Monetization | featured news

As you could probably tell by my latest entries, I've been spending the last couple weeks finding different ways to monetize the site. Wopular has about 400k-500k unique visitors per month, according to Google Analytics. That's a decent amount of users. It's about time I stopped coding new features and started earning. There's a certain challenge with monetizing an aggregation site, but I'm not gonna talk in depth about it here. I'll save that for another article. Mainly, it's that the average user only views a couple pages, compare to several with the average content site.

In my attempt to diversify revenue on Wopular, I'm throwing in another kind of ads -- in-text advertising. These are ads you see when you hover over keywords that are double-underlined. They're great because you can use them along with display advertising, thus providing an additional source of revenue without cannibalizing your existing ad inventory. Currently, the two most popular in-text advertising networks are Kontera and Infolinks.

AdBrite's full page ads overlays your website with an advertiser's until you click on a button at the header to skip the ad. A while back I disabled AdBrite's Full-Page Ads because shortly after enabling it, I saw a significant traffic drop. Although it could have just been the natural order of things, I didn't want to take any chances. Traffic came back shortly after I disabled it, but again, it could have just been be the normal ups-and-downs of the the traffic cycle. I've read that since it's just javascript, it shouldn't affect search engine referrals which makes sense.

Like I mentioned in the Ebert article, I've been testing out ad networks on subpages of Wopular for the past couple months. I don't want to put any ads on the main channel pages until I've settled into something; also, I want to reserve those pages for premium sponsorships.

I watched Roger Ebert's interview on Oprah the other day where he revealed his new computerized voice put together by processing audio commentaries he did for DVDs. I went to his blog to see if he had anything to add, like he did for the Esquire article. Instead of a reaction entry, I got an entry inviting me to join The Ebert Club, which cost $4.99 for the year for some value-added services.