How I monetized a blog in 30 days: what worked, and what didn't | Hacker News Reader

How I monetized a blog in 30 days: what worked, and what didn't

lessannoyingcrm.com

25 pointsthe_bear15 comments

On average we make $1 per order on Amazon, so what if instead of showing people Amazon ads, we offer them an awesome eBook for $1.

Why not try selling the eBook at a higher price, like $30?

Agreed - quality does not always go with low prices. A moderately higher price like $9 would probably have the same sales number.

I can assure you that people do not always respond more to lower prices; they'll often associate the higher price with a better item.

There are a two main reasons why I wanted to make the eBook so cheap:

1) Think of the $1 eBook as a minimum viable product. I hypothesized that our visitors would be willing to pay us for premium content, but I wanted to test it first. Given how few people were willing to pay $1, I decided my hypothesis was wrong. I realize that sometimes raising the price can actually increase demand, but I really doubt that's the case here.

2) I didn't know how long the traffic spike would last, so I wanted to get something out as quickly as possible. There wasn't time to create a real eBook worth $30.

Study after study has shown the biggest hurdle is getting someone to go from paying $0 to $1. After that, the actual price seems to matter much less (ie. if someone is willing to pay $1, they're probably willing to pay $10).

Since you're not trying to game any ranking lists (e.g. Amazon bestsellers, App Store), there doesn't seem to be any reason to sell at a "bargain basement" price. A quick glance at the preview recipe shows that your ebook does have valuable content for its target audience.

As others have suggested, $9.99 or so is probably going to be a sweet spot for you. Low enough for impulse buys, high enough to make decent money.

(The only other explanation for low sales might be the plethora of free recipe websites out there. But you're selling to a captive audience that's already on your website and likes your content, so it's probably going to be less of a factor.)

Give some of the other affiliate networks (Commission Junction, ImpactRadius, ShareaSale, LinkShare, etc.) a try. You'll find better commissions through many merchants and often better deals.

If you need help ping me at keith [aaat] zorz [dooot] com - I've been doing affiliate marketing for years and would be happy to help.

Thanks, I'll definitely check those out. I've used Commission Junction before with the Groupon affiliate program and the terrible UI drove me away, but now that there's real traffic I guess it's worth giving it another shot.

The hardest part is finding affiliate programs that sell the things my mom actually uses in her posts. I don't think either of us would be willing to recommend products that she isn't using. Amazon is great for that since they sell pretty much everything that's ever been made.

Yeah, CJ's interface is rather terrible.

Actually, check out VigLink - they do link monetization and that might be a great alternative to try.

I think you (and your mom) have done a great job building a site with quality content. From the headline, I was afraid it was going to be a made-for-AdSense type of site, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all.

Also, I can't tell you how much I love the design. I'm far from the target audience, but even I think it's great. Simple, colorful, memorable.

Regarding the redesign - I think you made great choices there too. The old sidebar was definitely cluttered and not as useful. I did like the personal touch in the "letter" from your Mom, but I can see why you removed it. The only thing I might suggest adding is some sort of "social proof" - the old sidebar had the Facebook widget showing 3,000 fans which was good. A FeedBurner widget is probably out of place, but even a blurb about the 200,000+ pins on Pinterest would be an excellent way to demonstrate the quality of the site.

The only other thing I might suggest changing is the date-based part of the archives. A simple list of every post title would probably be more interesting and get more clicks. I don't have any data to back it up, but personally I never look through date-based archives (but I'll always skim a list of titles on a blog's archives). You could also include a short curated list of the "best" or most popular recipes (like what's already on the homepage sidebar, but longer or a text-based list).

EDIT: Just noticed the permalinks - you should really clean those up. Maybe teach your mom how to customize the post slug?

Current URL: http://www.theyummylife.com/blog/2012/03/293/Overnight%2C+No...!

The /blog/ and date parts also feel bloated and entirely unnecessary. I don't usually like blogs that omit the date in the permalink, but recipes in particular are the perfect "evergreen" content that wouldn't need it. Heck, you could probably even kill the post ID.

I think it's as simple as /%post%/ on WordPress's permalinks options page.

(If you're worried about breaking existing links on Pinterest, there are many WordPress plugins that help you redirect the old URLs.)

I don't even know/care about the SEO of it, I just think shorter, cleaner URLs would help with remembering, bookmarking, and sharing links.

EDIT2: Just checked the source and realized it's not WordPress. What CMS is the site running? Movable Type?

Thanks, I'm glad you like the site! You make a lot of good points. Here are some thoughts/questions:

Regarding adding social proof to the site, I'm thinking that the non-post pages need a slightly different sidebar with an extra box forsocial buttons. The posts themselves have four social buttons on the left, so you see how many people like the post rather than how many people like our Facebook page. Do you think it would be overkill/confusing to have both on the same page?

I definitely agree that the date archives aren't all that useful for most people. I know a lot of sites have those and I'm guessing that it's so there's an easy way for someone to browse every post from the beginning of the site. This would only appeal to the most obsessed readers, so maybe it's better to just leave that out. To be honest, almost no one clicks on the archives so that's not near the top of my list of things to address, but I'll definitely keep your advice in mind for when I get to it.

As for the CMS, it's a homemade system. I know most people think it's crazy not to use an existing CMS like WordPress, but I like working on little side projects like this. It also made it really easy to build some cool customization like the recipe printing feature. You're right that I made a mess of the permalinks. That format is a holdover from a much earlier version of the CMS that I didn't bother to improve before launching The Yummy Life. I've added that to my list of things to address in the future.

Thanks again for all the feedback!

How old is the site? And how frequently do new blog posts go up?

Thanks.

The first post went up in August 2010. The domain is slightly older than that, but not much.

Right now there are one or two posts per week. My mom used to post more regularly but we found that it's more effective to focus on quality rather than quantity. It's generally pretty easy to predict in advance which posts will be popular, so she just puts more effort into those and leaves out the filler.

from ux point of view: the scrolling amazon bar really annoys, you should position it fixed..

Great design though.

Thanks! I've gone back and forth on the scrolling animation. There's definitely a balancing act between trying not to be annoying and trying to make money. At some point I'll have time to do a real A/B test and come to a more informed decision, but for now I'm thinking that the site is so free of the normal distractions (no pop-ups, only one section of ads, no video, no flash crap, etc.) that I'm comfortable being in-your-face with the scrolling animation. I'm on the fence though, so I guess I'll need to give it some more thought.

Personally I only think it's annoying if you're only skimming the article and scrolling fast. What about pinning the affiliate images fixed above, but scrolling a smaller, less intrusive "Find all the ingredients for this recipe here". And possibly instead of scrolling, fade it in. (Just my $0.02)

That's a great idea. It actually solves a big problem that you might not have even thought about. One of the challenges with having the ads scroll with the page is that it means the ads can't take up much vertical space (because small screens wouldn't ever be able to scroll to see the bottom section of the ads). This means that we only show a maximum of four affiliate links per page which sometimes isn't enough to cover the core ingredients. With you idea we could have as many affiliate links as we wanted without losing the ability to find the ingredients after they've scrolled down.

I'd guess this would lower the click-through-rate, but it would probably increase the average orders per click, so it might work out. Thanks for the idea!

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