Ask YC: Website Monetization Consultants? | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: Website Monetization Consultants?

2 pointsComputerGuru6 comments

I've been running a non-profit startup for several years now, and we've picked up quite a decent bit of traffic (15MM+ pageviews a month, half a million uniques), but we have very poor site monetization and are barely keeping up with the costs. Obviously we're doing some things wrong and I'm wondering if there are any trusted consultants or organizations that are available for hire to take a look at what we've got and try to make the best of it.

Other than manually tweaking and tuning the site to generate maximum revenue & trying out the different ad networks, etc. is there any outsourcing approach that fellow hackers would recommend? Ideally, we'd just hire a company to take a look at our site, optimize ad layouts for us, recommend the right ad networks by visitor demographics, and generally improve our visitor-to-cash ratio to help us keep afloat.

Any suggestions?

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Any company or individual that claims to be that title is very likely trying to take your money, so be careful.

As with others, I'm a fan of not outsourcing this, so it might be best to try out different strategies. If done properly (provided you can monetize your traffic), then you should do well in ~3 months.

afaik, there aren't any major businesses doing it. plenty of smaller ones but no one industry giant. i might just be drawing a blank, though.

my approach was to learn it all myself (i'm a big fan of bootstrapping and having a broad knowledge base).

if you want any tips, feel free to either do a search for this topic on HN, since there's good generic information on here already. any specific tips would require more info on your startup, so you'd have to either elaborate here, or if you'd like, drop me an email.

or, alternatively, i might be willing to do some of the work you need as a consultant if you're interested (again, drop me an email)

I second that. A whole bunch of people are in the business, from ad agencies to SEO consultants to "marketing firms." I'd keep your skeptical glasses on at all times when looking for someone, as there are a lot of fakes. I'd recommend looking for someone local if you're in a big area. Talk to owners of sites like yours, see if they've heard of anyone, and get references AND check them out.

i also second this.

there are a lot of consultancy firms that wave magic wands, practice black-magic voodoo and have secret sauces.

the reality of the situation is that there are bread and butter principles to follow, and then its down to just optimizing/tweaking things.

He might also want to consider some sort of contingency contract. If the consultant is any good, it should be an easy sell, something along the lines of 5% of any monthly growth in revenue, or stepped bonuses based on the conversion rate.

If interested I'd be happy to take a look at your website and make recommendations. You're doing well if your eCPM is anywhere above $1, really well if it's around $3.

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