Hi everyone,
I am running a smaller online bushiness and lately I have felt really stuck and would appreciate any help. I have been searching internet for forums like this and ran into The Fastlane Forum which is really amazing since The Millionaire Fastlane was a book that started everything for me (really thank you @MJ DeMarco ). I was an exchange student in the USA back in 2013 and I bought this book on Kindle and I loved it (at that time I could not understand English that well so I read it again at the end of my exchange year haha). After The Millionaire Fastlane , I started reading similar books, I started learning about SEO, email marketing, webdesign and web development, PPC and other essential things to the online business world. Little later, I finally started my website for which I am seeking help here now.
So about my problem. I have a smaller membership website with about 20 000 registered users. It's not that many, however, I think even with this amount I could be making some decent income but I am not. The website is not a community website where I would share some tips or learn anyone. The concept is more similar to a dating site, you pay to send messages and to unlock other features (but it's not a dating site and nothing sexual). It costs 10-20 dollars for one month (I am testing the pricing at the moment). Unfortunately, not that many people are willing to pay for it. It's not because their is not demand for my services though. Some of my competitors have 400 000 - 1 000 0000 visitors a month and my website has better design and more functions (it's not just a copy). Their pricing is even higher than on my site (30 -60 dollars) so I know the demand is there. Of course, I tried, to do similar things like my competitors do, I implemented free trial, notifications emails, prolonged the membership from one month to two/three months etc . These changes helped a bit, but nothing major.
I think that for websites like mine, it's mostly about getting the "momentum". Once you get certain amount of people to the website, the people start interacting. More notifications = more people coming back = more people willing to buy. I think if I got like 100 000 traffic a month, it would all started going right.
However, it seems impossible to reach that traffic. I am building my SEO continuously, but that's take time and I know that organically I could reach only around 50 000 visitors anyway (based on competitors numbers and keywords). The rest of the traffic for my competitors go from paid ads. I have tried paid ads many times but was never profitable. The metrics of my ads are great, low CPM and cost per click, may new registrations, but just not that many sales. If I could at least break even, I would continuously run the ads and tried to get that momentum.
I think some of my competitors grew their websites in unethical way (based on articles and reviews on the internet). They just created a lot of fake profiles and faked the interactions and that's how they grew their traffic. I don't want to go that way. I am trying to provide my users with value and build a brand.
So I am stuck at his point, growing just organically to big numbers is not really possible and I growing with ads neither since I can't afford to run them continuously- not getting return. I was thinking about joining affiliate network, but then decided not to. Had a meeting with someone who is a partner with CJ affiliate in my country and the guy was surprisingly honest with me. Affiliate networks can be great but they work once you have a working offer which I may not have. Watched some paid courses about traffic generation and learned the same thing there. Affiliate networks is about scaling what is working. I would go for it anyway at the moment just to test another thing, but the set up for CJ in particular is quite pricey and it seems to me that is better to spend that many on testing ads instead.
Based on my calculations, I would make more money on advertising platforms, but don't want to go that road just yet. Don't like the idea that my business would make money from ads, event though I am positive it would work. Even though my traffic is not that great, I have quite a lot of page views. People spend a lot of time on my site (around 7 minutes) so ads could work quite well. I have heard a lot of good things about AdThrive. In order to register in AdThrive, your website needs to have at least 100 000 page views mostly from the US. I am not on that number but quite close. If I made the website free and decided to go with the advertisement model, I would reach that number in less than a month (At the beginning I ran the website for free for some time to get the first few thousands of registration fast and at that time I hit the 100 000 page views a month. Once I switched to paid model, it obliviously dropped).
So that's an option I have but as I said I am not sure I want to go that road.
If you could guys tell me your thoughts, I would be grateful.
Thank you everyone in advance
I am running a smaller online bushiness and lately I have felt really stuck and would appreciate any help. I have been searching internet for forums like this and ran into The Fastlane Forum which is really amazing since The Millionaire Fastlane was a book that started everything for me (really thank you @MJ DeMarco ). I was an exchange student in the USA back in 2013 and I bought this book on Kindle and I loved it (at that time I could not understand English that well so I read it again at the end of my exchange year haha). After The Millionaire Fastlane , I started reading similar books, I started learning about SEO, email marketing, webdesign and web development, PPC and other essential things to the online business world. Little later, I finally started my website for which I am seeking help here now.
So about my problem. I have a smaller membership website with about 20 000 registered users. It's not that many, however, I think even with this amount I could be making some decent income but I am not. The website is not a community website where I would share some tips or learn anyone. The concept is more similar to a dating site, you pay to send messages and to unlock other features (but it's not a dating site and nothing sexual). It costs 10-20 dollars for one month (I am testing the pricing at the moment). Unfortunately, not that many people are willing to pay for it. It's not because their is not demand for my services though. Some of my competitors have 400 000 - 1 000 0000 visitors a month and my website has better design and more functions (it's not just a copy). Their pricing is even higher than on my site (30 -60 dollars) so I know the demand is there. Of course, I tried, to do similar things like my competitors do, I implemented free trial, notifications emails, prolonged the membership from one month to two/three months etc . These changes helped a bit, but nothing major.
I think that for websites like mine, it's mostly about getting the "momentum". Once you get certain amount of people to the website, the people start interacting. More notifications = more people coming back = more people willing to buy. I think if I got like 100 000 traffic a month, it would all started going right.
However, it seems impossible to reach that traffic. I am building my SEO continuously, but that's take time and I know that organically I could reach only around 50 000 visitors anyway (based on competitors numbers and keywords). The rest of the traffic for my competitors go from paid ads. I have tried paid ads many times but was never profitable. The metrics of my ads are great, low CPM and cost per click, may new registrations, but just not that many sales. If I could at least break even, I would continuously run the ads and tried to get that momentum.
I think some of my competitors grew their websites in unethical way (based on articles and reviews on the internet). They just created a lot of fake profiles and faked the interactions and that's how they grew their traffic. I don't want to go that way. I am trying to provide my users with value and build a brand.
So I am stuck at his point, growing just organically to big numbers is not really possible and I growing with ads neither since I can't afford to run them continuously- not getting return. I was thinking about joining affiliate network, but then decided not to. Had a meeting with someone who is a partner with CJ affiliate in my country and the guy was surprisingly honest with me. Affiliate networks can be great but they work once you have a working offer which I may not have. Watched some paid courses about traffic generation and learned the same thing there. Affiliate networks is about scaling what is working. I would go for it anyway at the moment just to test another thing, but the set up for CJ in particular is quite pricey and it seems to me that is better to spend that many on testing ads instead.
Based on my calculations, I would make more money on advertising platforms, but don't want to go that road just yet. Don't like the idea that my business would make money from ads, event though I am positive it would work. Even though my traffic is not that great, I have quite a lot of page views. People spend a lot of time on my site (around 7 minutes) so ads could work quite well. I have heard a lot of good things about AdThrive. In order to register in AdThrive, your website needs to have at least 100 000 page views mostly from the US. I am not on that number but quite close. If I made the website free and decided to go with the advertisement model, I would reach that number in less than a month (At the beginning I ran the website for free for some time to get the first few thousands of registration fast and at that time I hit the 100 000 page views a month. Once I switched to paid model, it obliviously dropped).
So that's an option I have but as I said I am not sure I want to go that road.
If you could guys tell me your thoughts, I would be grateful.
Thank you everyone in advance
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