Ask HN: What to do with 3K visitors a month?

[SpendBig]

I created a chat site with an open chat. Very basic. Additionally I added a profile system. Also very basic. Now I have about 3K visitors a month, make about $30 dollar a month through adsense, but I dont have any clue on how to make it more profitable.

[philsnow]

What to do with them ? Do right by them. Try to figure out why they are using your site instead of some other one (slack comes to mind), figure out who your audience is, talk to them to try to find out who they are (not necessarily "what they want", because people will tell you all kinds of things), and give them what they need.

If, at the end of all this, you don't have a clearer idea about how to help these people to happily give you their time / money / eyeballs, then maybe just leave it be and enjoy $30 worth of beer each month or something.

[SpendBig]

Thanks!

[vblord]

$30/month is pretty good for 3k in visitors i think. I get about 10k visitors and only make $25 off adsense. What's your website address? I'd love to see where your ad placement is at. Maybe it has to do with the amount of time the users are on the site.

In terms of getting more $, affiliate income makes lots of money. In the old days when we used to run sites with adsense and affiliates, the affiliate income accounted for about 70% of the revenue. If you had a good place on your site for it, I'd start by looking in to the amazon associates program. FYI. The amazon affiliate pays out from 4% - 10% of the sale of the product.

[SpendBig]

To bad, I have no idea what ads to target. Could be just anything. But I guess adult content would do pretty well. Most of the people really talk some nasty stuff.

[ncouture]

Do they know you're in on their conversations?

[SpendBig]

Yes ofcourse. It is am open chat, no private conversations are possible for the chat. But when user register, they can send private messages to each other. These i can not read.

[jayzalowitz]

Dont.

We haven't monetized hackernoon.com at all and have instead focused on good content and we are now well into the millions of monthly uniques. Its not worth the time to monitize 3k visitors

[iamben]

I'm half with you. I think monetising 3k people on a generic chat site is going to be hard/impossible (what interests one may not interest the other). That said, monetising 3k people in a micro niche could potentially be absolutely worth it. For instance, if the 3k are chatting about poker - you may only need to convert a handful a month with the right offer to make it a nice bit of extra (semi) passive income.

[mod]

This is highly anecdotal. You don't know how you would have done had you monetized it. Potentially just as well.

[SpendBig]

Very nice, thanks for the feedback. To give it a bit more context.

The reason I'm not sharing the url is because the code is somewhat outdated and may be insecure. In my spare time I'm working on a new version which matches some of the recent security 'standards'. The website started as a project just for learning how to develop a basic website with interaction between users. So about seven years ago I tried becoming new instance of \Zuckerberg. I started chatting the website all over de chat-places. I added a twitter account, following (by hand :)) all those singles and lonely people out there hoping they follow back. Greeting them every day and helping other twitter addicts keeping their following list clean with new tools also presented within a backoffice on the same website.

My situation only allows me to work just a couple of hours a week on a side project. The reason I'm looking for some new ideas to monetize the project a bit more is because I want to buy a new house, like within a year or so. Just need a 100K in euros additionally to buy a nice place to give my son the full experience of life as much as possible in the way me and my wife dream about it. I can't just switch jobs, because the company I work for did alot for me. And I am a v ery loyal person when it comes to people/businesses helping me out with stuff.

Now, for the chat service, its more like a lonely-chat-service. About 100 visitors a day, saying "Hi, is there anyone around here?" or something like that. Then, the silence is killing them at which point they probably start clicking thos e ads :) So as I removed the usefull stuff from the website, people started clicking more on ads, to just get away.

When I read the feedback, I think I should just add some sort of feedback button or create a popup with a textarea in which they can add their dream they expected to get in by entering the website. And then start building them those dream s, for just a penny a day.

[vblord]

That's a great dream and a great goal. Unfortunate there isn't a magic way to make 100k from a website without building a good product. I wish there was a way.

As for the 100 visitors saying "Hi, is anyone around here?" The chicken and the egg problem is a very common problem with social sites. The most common way I've seen this solved is by the owners of the site "faking" responses or filling in their site with fake content to look like it is active. They do this just until the site takes off. But it sounds like your project is not that large yet and needs to be built up larger. I'd say for you to keep at it or start another project that you can get more traction in.

