

Ask HN: What would you do to monetize this? - Mz

I have a health site. Every year for the past three years when I announced I cannot afford the webhosting and it will be shut down, I got enough money to pay the webhosting, but no more (edit: I mean no more money than <i>just enough</i> to pay the hosting). I have serious financial problems and serious health problems. It would be best for me to make money online to protect my health. The site currently gets about 800 page views a month. My attempts to promote it on email lists have been met with ugly open hostility. My sites grew out of demand for the info or they wouldn't exist. But I need an income. If this were your site, how would you a) promote it to get more traffic? And b) monetize it?<p>Ask me anything about stats, obstacles, etc. I need to either turn this sow's ear into a cash cow or shut it down and move on. There is clearly still interest given the reactions I get when I say I will shut it down. How do I turn that into something I can work with to make the site profitable instead of merely a thorn in my side?
======
cd34
I'm not really familiar with the subject, but, I think you're going to want to
start talking with the homeopathic sites and getting links from them. Going
direct to affiliate programs in addition to adsense is going to benefit you as
well - connectcommerce, linkshare, cj.com, etc. It'll take time to find
products that have affiliate links that you're mentioning. Make sure you read
the adsense terms carefully. There are restrictions as to what you can run in
conjunction.

Are there books you can refer to? bn.com and amazon.com have decent affiliate
programs - amazon is a bit easier as you have a lot more than just books that
you can promote. If you review books and provide recommendations from your
'library', you might be able to make that work.

However, none of these are short term fixes. And you're probably not in a
position to do arbitrage. You might look at the terms that are related to CF
and use those keywords to build your articles around.

I don't think you could start today and have a good chance of bringing in much
more than $20-$50 in the next 30 days, but, most payouts don't occur until you
reach $100, 30 days after the period, etc. which suggests 90-120 days before
you would be likely to see a first check.

kickstarter, kiva, gofundme and a number of other sites might also be
reasonable.

Kickstarter - perhaps ask for funding to create an alternative/homeopathic CF
site. Kiva is a crowdsourced loan site, gofundme is more of a 'donate to this
person in need'.

Alternatively, are there health sites that would hire you as an author, or,
could you leverage one of those sites as a free contributor and push traffic
back to your site?

~~~
Mz
I actually have about $75.00 in adsense earnings owed me. And the jump in
traffic to my sites the past couple of days from discussion on HN has earned
nearly $10.00, which is part of why I am asking around. If the site only made
a few hundred dollars per year I would consider it worth keeping.

My experience is with email lists run for free. This has not worked as a means
to promote the site. They are often openly hostile towards anyone doing
anything commercial/for profit. But I don't know any other means to get
traffic. How do I get other sites to link to it? Or where do I go to read up
on how to do that?

I will check the funding sites you suggest. Also, someone gifted me a
Metafilter account today. I hope to ask around there for feedback as well,
just as soon as I can figure out how.

I doubt anyone would hire me as an author on a health site. My only credential
is that I got myself and my kids well. You either believe me or you don't. It
doesn't make for a good resume.

Thank you for the feedback. I probably have missed something I meant to
comment on. I am on a tablet and it hampers my replies in several ways.

~~~
NSAID
On MetaFilter, you'll have to be a member for a week
([http://faq.metafilter.com/38/Can-I-post-to-the-front-page-
im...](http://faq.metafilter.com/38/Can-I-post-to-the-front-page-immediately-
after-registering)) before posting to AskMeFi.

MetaFilter also has a few rules about linking to your own stuff in posts, so
rather than including your URL in your question, you'll want to put it in your
profile.

~~~
Mz
Thank you.

------
SpaceDragon
I only looked at your site for a few seconds (I've got to get to bed) but I
wanted to share some ideas because I want you to be successful.

Podcast... have you thought of doing a regular podcast? You could grow your
traffic and ask for donations.

E-books: package up your blog as an ebook and spice it up with some premium
content. Lulu is a great place to publish and sell it.

Amazon.com: you're doing affiliate stuff, right?

Twitter account: load up with followers and get a Bufferapp account so you can
schedule tweets.

SEO (not PPC): Obvious I know, but it's an easy win.

If you spruce up the site / blog with a nice, free Wordpress theme like
something here: [http://wplift.com/30-free-premium-wordpress-themes-with-
cris...](http://wplift.com/30-free-premium-wordpress-themes-with-crisp-white-
designs) you might be able to lure more advertisers. In the meantime, have a
space for advertisers on the sidebar or something (but then again, what do I
know).

If I have any more ideas I'll post them tomorrow.

~~~
Mz
Podcast: Where would I learn more?

Twitter: I have looked into this but never taken the plunge. Again, where do I
learn more? I find twitter baffling and intimidating.

Thanks. If any other questions occur to me, I will let you know.

~~~
SpaceDragon
For podcasting, here's a nice overview on how to get you started:
[http://snapguide.com/guides/create-an-audio-podcast-on-
the-c...](http://snapguide.com/guides/create-an-audio-podcast-on-the-cheap/)

For Twitter, check out [http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-grow-a-
twitter-fol...](http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-grow-a-twitter-
following/)

In fact, keep an eye on the site Social Media Examiner. Dig through the site.
I'm sure you'll agree it's a gold mine of good advice relating to using social
media effectively.

~~~
Mz
Thank you.

------
apsurd
publish an Ebook.

It has less to do with your actual site, but the problem is when people go on
a website, they expect what they read to be free.

