I posted this on the blog, but it is relevant here also:
"As someone who is in a similar position you were, what advice do you have? I have a website that generates a few thousand dollars a month. Like you said, it's enough to live by, but I'm doing everything myself and I'm not sure how to scale.
You mentioned being able to see what you were doing wrong...what was that? Do you have any tips?"
"It's hard to come up with any gems of advice for you specifically because you're in an area I really don't understand - entertainment. Humor, games, and other sorts of light entertainment are obviously a big business (CollegeHumor, Break, Sickipedia, JibJab, Kongregate, et al. show this) but I haven't got a grip on how they work at all. I've kept my focus on software and technical content and I could write quite a bit about that.. that sounds like it should be one of my next blog posts ;-)
It's generic, but my best advice to you would be to figure out who is using your site and why, and optimize heavily to that demographic. Once you know who's using your site, you can make them keep coming back by optimizing the experience. Once you keep people coming back (or new people coming in), you can target money making products and services at them. It seems to me that entertainment sites are heavily focused on sponsorships and advertising as their main revenue streams with subscriptions and products coming a way behind. CollegeHumor, for example, are running a Converse sponsorship right now, and they can sell this sort of package because they have a strong grasp on the demographic of people hitting their site. It's like how Rolex and Prada always advertise in the glossy fashion or "wealth" magazines.. they want to stay in the consciousness of a certain demographic. With weed smoking, you might have an uphill struggle with that.
Another approach is to find existing successes that relate in any way to your own site and see how they are making money. Even if you can't get any numbers, people's sales channels are usually quite transparent because that's how they get people in to make money. How are other sites related to marijuana making money, if at all?"
I'm sorry it wasn't a particularly strong one, but I'm very interested in your story and how it pans out. Hopefully you'll blog about it or post here if something significant happens.
For sure. I'm new to it and I never expected to make as much as I have. It's been an invaluable experience.
I actually did secure some direct advertisers from the UK, the payments should be on their way, and then I'll have some more revenue which is good. Still not as scalable as I'd like, though. I only got $2 CPM from them...
"As someone who is in a similar position you were, what advice do you have? I have a website that generates a few thousand dollars a month. Like you said, it's enough to live by, but I'm doing everything myself and I'm not sure how to scale.
You mentioned being able to see what you were doing wrong...what was that? Do you have any tips?"