For what it's worth... In my experience, only working a couple hours a week on a side project won't get you anywhere fast. I usually spend around 15 on my side projects a week. Otherwise, nothing will get done on them. You just need to make the time. As Gary Vaynerchuk puts it... go to work, go home, kiss the dog, and between 9PM and 1AM you need to crush it.

I wish you the best and hope you can make something happen.

Edit: Here's that keynote where Gary talks about having a side project and working 9-5. https://youtu.be/EhqZ0RU95d4?t=11m50s

[ttam]

As vblord and others have said: you need to work on the product if ultimately you want it to grow.

But here's another way you can make some money with 3k users: sell something to them. As some have said, things like custom emojis, digital roses, etc, might work. But think outside of the tech box and offer to sell actual physical things e.g. a user could buy flowers for another user and you take care of the service and take a cut out of it.

There's actually a show right now on tv called "Halt and Catch Fire" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543312/ best show ever about tech imho) and they're trying to grow a startup who's service is a chat service!

[vblord]

ttam, i hear Silicon Valley is supposed to be a really great show about that too. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2575988/

[aminozuur]

Why would you want to make it more profitable? The alternative is giving your users a better, ad-free experience. What makes you happier: 1) Getting $100/month in revenue 2) Having a fast growing group of users who love your web-app?

[stanmancan]

I don't think that's really a fair comment. There's lots of reasons to want to monetize a project, including to pay for servers, fund future development, and fund future projects. All it takes is a few small sites/services that are making >= $500/m via ads or paid customers to be able to quit your job and focus your time on said projects.

[betenoire]

The parent worded it poorly IMO. But the notion is real.

The parent made it seem like you had to choose between making money or a good app, which is obviously nonsense.

But I do identify with getting more gratification from solving a problem well and offering to others for free than potentially making money off of it. I might be weird, but money is a drug, and I'll take just what I need (or what my wife says we need).

[sharemywin]

But if you take the ads of and it grows faster you need to see if the growth is worth the loss in short term revenue. Facebook was a perfect example.

[Trufa]

You need to provide more information about the services you provide.

How specialized are you, maybe if you're incredibly specialized and have the right crowd, you can start having premium accounts, in exchange for special features.

3k is pretty low, for a chat service (in general, maybe for extremely specialized services it isn't).

If possible, try to expand your userbase, advertising? Social sharing? Affiliate programs?

The possibilities are endless and you live and die by the specifics of your niche.

Decide if you want to aim for massive, or niche, ads, premium features, freemium?

If you want more specifics, I think you need to be more specific in your question, but then I'll gladly expand.

[xiaoma]

>"...but I dont have any clue on how to make it more profitable."

You probably won't fix that in this thread if you don't share the URL or even enough information about your chat site for people to give educated feedback.

What kind of users are they? Do they chat about everything or is there a theme or geographical niche? What kinds of ads are displaying through adsense? How long did it take you to get to 3k users? Do you feel like it will be hard to get more? Why did you throw up adsense at such low traffic?

[SpendBig]

What kind of users are they? > mostly people that search chat sites like "free chat sites without registration" and those that click links on chat link pages.

Do they chat about everything or is there a theme or geographical niche? > Dutch visitors, 99%. No theme, just a single chatbox, and another one for registered users. Mostly chatting about adult related stuff or searching for men/woman.

What kinds of ads are displaying through adsense? > anything, I took the advice that popped up in google adsense.

How long did it take you to get to 3k users? > took me a few years, but i spent just a few hours a week like half a year to get those monthly 3K.

Do you feel like it will be hard to get more? >Just figuring that out now.

Why did you throw up adsense at such low traffic? > Someone told me I could get $ for throwing adsense on my site and i was wondering how much that would be

[stanmancan]

Aside from having ads on the site, your only real option is a paid plan. In that case, just start marketing the project as "beta" and add a pricing page that says the pricing is "coming soon". Continue building out features and once you get a good enough product to charge for add a paid plan and flip everybody else over to the default "Free Plan" that's limited in a way that users can still use the site, but have enough reasons to upgrade to the paid plan.

