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Comment by WalterGR | Hacker News Reader

I created and run The Online Slang Dictionary - http://onlineslangdictionary.com/ . It's the eldest slang dictionary on the web.

I started it in 1997 when I was in highschool. I found it interesting that slang terms frequently heard just the year before were already passe. I thought it was something that was worth capturing.

It affords me a modest salary in a fairly high-priced area, on around 2.1 million visitors a month. I estimate that it would get 2.5x - 3x the traffic (and hence the earnings) if google weren't up to strange shenanigans with the site's rankings.

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That's amazing! I've definitely stumbled upon your site while searching some phrases.

How has UrbanDictionary affected your traffic?

Nice! I'm always happy when people have come across it.

Urban Doctionary gets around 30x the traffic. So it definitely gets the lion's share of slang dictionary traffic.

The Online Slang Dictionary was always a side project from when I started it in 1996 until 2007, when I started working on it full-time. It wasn't until 2007 that people could put content on the site without my manual intervention. So it's easy to see why Urban Dictionary overtook my site in the long past. Since 2011 though, Urban Dictionary's traffic has been artificially propped up due to an ongoing manual penalty against my site, which I've had no success in resolving.

So if anyone works at Google or knows anyone who works at Google - I can be reached at waltergr@gmail.com or editor@<my site's domain>. :)

Do you only monetize it with Google Adsense?

A small amount of Google AdSense (<$100 monthly.) Sortable makes up the vast majority - https://sortable.com/ . Switching from only-AdSense to almost-entirely-Sortable is what made me able to afford to live off the site's revenue: my earnings doubled overnight.

Thanks, very interesting!

I suggest you look into Header Bidding, you're leaving tons of cash on the table by going all in on just one demand partner.

Sortable does header bidding.

What are your recommendations for other firms?

I believe they do header bidding for their own demand, but you can squeeze more revenue out of your traffic if you learn to manage your own headerbidding stack. Take a look at prebid.org and checkout the r/adops reddit. You might find some inspiration there.

Thanks, I'll check those out.

Recommend Publir:

https://publir.com

Edit: 1996 not 1997.

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