Is Creating A Content Site Still A Wise Idea These Days?

[finnegan]

With the rise in ad blockers, I'm seriously worried about the future of my content site which is still in its infancy.

I'm about to hire a writer who will take over 75% of the writing duties from me as I concentrate on traffic leaking.

But I see problems up ahead.

Annoying ads have gotten out of control and people have finally had enough. By the time my site hits full steam, most of my revenue could be taken away by these ad blockers which are becoming way too common.

I suppose there's always Patreon, but that may not work for every vertical/niche out there.

Am I just worrying too much? Will this ad blocker problem eventually go away once someone puts an end to self-playing video ads?

 

[Ryuzaki]

You'll definitely want to incorporate better forms of monetization than only display ads. They're great but they ask the least of your user and thus are the least valuable leads.

Is it a tight enough niche (not broad news) that you can push products of some form or collect and sell CPA leads? Are you building an email list?

I consider my main project a content site and I have no fear of a display ad meltdown. I'd be sad but it's about 3% of the revenue. It's def still a possibility. I consider the Wirecutter a content site.

Can you define what you mean by 'content site'? More like viral or news?

 

[Sutra]

Sounds like you might be talking about a "viral" site? If so, sure, display ad revenue won't be as lucrative as it is now. But no problem.

• Capture emails, send updates to subs and send them back to your site
• Include relevant affiliate offers in the emails
• Segment the subs to target the offers better
• Use retargeting to get low cost traffic back to your best performing pages
• Branch into topics that are tangently related to your main topic. Work on your SEO game to create great content intended to bring in organic to make affiliate sales
• Write informational articles on those tangent subjects
• When those info articles start to rank create an email segment just for that page, capture emails, make specific offers related to that pages content. Put them through a short sequence offering more stuff (or the same stuff a couple times) then have them go back into your main AR.

And a ton of other shit. Stop worrying. Start doing.

 

[Potatoe]

^ Exactly.

People have been having this same conversation for years, and during that time so many sites have been born, grown up, and been flipped for six or seven figures. People will be having this same conversation years from now, too.

 

[finnegan]

You'll definitely want to incorporate better forms of monetization than only display ads. They're great but they ask the least of your user and thus are the least valuable leads.

Is it a tight enough niche (not broad news) that you can push products of some form or collect and sell CPA leads? Are you building an email list?

I consider my main project a content site and I have no fear of a display ad meltdown. I'd be sad but it's about 3% of the revenue. It's def still a possibility. I consider the Wirecutter a content site.

Can you define what you mean by 'content site'? More like viral or news?

It's a news site with an opinion section. It's not broad news though and appeals to a certain audience only.

I'm collecting emails. Are you suggesting I push the CPA offers through email or on the site?

 

[built]

The way I see it is if you have a site that is generating views then there must be a way to monetize it.

And the end of the day it's impossible to not make at least *some* money from it.

 

[doublethinker]

The solution to having the biggest advertising platforms being blocked is not to move to yet another platform.

Ad blockers work they work because they target the biggest advertising platforms first. These are the easiest to spot and block out. They then narrow down to the biggest sites that are incredibly annoying but have been able to get away with being annoying through custom filters that you have to individually set if you as a visitor is so frustrated by them (but still so loyal) that you are pushed to this.

Do you see where I am getting at?

1. Be more technically proficient.
Host your own ads, being lazy on an advertising platform doesn't work as well as it did anymore. Create your own advertising function using shortcodes or something to make your life easier.

2. Don't be so incredibly annoying.
That it warrants an ad block or custom filter against you.

3. And if you do get singled out.
Feel honored because you made it to the hall of fame. Switch up your codes and links, mask the links and host the images on your primary domain if you have to. Now they have to block the entire site if they want to block an ad on your site.

4. Still not working out?
Do what Forbes does, block them for using an ad blocker. Though they've lost me as a reader for being so god damn frustrating to browse in.

It's not the end of the world, but a new way of hustling.

 

[CCarter]

"Is Creating A Content Site Still A Wise Idea These Days?" - That's like stating "Why even bother getting out of bed? the world is going to get destroyed by the sun exploding in 4-5 billion years..." - I mean jeez.

Why even get out of bed if you are constantly looking for all the potential negative problems?

