Tell HN: I grew Visa List to $5k per month in a year
But it didn't start making $5000 immediately, it started with $500 per month and grew slowly over the span of a year.
Initially I placed ads on visa list and was getting around 100K pageviews around a month. But the ads revenue was not that great at all. I tried to apply for skyscanner partnership because I knew that there would be good need after getting visa, but unfortunately I got rejected. I think the main reason was it was I was not getting a lot of traffic.
With a heavy heart I tried different ad networks like video ads, content ads but none of them improved the revenue. All this while, i never lost sight of my goal to increase the SEO and along the way get more users to Visa List.
Suddenly after a month I got an email from skyscanner from saying that they are interested in partnering with, this was another team. I was so happy and realised that things come around eventually. In a month I integrated skyscanner and it started a good stream of revenue from visa list.
After 5 month around june, people from iVisa contacted me. They provide visa service and visa assistance across the world which was perfect. I was very happy to partner with them as well and thus opened 3rd revenue stream.
Along the way I also learning AdOps so i could monetize the traffic I was getting and finally after 6 months things started working out. So my first channel also started contributing a good chunk to overall revenue.
After around 8 month i started an experiment with Visa List membership which i have been sitting on it for a long time. I was not really sure what was the most valuable information that travelers really need so they won't mind paying. Looking at Nomad list and starter story, i finally put in a set of features that i thought can be useful for Pro members. I'm happy that the experiment paid off adding to the 4th revenue stream.
So looking back, it was not a single thing but a lot of small things done right over a year.