(Serious question. I suck at asking questions that get me useful answers. I have some websites that have been around a while and make next to nothing in spite of having something of value to offer. I want to make $2000-$3000/mo. How on earth do I get there from here?)
You can start by being specific. There's no generic answer here. You can't really try to understand "succeeding at businesses" in the abstract. You have to do things on a case-by-case basis. So if you ask about one of your _specific_ sites, people can help you.
Okay. How would one get more quality traffic with this specific challenge: It's a health site where I talk about getting myself well when doctors claim it cannot be done. The rest of the world thinks it cannot be done either so it's a hard sell.
So far, I have been working on building an audience painfully slowly. Since I am also working on getting myself well, content does not go up as regularly as I would like. My feeling has been this is probably a good thing for now because the first thing I have to do is win over my audience and the world just does not believe this can be done. Maybe I am completely wrong (about needing to build the audience this way)? But without participating in email lists and hearing what other people are asking, I also don't really know what to talk about -- I don't just psychically know what is different about what I am doing compared to other people. So for me that relationship to the audience is important and there has been a huge barrier for a long time. It is gradually coming down. Maybe I do know exactly what I am doing and it just takes time. Or maybe I am an idiot and someone else would have no problem slapping some content onto the site and generating an income.
It's a health site where I talk about getting myself well when doctors claim it cannot be done.
Besides your Mom, no one cares about getting you well.
Since I am also working on getting myself well...
Supposing I were sick, I'd care mainly about getting myself well. It sounds like you don't have the answers, so why am I bothering?
It sounds like you aren't selling solutions. So your best bet is to sell sympathy and motivation. My suggestion: make it more of a forum, allow other people to tell their stories as well. Focus on sharing emotions as much as sharing solutions.
Monetization will probably come from ads selling snake oil. Near as I can tell, that's the primary method of monetization in health related sites - selling homeopathy and herbs to desperate people.
Besides your Mom, no one cares about getting you well.
As noted elsewhere: The site exists because there are people who are interested in what I did to get well, not because I had any plans to create such a site. It gives them clues as to how to get themselves healthier when all else has failed. I talk about what worked for me in large part because I have zero interest in giving advice per se. I think that is part of what is wrong with conventional medicine: Doctors routinely prescribe treatments with short term benefits and long term costs, which is not so bad if you are basically healthy and can take the hit for an acute problem. But it's deadly if you have a chronic health issue. And the fact that they take this basic approach is no secret. It's done quite openly: We all know about the huge fold-outs detailing the negative side effects that come with most prescription drugs and the waivers that have to be signed before they will perform surgery. Since getting myself healthier relied heavily on trading short term costs for long term gains, I have zero interest in replicating a system that I am convinced is part of the problem.
So your best bet is to sell sympathy and motivation. My suggestion: make it more of a forum, allow other people to tell their stories as well. Focus on sharing emotions as much as sharing solutions.
I own several email lists. I cannot for the life of me get conversations going on them. I also briefly had a forum for the site. It was overrun with spam and had maybe three members (myself included). So I've tried that route and failed, quite consistently and miserably. It works better for me to try to get people sharing info when someone else owns/runs the discussion space. And that is a piece I am working on elsewhere, for the purpose of helping people help themselves. I'm also not interested in selling sympathy or motivation per se. There is a saying that "an example is the best lecture" and I have found that to be true. So I do offer myself as an example in hopes that it inspires people to feel "If she can do it, I can do it". But I have zero interest in being some cheerleader.
Again, I was not asking about monetizing the site. Only about getting traffic, a question you have not addressed. As stated earlier: I have several websites. I really don't expect this site to be where the money is. But it is the most mature/developed of the sites I own and it basically serves as a proving ground for me to learn stuff.
You didn't ask about getting traffic, you asked about getting "quality traffic". Since you didn't define "quality", I assumed you were going with the standard definition of quality - traffic that earns you money. Hence, a discussion of monetization.
Anyway, I was going to list the ways your site is an SEO and navigation disaster.