If you put the same content in an Ebook and work hard at promoting and
marketing it, people are generally OK with spending a couple bucks to purchase
an eBook. You can also offer a 100% unconditional money back guarantee so that
it will lower the initial doubt someone might have.

eBooks are very marketing heavy but they can also be very lucrative in the
short-time but especially long-term.

You already have a head start because you _do_ have a story to tell; the rest
is just marketing and there is lots of content available on that topic for you
to try:
[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=ebo...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=ebook&start=0)

------
true_religion
Rather than constant donation drives, I'd suggest you try to raise all the
money for a year at once.

Also, if you're going to survive on donations---then publish a newsletter as
well as a way to get peoples emails, and thus have them when you need to run
your donation drive.

Target cost + your expenses + expenses to spruce up the site.

I'd also suggest recruiting other people to blog with you (not for you), in
order to slowly give it a more of a community feel. A feeling of community is
100% necessary for donation drives.

\--

Otherwise, if you'd like people to pay for product because the above feels too
much like turning your page into a charity, then publish an ebook of your
writings and place that on Amazon.

\----

How do you currently get visitors? 800 page views a month is a pretty small
amount. With greater traffic even a small margin can be profitable.

~~~
Mz
I get some traffic from email lists, the link in my HN profile and things like
that but I also get a lot of apparently non-sticky traffic from searches for
things like "mild CF" or "saline solution". If I can get traffic, I can make
enough money to feel it is worth keeping. I have other things I also want to
work on. But this is the site that has the most traffic currently, in spite of
severe neglect, and this is the site that keeps inspiring other people to gift
me enough money to stay online in spite of making no effort to raise money
previously. This is also the site for which I would like to develop a
simulation if I can figure out how. I am healthier/more functional than I have
been in years and unemployed, thus I have some time on my hands in spite of
standing in long lines at soup kitchens and the like. Being homeless might
actually be a good opportunity for me to finally develop my sites so I can
stay healthy and not need a "normal" job, which was helping me stay sick. Not
ideal, of course, but ideal would have probably involved being born without a
genetic disorder.

I hope that makes sense as an assessment of where some things stand and does
not merely sound like whining.

Thanks.

------
trienthusiast
1) GET MORE VISITORS. You really need to get WAY more visitors to see some
money from adsense. How to get visitors? I would find a suitable sub-reddit
and ask the people there to link to you, share you on facebook etc. Write
articles and submit them to ezinearticles.com

2) ADD A "DONATE" BUTTON. Easily implemented, you will explicitally ask people
for a trivial amount (2$? 5$?) to help you keep the website alive. Say people
that your blog helps people but you can't just keep paying for it.

~~~
Mz
I actually have a donate button but people cannot seem to find it. Any
suggestions on how to improve that? I mean, obviously I need to add it to the
index page, something I intended to do at one time. Any other suggestions
beyond that?

Thanks.

~~~
trienthusiast
1) change theme, immediately. If i can be unpolite, this must be one of the
worst colour combination I have seen in a website.

2) the homepage is kind of useless. You have some text and there seeems not to
be anything else around it. The real content is the blog and the link to the
yahoo group. You don't need that. Make a homepage that has a) your text on the
top b) the blog underneath it.

3) put some "about me" that is a quick (300-500) characters with your picture,
maybe your kids and explain your story and what you do. I have been on the
website a while and still i have no idea what is the issue at hand.

4) the 3) will actually link to the "donate" button. Explain that your
experience and the community can help other people. your donate button is
orange over brown (!!) and the text black over brown. It seems you are trying
to hide it on purpose. hint: go white background and never go back.

5) your adsense banners... with those numbers you'll never see money. use that
space to make a compelling story for people to donate. tell them how much. 2$
5$ 10$

~~~
Mz
Answering a direct question is not unpolite in my book.

I am not crazy about the colors of the wordpress theme. I chose it in part to
try to coordinate with the existing site and in part because other design
elements are nice. I will look around but if I had more of the right skills I
would probably first try to tweak the existing theme instead.

I don't understand your last sentence in point 2. Do you mean leave the
archive as the main body of the site? I don't want to remove the older part of
the site because it has detailed instructions on treatments which I once used
but a lot of the info there is out of date. I would like to preserve it but
move the emphasis to the blog and try to find a means to more effectively
convey my current thinking and mental models. My preference is to emphasize
rubrics which can lead to multiple possible effective solutions. I think a top
down, one size fits all solution helps create problems.

------
epikur
Is it just a blog and an email list? Have you considered migrating to Tumblr
(or wordpress.com) and Mailchimp? They could easily handle your traffic, for
free. Then you could worry about promoting it and/or adding ads, without the
monthly overhead of hosting.

~~~
Mz
I am currently talking to someone who has offered to host it for free. What I
need is traffic. When it gets traffic, it makes some money. I do not need a
lot of money to feel it is worth keeping but I do need some money. I would
still like to do a webcomic at some point but my health site seems like the
quickest short term means to make at least a little money.

Thanks for responding.

Edit: I would like to do a simulation (aka "game") at some point but I do not
know any programming languages or where to start with this idea. This idea is
why I joined HN to begin with...more than 1000 days ago...and it has so far
gone nowhere, largely because I was working full time and continuing to battle
my health problems. I am currently unemployed and far healthier so in a better
position to develop my sites, ironically enough.

------
Mz
Link to the site in question: <http://healthgazelle.com/>

