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Comment by jasonkester | Hacker News Reader

Not all passions monetize.

At the moment, I'm passionate about rock climbing, travel, surfing and computer programming. If it weren't for that 4th one, I'd be screwed.

I currently run maybe the 3rd most popular Travel Blogging site out there. It's had a good 5 years of passion poured in now, off and on, and if I were to slap ads on it today I'd pull in a buck thirtyfive a day.

I also run a little service that processes the draconian logfiles that Amazon provides for its webservices and spits out pretty analytics. It's a subject that no human being could ever be passionate about and it pays my rent.

Sometimes it's better to monetize something boring that people are willing to pay for.

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Assuming your travel blogging site is the one listed in your profile. If that's the case, you should be making way more than a $1.35 a day (~2K uniques per Compete and nearly sub 100K Alexa). I'm sure you don't want to plaster your site with ads, but if you reached out to smaller brand advertisers, I'm sure you could get some decent non-obtrusive, CPM deals. You could also use something like Skimlinks/Viglink to affiliatize traffic (although I think CPM is the way to go).

Not always directly, no. You could, for example, route your passion for rock climbing into selling rock climbing equipment, or producing rock climbing training videos, or publishing a travel guide about the best rock climbing destinations.

Those specific examples may or may not work for you, but even if rock climbing itself isn't a profitable activity, there's surely some way to build business related to rock climbing.

Clearly you haven't met many rock climbers :)

Climbing shops squeak by selling ice axes to non-climbers who mount them on their walls. Climbing guides survive by taking beginners up mountains and hosting birthday parties at the crag. Guidebook authors are lucky if they recoup their printing costs.

Climbers (and outdoor folks in general) just don't like to pay for stuff. I rode enough outdoor-enthusiast dot-coms into the ground back in the 90's to know to stay clear of that space.

I see where you're going with this though, and I'll grant that you can certainly find a way to squeeze out a niche in even a space this dirtbaggishly stingy. But if you're going to put in the effort, I'd recommend doing it in a vertical full of people used to paying lots of money to make their technically trivial problems go away.

There are plenty of those verticals waiting to be tapped, and chances are they're not your passion.

Maybe some rock climbing software, then... :-)

I just picked up indoor rock climbing about 6 months ago and would disagree. Many climbers at the gym I frequent are in their early thirties or older and already have a steady income from a white collar job.

While it isn't a particularly expensive sport like hockey or golf, I'd say it isn't cheap either. Day passes at the gym are $16, and it is packed. And it's growing too! There's lots of newbies starting the sport, especially parents bringing their kids, or school groups.

This could vary widely from location to location though.

Regardless, climbers have a noble history of not paying for things.

Gyms are a good example of this. They make the lion's share of their money off of Birthday Parties. Monthly dues won't even keep the lights on.

Other lifestyle sports have the same issues. There's a reason why most Surf Shops don't sell surfboards. They sell boardshorts to people who want to look like surfers. The actual participants don't spend much on their sports.

I think it really depends on the gym. In my area, I would estimate that around 90% of visitors are regulars (that is, have an ID card/monthly pass).

The ones I've been to have a range of climbs: from a small section available to beginners, to routes and bouldering that require a much higher level of technique and endurance.

From personal experience, I've already spent an embarrassing amount on courses, memberships, and equipment.

That's actually my point, and the reason that gyms struggle. 90% of the people you see only pay them money once a month, and even then they complain if it's more than $50/month.

Daypasses cost $16 and end up generating a lot more revenue. Birthday parties cost $10/head, happen 16-30 times a month, and bring in enough to keep them afloat.

That's why you end up with tons of toproping areas, easy routes, and pretty looking features: to bring in the one-time visitors.

A good training area doesn't need to look pretty. In fact, the more it looks a lot like an inclined piece of plywood, the better. History shows, however, that training-focused gyms fail every time, whereas beginner & birthday party "social" gyms can sometimes squeak by.

It's certainly not an industry you go into to make money.

> isn't a particularly expensive sport

Let me know when you get into traditional climbing, all the gear that it comes with, and start flying to different crags, then it will surely start adding up :P

I share those exact 4 passions (surfing a bit less so, but have been getting more into it when time and weather permits, with climbing at #1 spot by far) and while I can totally see what you mean, I'm not sure I'd personally want to "monetize" climbing.

I climb to get away from computers, to spend an afternoon (or a few days) with friends away from technology and have by my escape. Just like artists who choose not to sell their art, I'm afraid trying to make money from it will ruin it. I have met guides who I've taken lessons from before who absolutely loved guiding and would not have traded it for the world. Obviously, other peoples' opinions will differ.

(Where are you geographically btw?

edit: just checked your info and I think I've asked you this before. Last time I did, you were in Thailand or the UK, not quite sure if I remember)

> and if I were to slap ads on it today I'd pull in a buck thirtyfive a day.

Do you mean $1.35/day? If that's the case, then I see your point: even though you're passionate about it, it (in and of itself) won't pay the rent.

Indeed. Every adsense test I've done on the site has pulled in about a dollar a day. More fun, it's always been $1/day even as the site grew to 10x and 50x the original traffic. It seems our growth was inversely matching people's decline in tendency to click on ads.

Have you considered trying affiliate sales? Pick something that you like, mention it with an affiliate link. Blogs with some kind of focus seem to do pretty well with this approach.

Yes. For a while we tried Amazon links to Lonely Planet guidebooks and Affiliate links to hostels. That made maybe ten dollars after 6 months, and dropped the site into Google's "Hotel Affiliate Site" black hole for the next year. Bad move.

The problem with monetizing the Travel side of a site like this is that there are dozens of big money sites devoted to doing exactly that. Blogabond's whole appeal is that we don't surround your blog with banner ads and we don't try to help you book flights and rental cars.

So yeah, we could do that sort of stuff and maybe make a few dollars, but it would just turn us into another TripAdvisor instead of a cool place to host your blog.

Oh, I see how you're set up now. I thought you were the sole blogger, not a blog host. That makes a little more sense as those sorts of sites do seem to be tougher to monetize without doing things like offering premium features to your bloggers (and even then, you need a pretty huge author base to make it worthwhile).

I think you need to do more research on adsense optimization.

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