But then I saw that your content is a deceptive mix of good advice, snake oil, and stuff I don't know enough to evaluate. It would be unethical of me to give you any tips on directing more people to it. You should take your site down. You are clearly unable to evaluate scientific evidence, and your anecdotes of how the placebo effect helped you are not providing any benefit to others.
Honestly this is like trying to sell pages off your own personal diary. Im going to say from my POV there is no way you can make serious money of of this.Google adsense yes but we all know how that goes if you have low traffic. BUT if you can gather an Audience and after that write a book about this..your blog audience could spread the word about ''the guy who defied the odds''
In regards to both this reply and the other one where I wrote a lengthier response, please note I have not asked "how do I monetize this?" I have asked "How do I get quality traffic for the site?"
My expectation is that at some point there will be an app and that will have more potential for being monetized. For now, I only want to know how to get more traffic. Can anyone address that specific question and leave out your opinions that I am crazy to try to monetize this?
The caveats to this advice are that this worked for me a couple of years ago (so I'm not sure if the same community exists there now) and that my thing was much more about fat loss.
Still, I was shocked at how quickly I felt like I had been embraced by a community, especially since I had only started out with the intention of using Tumblr as a free place to host a diary (I was quite ignorant of the community features at the time).
Another caveat is that Tumblr tends to favor short form content rather than longer blog posts. However, this could actually be seen as a positive since it's a lot easier to do shorter, more frequent updates.
Aside from that, finding forums where people are talking about these issues and then getting actively involved could be one of the best ways to indirectly build an audience.
A few thoughts on your website:
* I'd either make your blog the main page or automatically pull in at least the latest blog onto your main page. Otherwise, I get the impression that the site was last updated in 2009.
* I'd write a one paragraph summary of who you are and what you're trying to accomplish, the "elevator pitch" if you will. I feel that a lot of what is on your current main page would be more appropriate on a longer form "About" page. I'd put the elevator pitch front and center so that new visitors can know exactly why they should care and keep browsing your site.
* I'd consider coming up with a short timeline - as a new visitor, I might be interested in quickly knowing things like how far along you are in your journey. Like were you just diagnosed? Have you just recently decided to turn your life around or have you been working on this for awhile? As a new visitor, it helps me more quickly identify with your story and what I can expect to get from you.
To sum up, I think there's an audience out there for this. Plenty of people are going to be interested in the everyday perspective of someone who's down in the trenches battling an illness.
So if keeping the site going makes you happy, don't give up!
Without even getting into the ethics of selling health advice before the experiments are complete, consider the probability that it's just a terrible idea to try to monetize your personal health site, no matter how you do it.
The point of your health regimen is to get yourself well. The point of your health site should be to help you get yourself well -- by motivating you to stick to your plan, by helping you keep records of your own plans and thinking and data, and by recruiting folks to help encourage and coach you and share advice and conduct experiments along with you.
Don't screw up your own priorities and motivations by introducing an additional profit motive. When your health is at stake, you need to do what you need to do, not what your audience wants to pay for. If, after all your experiments, it turns out that the healthiest path for you is the most boring thing ever, something that nobody wants to read about and that can't be sold for money but that is nonetheless effective for you... great! Mission accomplished, you're healthy. Don't bias your judgement by asking a market to vote with its money. They'll end up (e.g.) steering you to the latest fad, whether it's healthy for you or not.
A) I am well on my way to being well. Although I continue to learn, the site does not exist to get me well. It exists because I made some off-the-cuff remark on an email list where I was held in high esteem, got attacked for it, was politely asked to "prove" what I had said and I said "give me a day or two to get back to you so I can put together the information". The response to the next email where I backed up my remark was stuff like "Can I forward it to someone I know who has a child with the same condition?". So I began working on putting the information on a website so people can share the links without asking to forward my emails.
B) It turns out that there is actually research that backs up some of what I kind of stumbled across. But it doesn't get much press because it won't make any drug companies rich.
