

Ask HN: Have high traffic med site, what to do? - gohat

For over a year and a half, I have been blogging on medical topics at healthlifeandstuff.com.  The articles, which are written to be friendly and accesible, with the help of SEO, now reach 60-70,000 visitors a month.<p>I was running Adsense on it, and making up to $1,000 a month, but was removed from the program with no explanation.  I was in full compliance, of course.<p>Now I have the site but don't know what to do with it.  I tried other ad programs, but they were either poor quality or had ads for online drugstores which I could not remove and was not comfortable with.<p>What should I do with the site?  I'd love to sell it or something but don't know how/what is normal in these situations.
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patio11
The standard answer to "I have a high traffic site in a vertical which is
awash in cash and AdSense is not an option" is affiliate ads. In particular,
if your site is trusted, you can bolt on a section with more commercially
oriented content (such as, e.g., reviews of exercise- or diet-related info
products) and rank on the strength of trust built through your non-commercial
content.

You can do more or less of this depending on how comfortable you are with
slinging snake oil. For example, I note you have content like
[http://healthlifeandstuff.com/2010/07/acai-berry-and-
weight-...](http://healthlifeandstuff.com/2010/07/acai-berry-and-weight-loss/)
Presumably if you've looked into that you understand, yep, snake oil. Now
previously, what was happening with your AdWords ads was you were a) ranking
for snake oil and b) referring people to advertisers of snake oil who then c)
did rebill fraud on them.

Another option is to use one of the numerous Wordpress plugins to do your own
self-hosted ad system, and either a) let people buy ads on your site (they'll
mostly be affiliates) at whatever rates you specify or b) either use provided
creatives or make your own for affiliate products which you are comfortable
selling.

~~~
mikerhoads
Its pretty tragic if they removed him from Adsense for that reason. He writes
an article that concludes that there is no evidence that Acai leads to weight
loss and then Google chooses to serve the snake oil ads and dings him for it.

~~~
patio11
Their reason for dropping him may or may not be related to the vertical -- I'm
just explaining the mechanics of why his site was earning $1,000 a month.

Just as an FYI, the seedier side of Internet marketing is very well acquainted
with the notion of selling a scam by calling it a scam. Pretend, for example,
that you understand your business model is stealing from unsavvy customers.
You know it is vastly easier to attract links to "Scam is a scam" than "Non-
existed research suggests that scam might have some merits!", and hence to
rank for the first article.

But _do people read on the Internet_? Suffice it to say that is not a
universal habit! So, if you can rank for [acai berry] or even [acai berry
scam] with an article that the average 10th grader can tell you concludes
"Yeah, probably a scam", you can _still get clicks and conversions_ to the
acai berry offers on the same page, presumably from people who didn't or
couldn't read and comprehend the page content.

------
_delirium
Have you tried Amazon affiliate links? If you're willing to put in some manual
effort in selecting books, you could put a "further reading" type link at the
bottom of articles that'd actually be relevant.

One thing I like about that approach is that in addition to the money, I get
to promote books that I actually think people should read, which I consider a
non-monetary benefit of having a site with some traffic. Unfortunately the two
benefits aren't in perfect harmony, since snake-oil is often the easiest to
sell--- you may want to link people to a serious medical book, but your most
_profitable_ approach may be to link fad-dieting books. I suppose the right
balance depends on how much you value the money v. soapbox aspects of having
readers.

------
mcdowall
Feel free to mail me (no contact info on your profile). My 9-5 corporate
company may he interested in this (alternative healthcare). James.

~~~
gohat
thanks - don't see your email tho? mine is dgurevich5@gmail.com

------
solost
I'd like to contact you directly, mind adding your email address to your
profile? Or check my profile and contact me.

Thanks.

~~~
gohat
Sure, done, thanks.

