Should I Monetize My Site Immediately or Wait Until I Have More Traffic?

[Mahjong]

When you build a website, do you put an optin form or you wait until you see some movement on your site?

 

[Ryuzaki]

When you build a website, do you put an optin form or you wait until you see some movement on your site?

People ask and suggest this same kind of approach to monetization. I can't think of a single legitimate reason to wait to capture emails or make money.

Would you open up a store in a shopping mall and not stock it with product until 10,000 people had come and gone first? If you were gathering signatures for a petition to save the whales, would you not put an ink pen in the first 1000 people's hands? Would you just get them to verbally commit?

Pretty much any time you see the word "wait" being suggested, especially in something this directly related to the very reason you've built the site... you can pretty much safely do the opposite. All you do while waiting is waste traffic and leave money on the table.

 

[Mahjong]

Thanks Ryuzaki, I already stated on the introduction section of this forum, that I'm a noob, so take it easy on me.

Could you suggest any good direction to surf this place and learn correctly all these concepts and strategies before I advance on building my first website?

Including books, courses, crash courses, forums, blogs... anything that you see will help new players like me and help them to not wasting anytime on surfing useless waste we find everyday on our social media news feed.

 

[Ryuzaki]

@Mahjong, we have the quintessential, start-to-finish guide here on BuSo, free of charge: The Digital Strategy Crash Course.

That will give you the lay of the land and a frame of reference on what all exists and how to think about it. That's definitely the most important part of the game and why we suggest newbies go through the entire process of building a site, marketing it, and failing quickly, at least once immediately. It's the fast path to knowing what all is involved. The crash course can give you knowledge, but you have to solidify it with experience.

 

[Mahjong]

@Ryuzaki, a great way to learn, thanks. Is there any additional advices you may share.
Appreciate all your answers, I'm surfing this place, exactly by reading "The Digital Strategy Crash Course" it is a bit philosophical, some meaning is missed into that hard sophistical way of writing, but one of the best stuff I've ever read.

Thanks to @CCarter for his/her efforts, best regards.

Do I need to adjust my article to how many seconds a reader spend on each article or just write interesting stuff that attract people, I'm confused with all those Google on-page metrics?

Okay, I have now hundreds or so of emails on my list but I don't know how to push products to them, is there any tutorial for that?

 

[dsoul]

Okay, I have now hundreds or so of emails on my list but I don't know how to push products to them, is there any tutorial for that?

Best way to begin is just keeping the list expectant that they will hear from you, set up a follow up series that begins pushing interesting related or industry/niche content, or highlighting various pages on your site that they may have missed, then start experimenting by throwing in the occasional promotion every couple of emails, keep stats on what is working, what is not, open rates/click through etc and adjust as you go.. try not to hit them too hard, don't piss them off, maybe a few emails a week max, but every niche is different, some won't expect many mails, some will, maybe dependent on niche you need to hit them every day until they leave lol.. before starting try http://bfy.tw/Bc5m

Or sign up to some successful lists, and see what they do.. follow.net do a great job of curating related content in their email list mixed with promotional offers.

 

[rick]

I just started building some authority sites targeting only my country. I have already put up a few content and planning to put ads on it. My question is do I put the ads as I put those content or after I get some traffic?

Thanks.

 

[Steve Brownlie]

I just started building some authority sites targeting only my country. I have already put up a few content and planning to put ads on it. My question is do I put the ads as I put those content or after I get some traffic?

I know you'll get some interesting answers to this one - you can win either way, though, and I've seen clients do both.

The biggest exits I've seen though they were very subtle early on and that let them grow more quickly than some 'obviously monetised affiliate sites' - almost looked purely as some kind of altruistic authority site built just to provide value. No ads, a homepage that was totally clean and beautiful. It gets you more and better links when you do outreach, it gets you easier shares from bigger social accounts in your promotion, it looks less suspicious when you start leaking. BUT... it's a much longer game.

If you can do one monster post with ads on and affiliate links, leak to it like a boss, and make $100 right off the bat, there's no reason to pass that up early just because your site is new.

 

[rick]

I know you'll get some interesting answers to this one - you can win either way, though, and I've seen clients do both.

The biggest exits I've seen though they were very subtle early on and that let them grow more quickly than some 'obviously monetised affiliate sites' - almost looked purely as some kind of altruistic authority site built just to provide value. No ads, a homepage that was totally clean and beautiful. It gets you more and better links when you do outreach, it gets you easier shares from bigger social accounts in your promotion, it looks less suspicious when you start leaking. BUT... it's a much longer game.

If you can do one monster post with ads on and affiliate links, leak to it like a boss, and make $100 right off the bat, there's no reason to pass that up early just because your site is new.

Thank you for the reply.

I'm actually in some kind of analysis paralysis right now about this website, since it's the first one that really got me going after putting it off for 3 years. I just can't help it, really. Hope to get it done by the end of June.