C) I don't mind helping people but 1) I have bills to pay myself 2) if it benefits others and has value, why shouldn't I get something in return? and 3) people don't take it seriously when it isn't "for profit". Just being some nice person who got well and is willing to share what I know is very unconvincing for helping others.
D) I often contemplate just taking the site down. I am okay with just getting on with my life now that I am healthy enough to do that. But other people have made it clear they don't want it to come down. Both this year and in a previous year, donations paid my hosting service renewal when I couldn't afford it (this year: Thank you HN!).
As for the ethics question, I have had that thrown in my face before. People are dying from what I have and doctors can't really help them. Is it possible for people to misuse the information on my site and wind up with a problem because of it? Yes. Is it likely that doing nothing is worse? Very much so. My approach is much more conservative than what doctors do and much safer.
You are 100% incorrect about C-3. I don't take sites that want you to pay for information seriously. Information and knowledge should be free. Charging for information makes you "them" instead of "us" and totally leads people to not trust you.
Examples:
- Get rich selling stuff on ebay! (internet treasure chest)
- Save your marriage! (google "save your marriage ebook")
- Penis enlargement! (...)
- How one mom found a cheap way to whiten her kids teeth! (in ads everywhere, usually leads to a site where you pay for an ebook).
How would one get more quality traffic with this specific challenge: It's a health site where I talk about getting myself well when doctors claim it cannot be done.
The first thing to define is "quality traffic". Let's say the health condition is a painful nose wart. If only 14 people in the U.S. have this condition you're never going to get significant traffic. If the condition is indeed widespread you have to ask how people would search for it. Would they type "painful nose warts" or maybe something else like "nose bumps"? If you have been assuming people use the same keyword phrasing you do to describe the same thing you need to investigate what is the actual case. Google's keyword tool can help by showing what people are searching for. (I recommend comparing broad and exact match versions too.) Make a list of all possible phrasing. This can help you identify long tail keywords which there is little competition for, and sometimes strong keywords nobody targets well at all.
After you've confirmed that there is indeed significant traffic to be had for your topic, and you're armed with your keyword list the next step is to set up your site to be successful when aligned with those things. Probably the quickest and easiest thing to do is start a Wordpress blog, since there are many theme possibilities and it's already going to have many SEO basics built in. Next, go to Google and type in: SEO site: news.ycombinator.com. Take a day or two to read through many of the results. Pay extra attention to comments by patio11. Now, consider how you can follow as much of that advice as possible with your site. Be prepared to work and improve on this for days or weeks. The time consuming part of receiving free traffic from search engines really boils down to: creating quality content (keep your phrasing list in mind here!) on the topic, and receiving links to that content. If your content is good enough, links will start appearing naturally. This can take time, but it will happen. To help things along be proactive by reaching out to sites, communities, writers, organizations which have anything at all to do with your topic. Ask them directly for links back, or possibly if you can write a guest post on their site referencing your site. If you follow these steps correctly, over time you will see results.
Now that you've established traffic you need to monetize it. There are a couple ways to do that. If the traffic is significant enough, and depending on the topic, simply putting up ads may be enough. If there are complimentary products to aid in getting healthy, like a special measurement machine, see if you can position yourself to earn a commission whenever it's sold through your site as an affiliate (start contacting suppliers directly if you need to and pitch them).
The other way to monetize your traffic is by selling access to the information itself. You hold valuable information. You want to monetize it. And here I disagree with mechanical_fish. There is nothing wrong with asking people to pay for you taking the time to show them a way to improve their life. Doctors and drug companies don't work free. They are usually quite expensive, and they don't have all the answers as they are literally "practicing" medicine. Providing alternatives which may be more effective and likely less costly as well is certainly worth something.
The approach I would use when taking this route is freely offering about 80-90% of the solution and trying to monetize the remaining 10%. As you say you will probably face skepticism about any proposed solution, whether it's true or not. Talking openly and candidly about the first 90% is a way to address that skepticism. People can detect when you are probably being genuine, and they will respond to that. I would tell my story as genuinely and matter-of-factly as possible on my blog, and interact with readers. Next, I would offer one of two options which could be monetized. My favorite thing to do would be adding a premium membership forum to my site. I'd make it known that in this forum participants shared and progressed together, as well as having access to me. Even if you gave away 100% of your solution, coaching members along is still likely to be a needed and valuable product.