It honestly sounds like you are not passionate about the project if you are just looking for any random excuse to not continue with it, and when you read in between the lines of what you wrote you are looking for a reason to not continue.

There is a day in the crash course called "Monetization" - it literally shows you how to monetize all the different types of websites. Read that and you'll know how to make more money than with just Display ADs. Display ADs are the lowest barrier to entry and will drive you the least amount of money to any project.

If you are making $100 a day with Display ADs you could be generating about $1,000 to $2,000 a day with the same amount of traffic by just expanding your options. There is a reason people are clicking on your ADs to generate you $100 a day, that means a product or service that you are displaying is intriguing them - do a partnership with that product (affiliate or direct CPC campaign - native ADs) and you'll make more than simple pennies for clicks.

If you simply add CPA, sponsorships, and other monetization methods - things that takes a bit of time to setup and get going you'll generate more money than you could ever with Display ADs. But realistically people use Display ADs cause of laziness - when you can make a lot more money with less effort by adding better monetization - so it wouldn't matter if a user is using an AD blocker.

 

[finnegan]

"Is Creating A Content Site Still A Wise Idea These Days?" - That's like stating "Why even bother getting out of bed? the world is going to get destroyed by the sun exploding in 4-5 billion years..." - I mean jeez.

Why even get out of bed if you are constantly looking for all the potential negative problems?

It honestly sounds like you are not passionate about the project if you are just looking for any random excuse to not continue with it, and when you read in between the lines of what you wrote you are looking for a reason to not continue.

There is a day in the crash course called "Monetization" - it literally shows you how to monetize all the different types of websites. Read that and you'll know how to make more money than with just Display ADs. Display ADs are the lowest barrier to entry and will drive you the least amount of money to any project.

If you are making $100 a day with Display ADs you could be generating about $1,000 to $2,000 a day with the same amount of traffic by just expanding your options. There is a reason people are clicking on your ADs to generate you $100 a day, that means a product or service that you are displaying is intriguing them - do a partnership with that product (affiliate or direct CPC campaign - native ADs) and you'll make more than simple pennies for clicks.

If you simply add CPA, sponsorships, and other monetization methods - things that takes a bit of time to setup and get going you'll generate more money than you could ever with Display ADs. But realistically people use Display ADs cause of laziness - when you can make a lot more money with less effort by adding better monetization - so it wouldn't matter if a user is using an AD blocker.

It's not that I'm not passionate about the project, it's that I am wondering if my passion project will be worth doing since it's an informative/entertainment site and it will rely mostly on ads.

When you're selling products off Amazon, you don't have to worry about this kind of stuff so I'm always second guessing myself on whether I should've taken that road instead.

...do a partnership with that product (affiliate or direct CPC campaign - native ADs) and you'll make more than simple pennies for clicks.

I'll look into doing something like this and see if this might be a better way to go. It's possible I might be able to do affiliate stuff too via emails.

1. Be more technically proficient.
Host your own ads, being lazy on an advertising platform doesn't work as well as it did anymore. Create your own advertising function using shortcodes or something to make your life easier.

If it's as simple as hosting your own ads using this method, why don't big sites do this?

 

[doublethinker]

If it's as simple as hosting your own ads using this method, why don't big sites do this?

Probably because it just isn't as big a deal as what people make it up to be that warrants an overhaul vs a patch.

I don't need to buy a smartwatch just because they used to say it's the next big thing, it's cool and you'll be left out. It isn't, it's not and I don't care.

But if I find that I need that smartwatch because it serves a function, I'll get it. But not because the trend says so, because I need so.

That's what you seem to be assuming, that the trend of ad blockers affects everyone the same way, it doesn't. Anyway, it's a potential future problem, not one you need to address now. And even then, it's not catastrophic. Just start.

 

[Prentzz]

If it's as simple as hosting your own ads using this method, why don't big sites do this?

They do. What you're thinking about is very general sites, Huffington Post, Wired, LadBible, Daily Mail, etc.

Some of the biggest sites are also websites that have a huge range of niches that they cover, or they just cover news in general. They can't go ahead and contact individual advertisers because those advertisers will never know what type of content their ad will appear alongside.

