any new content pieces need to get emailed to them everytime you post

How much email is too much email? Like I said above, "content discovery" is mostly automated and I suspect users might end up being spammed too much. I guess a good approach to this would be to batch all the new content into weekly "Here's what's new" emails..

Since you are in the entertainment industry - you can create new content like pitting celebrity against celebrity in a "hotness" contest. This will create engagement on your platform. There is so much content around celebrities you can create it's literally endless. "Best Dressed", Talk about award shows and viewerships.

Hmm, I'm not sure if this is a good fit for my site given that it's centered around one single platform and it tends to be more indie / niche films. But I suppose I could explore similar ideas to drive up engagement.

---

In any case, what's quite clear now is that I can't just rely on Google traffic alone, and I can't just rely on affiliate income either. I gotta come up with ways to diversify traffic sources AND income sources. Also the fact that the site is centered around one single platform isn't too great either..


Thanks again for your reply, much appreciated.

 

[CCarter]

Do you think this would fit my site's audience? Given that it's mostly people already signed up to the streaming platform I'm targeting and my site serves as a way to explore the platform's catalogue basically

How do YOU know? You are assuming and need to go over the Market Research day of the crash course.

If I want to watch "Billy The Kid" - I have no idea what streaming service it's on. I land on your site and figure out it's MGM+ you'd better have an affiliate link otherwise you are just missing out on money.

Also people google stuff to find new TV shows to watch so - honestly this seems a bit elementary, but short answer YES.

How much email is too much email?

Ask them. Some people read every daily email others will read the weekly and save them. The ones that are annoyed will unsubscribe. You can use email software that allows the user to choose "daily" or "weekly". Also this is you assuming again.

one single platform

That's brand new information you just gave us.

 

[Ryuzaki]

or if "Page Views" from GA3 and "Views" from GA4 aren't the same thing?

I'm pretty sure "Views" on GA4 refers to Unique Viewers which is almost like Sessions, meaning 1 viewer viewing 3 pages counts as 1 "view" whereas on GA3 it'd count as 3 "pageviews".

 

[br4in]

How do YOU know?

Also this is you assuming again.

The way I was thinking about this is what would I want if I were in the user's place, which very obviously (now) is detrimental to business here...

That's brand new information you just gave us.

Yeah my bad, I wasn't clear enough in the OP.

I'm pretty sure "Views" on GA4 refers to Unique Viewers which is almost like Sessions, meaning 1 viewer viewing 3 pages counts as 1 "view" whereas on GA3 it'd count as 3 "pageviews".

I tried "monthly page views last 24 months" in the Google Analytics search bar which gives an "Insights result". Same thing... Maybe I misconfigured something, I'll look into the GA3 -> GA4 migration docs again

 

[BakerStreet]

Yeah, I tried to reach a similar agreement with the streaming platform I'm targeting back in the day, didn't go anywhere. But then again I had just launched the site.

Either way, I'm trying to diversify the income from this site and not rely solely on affiliate income, so I was hoping you guys might have some ideas or point me in the right direction.

I can't really consult on your site, since I really have no idea what your site is or your industry... but I do know the guys who made JustWatch so I'll keep on outing their shit (lol). They're #3 in the film niche, right behind Rotten Tomatoes, so I doubt anyone here would be offended if I out their business model. It can serve as a cool case study!

So the guys who made that platform were second time entrepreneurs. The total starting capital was $500,000 and they got a $2,000,000 grant from the culture ministry of the EU to start the streaming platform guide. The owner waited until the platform was profitable before pitching and he has, I think, 75% ownership today. Pretty solid for a $20+ million/year company! $500,000 in 2014 (?) equates to $20,000,000 year today!

How they monetize their site is:
1.) Affilaite income from streaming services
2.) They're also an ad network. So if someone views a page of theirs about an action adventure film, they have a deal w/ the big movie networks in Hollywood to show that same viewer more ads about new action adventure films that hollywood is promoting. I think this 1-2 punch of both a traffic generating site, and an ad network in the same company is a great idea!
3.) They have media buy deals for in-platform ad placements
4.) They have a $3/month ad free subscription.

I know a lot of people complain about HCU and whatever but this site is all scraped content and they receive a boost in traffic with every google update. There's some original content on the site targeting keywords like "Top 10 best films with X celebrity" but other than that it is all scraped content. How they get 25 million hits/month is because they have 500,000 pages. They really did scrape IMDB and there's that many films out there.

Weaknesses of the site is that their content is only relevant for "watch $Film" online keywords. They can't rank for "$film" since they don't tell you "what is this film about?" or "should I watch this film" but only "where can I watch this film?"

From knowing them, you should:
1.) focus on keyword intent and make sure you do the best writing in the industry. VanityFair still outranks them, because vanity fair's writing is better
2.) Figure out an alternative way to monetize. The affilaite earnings was their plan B. Their plan A was an ad network.
3.) scale your content more. They have 500,000 pages/language and are in almost every language. They focused on scalability a lot in the early days and that's what made them do so well. Your content strategy needs to scale too.

Here's things they did lately to expand:
1.) They added a sports section to tell people where they can stream sporting events.
2.) They made an API to display where people can watch a show and receive several thousand backlinks this way via API integrations. The API is also an affiliate program for webmasters so lots of people in the film niche integrated the API.

Hmm... That's about all I can think of about them. Hope this gives you some ideas for your site.

 

[br4in]

Hope this gives you some ideas for your site

Very insightful information, thank you so much. I'll study JustWatch and RottenTomatoes and the other players in the same niche and figure out which direction is best for my site next!

 

[jelf]

I'm pretty sure "Views" on GA4 refers to Unique Viewers which is almost like Sessions, meaning 1 viewer viewing 3 pages counts as 1 "view" whereas on GA3 it'd count as 3 "pageviews".

In GA4 Views are page_view events.

Which are generally sent once per page (unless its a Single Page App).

Users are unique Viewers
Sessions are generally users over 30 minutes.

You can look at the individual event numbers in engagement > events and compare to traffic reports.

if your UA pageviews went from 100k -> 35k GA4 page_views there's something weird going on.

 

[CCarter]

Were you guys aware of what's going on with Ezoic?

(video by @shaunm)

- $9 million stole
- 3 rounds of layoffs, 2 within 12 months
- shutdown affiliate program.

I'm not in the display AD space but I didn't see this mentioned here.