The other option is to package up the remaining 10% in an eBook format where you essentially re-tell your entire story, but with 100% of the information. Show your site visitors that you have taken time to put together a more in depth look at the topic, and you hope they will pay the modest < $5 cost to receive it.
Last, be sure to have a legal disclaimer stipulating that you're not a doctor, you're only telling your story, and people should consult their doctor before beginning any form of treatment for anything.
I actually just looked into your site healthgazelle.com. I'm afraid I would recommend pursuing another avenue to reach $2,000-3000 per month. One area you seem to be good at is writing. I'd pick another area you're an expert in or passionate about which is far more popular, then build up a blog audience writing about it.
There are two problems. The first, good traffic quality, can't be changed. The second, your site not being optimized for search engines can, but without the traffic there isn't much point.
It took me several seconds to find out that the topic of your site seems to be cystic fibrosis. You actually have a decent store of content about your topic, but right now it's practically invisible to search engines (for example, you refer to it as "CF", and you're not implementing good page title tags, or effective headers, urls, etc.). As I said, that can be fixed. The bigger problem is that Google's keyword tool for "cystic fibrosis" (exact match phrasing) shows not many are searching for what you're offering.
The general term "cystic fibrosis" has decent numbers, but that can include everything from people checking what it is to students doing reports on it. You are interested in people looking for treatment for it, and those numbers are very, very low. Perhaps people don't think to look for a treatment for it. Whatever the case, you would need to be near the #1 result for the keyword "cystic fibrosis treatment", beating out sites like mayoclinic.com and nlm.nih.gov, and you still wouldn't have more than a few thousand clicks per month. Maybe that's enough for you, but I'd pick a more popular traffic topic.
Also, please note I have a typo in my recommendation above to learn more about effective SEO. You need to type into Google "seo site:news.ycombinator.com" with no space after "site:" to see only results from HN.
I have no plans of making $2000-$3000 off that one site. I have other things in the works. They need a great deal more fleshing out (one project has exactly zero actual content). Nor is the site intended to be about cystic fibrosis per se. I advocate eating right, exercise, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" and so on. Those things are more broadly applicable than just treating my specific condition. And I am quite well aware that very few people go looking for info on how to get well while living with CF. Still, I want to use this site to learn about building traffic as it is the most developed site I have. So thank you very much for your suggestions and for correcting the typo.
One area you seem to be good at is writing. I'd pick another area you're an expert in or passionate about which is far more popular, then build up a blog audience writing about it.
:-)
That's kind of the long term goal. Only I am thinking webcomic. Time will tell.
Still, I want to use this site to learn about building traffic as it is the most developed site I have.
Okay, if you want to learn about building traffic you need to learn either SEO (learning best practices for Google's model), or how to write content people want to read and feel compelled to refer others to read. That site appears primarily about cystic fibrosis, which isn't a very popular topic. It's fine to have the idea of talking about other things, but if you're taking the SEO route your goal is to be seen as an authority on some specific area of information. Also, having a fully developed site which is set up incorrectly by SEO standards means very little when it comes to SEO. For example, it's sometimes advisable to start from scratch building out page structures, title tags, content, etc. correctly (for example, as I mentioned using a Wordpress structure), and you can often get better results faster by doing this.
That's kind of the long term goal. Only I am thinking webcomic. Time will tell.
A webcomic sounds fantastic! Are you any good? If you can put out something like xkcd.com, then simply add Twitter/Facebook share buttons to it, that can be a quick way to build an audience right there.
(Serious question. I suck at asking questions that get me useful answers. I have some websites that have been around a while and make next to nothing in spite of having something of value to offer. I want to make $2000-$3000/mo. How on earth do I get there from here?)