But if you're creating an information website about fixing your car engine, there may be no affiliate products, but you can contact huge automative dealers, local garages (then filter to show to people in that state), tire companies etc.

I've done this myself on a website that was in a particular niche and the extra revenue beyond standard ad platforms was significant.

 

[contract]

If content dies so do the advertisers.

Where are they going to advertise if every website on the planet has all their ads blocked?

If you want to dig into this deeper, that's like blocking link exchanges that the porn industry was famous for. Where does the line stop, considering everything is a form of advertisement: Links, banners, sponsored posts, etc... But it's not a banner ad so it's somehow okay? You could easily post 10 sponsored articles for every 1 genuine article. Try sorting through all of that shit and ad-blocking that, lol! It can get much worse...

Things may change, but we're not going back to advertising websites in the newspaper or on physical billboards just because some ads get blocked on sites...

Publishers aren't going to give up either. The Porn industry has invented all kinds of different ways around obstacles. Remember when pop-up ads were blocked completely? The web didn't stop then.

 

[turbin3]

Content is about consumption, and there seems to only be an ever-increasing desire to consume more in our modern societies. The differences are merely a matter of what forms that consumption takes.

Here's a few ideas:

Self host + inline images with base64 data URI. That still works for a lot of blockers.

Also, some interesting possibilities have already been in use in the wild using websockets...

Also, text links. Just saying. Not everything has to be a display ad. If it drives targeted traffic that converts, people will pay for it.

Also, LOTS of small businesses and manufacturers know nothing of affiliate marketing and digital advertising. If you just pick up a phone, often you'll find plenty of companies within your niche/industry that would LOVE some more sales. Why not pick up the phone, cut out the middleman, and go straight to the source?

The struggle people face in our modern societies is the tyranny of convenience. Everything is so "convenient" these days, fewer and fewer are about that grind. Burn some shoe leather, pick up that phone, and you've already set yourself apart from most.

This may not be necessary for everyone, but what can be useful is researching and becoming intimately familiar with fundamental components of web-serving technology. For example, HTTP status codes. Also, the general process of requesting and receiving pages over the internet. If you're the type that spends countless hours of "free time" browsing around the IETF site, for example, examining RFC's in detail...yeah you probably have the grind necessary to win...

HTTP/2 is another example. A lot of changes to specifications occurred. Might be some things hiding in those specs, that could be utilized in creative ways... I'm not saying there necessarily are, just that it's the way to approach it, figuring out how to exploit the technology of successful delivery based on whatever constraints you're fighting against.

The other end of this is a bit more esoteric to most. In short, getting to know your customer base BETTER than they even know themselves. Steve Jobs was famous for this. You think Steve conducted polls to decide on design features for his products? No, he grinded away tirelessly until he had his fingers so firmly on the pulse of things that the solutions were presented to him clairvoyantly. You'll find this is a common theme among those pivotal individuals that have irreversibly shaped society and industry in their time.

When you understand their needs, their wants better than they do, you'll be able to present the perfect solution to them and they will THANK you for it! I would actually say that, in a world filled with ad-rapists, things are that much easier for the one willing to grind it out to the point of developing great insight into their marketplace. The rest will be sitting back, racking up pennies with their diminishing ad networks, whining about what a tough racket it all is. They won't be getting the Glenngary leads.

 

[Kevin]

I take a different line than most in this thread. The ad-based model for free content is fundamentally broken from an incentives perspective, and it's only a matter of time before the Internet will change as a result. In a big way.

Think of the Internet's inception to now as V1 of monetization on the web. V2 is going to be very different, just look at China. Their culture is more accepting of paying individuals for information, instead of being sold out to by companies because they (read: Americans) aren't willing to fork over some change for content.

That is going to change, or the ad industry is going to get worse and worse until people see paying for content they enjoy as the lesser of two evils.

Me? I'm preparing for it, while making the most out of the current era. I still run display, but I do it in a way that doesn't strictly maximize revenue. I set my UX standards at an objective point, then maximize revenue up to that point of UX. Anything further, I don't even consider. I'm also grooming my audience and fans to become accepting of paying for information.

Just look around - it's already happening. Patreon is growing, Sam Harris has 1% of his podcast listeners funding it (probably $20k+/mo), etc.