Whatever you do I'd try to listen to your users and see exactly what they want. 3,000 users really isn't very many and it would be really easy for them to disappear. Talk to your users, find out why they're using your site/service, keep that in mind when building out your feature set.

Edit: Keep in mind, building out the service and keeping it free is also an option, especially if you enjoy working on and running the site. If you listen to your users and keep improving the product, it's very possible to turn 3K monthly users into 300K. I run an API that has a front end site which gets around 175K monthly hits and brings in about $1300+ (CAD) a month from the ads. The site costs peanuts to run so I'm happy to serve the 35 million API calls for free and fund the project 100% via adsense. It just depends on how far you'd like to scale it and what your users are like.

[SpendBig]

Thanks! When I finished the rebuild, I will be able to create and maintain some new features based on what users want. Will keep de the paid plans in mind! Maybe just a very small amount, it does not cost me that much to run the service.

[sawantuday]

Can i get a look at your frontend for APIs

[throwawayValue]

It's a great feeling knowing that you've built something which is used by thousands of people, but even better when it's generating revenue to cover the costs (your time, hosting, etc). However, to put things in perspective you're really only talking about 100 visitors per day and $1 in revenue. Factoring that, I suggest focusing more on improving the site, growing it's traffic and then when it passes 500 visitors per day start focusing on revenue. If you prefer the AdSense route, make sure you've optimized your ad placements and the type of ads you're serving.

This advice is coming from someone who has a site doing roughly $5k month from AdSense via 275k+ visitors / 1.3M+ pageviews and it makes up about 30% of the site's revenue. Rest is from paid plans & affiliate marketing.

[iurisilvio]

Follow this advice! 3k users is awesome. It validates your product. Get more users to do more money.

It is a nice challenge and you'll learn a lot.

[milesvp]

As a chat service, you may have some options for adding premium emoji, premium avatars, or other digital displays of wealth. Digital gifts can be another option. Ok Cupid is rumored to have made a lot on digital roses. Premium services like private rooms may have value as well.

[jeffmould]

My question is do you have 3000 visitors or 3000 MAU? There is a big difference. With Adsense there are things to consider to increase your revenue, such as who your users are (location and demographic), the type of content on the site, and how long they stay on your site.

As others have pointed out, without knowing more about your site it's difficult to answer. But some suggestions. Try selling add-ons such as premium emojis or avatars. Look towards a premium account with added features as well.

[jlobato63]

I suggest to add some premium content to profiles. Charge a very low price - 2-3 Euros/month - and have people pay at the end of each month. If they dont pay then close their account/profile. This way they only pay if they are satisfied and allways have the last 30 free days. You only need 10 paying customers/visitors - 0,3% of current visitor numbers to earn the same as with adsense

[namank]

Go to a startup meetup and hook up with someone you think will be great at marketing or knows something about the chat space that you don't.

Partner with them on making this more profitable.

[ialex]

I work building tools for ad optimizers, next step they take is to get an account for DFP and Ad exchange(Google) which offers better revenue, there are also other ad networks you can configure on DFP to boost revenue like PubGalaxy the thing is you need to take time to test each one or get help for a pro ad optimizer and these days all big publishers are using Header bidding, you can reach me alejandro [at] ialex.org if want more details.

[zerognowl]

Flattr is worth investigating: https://flattr.com/

Also you can ask for Bitcoin / Litecoin donations depending on how technical your visitors are. I know you want normal currency, but you can convert BTC using Coinbase and other exchanges

[montibbalt]

It's awesome that you made it this far, but to be honest 3k MAU just isn't enough. If you're making money through ads, you'll want more eyeballs on them so try getting more users! Depending on how far you want to take it, your username may unfortunately become very relevant.

[kwhitefoot]

Where is it? If you had given us the URL you might have got a few cents more.

[shanecleveland]

Is it oriented toward businesses? Or is there an angle to create a more business-oriented version? Better ad payouts in my experience, and more likely to pay for a service.

[afarrell]

Does your community share some set of problems in common? If so, look for sponsorship by an organization that makes money solving those problems.

[wehadfun]

You could probably sell ads on your own depending the audience. If its a bunch of CEOs on their you could probably sell ads for millions.

[dismantlethesun]

Depends on what they're talking about. What's the name of your site?