Anyone making any real money from their tube site?

[yourkidding]

All the marketing forums that I visit suggest that it is extremely hard to monetize tube sites, and with my own experience I believe it. Just would like to hear some success stories to help motivate me. As of now, I have basically written off my tube site as a "hobby" and am in search of a better way to make money.

[lordjazz]

Hello yourkidding,


Well I for one really not looking to make a killing off of this... Just like my poetry social network site, I look at it all as a pet project... Something to do on the side, as I have my money making sites that have been around for years...


Note: Is your site targeted toward a certain crowd?

[cagefilm]

indirectly.
Run a martial arts related video site - www.cagefilm.com
The original idea was to monetise my filming as I was filming lots of shows, docs, instructionals etc. PPV, DRM download that sort of thing.

Had a members fee at first, got a handful of paid members but then wrote the idea off as it was more of a put off for people.

Then scrapped the paid content idea as so much is available on other free sites no matter what the quality. If something is free somewhere, people expect it free everywhere.

Tried to sell advertising, interest but noone would pay!

Now, use the site to gather a user base and then market DVDs direct to the user base. Selling fairly well. Also has opened up to a number of trade outlets buying from me direct. Expanding into a forum, full shop to accompany the video site.

So yes, in a way although probably not the way you would have been looking for!

Whats your site?

[yourkidding]

Thanks for the feedback. I guess it confirms what I already thought... hard to make money off these sites. Unless you have a ton of visitors each day, you won't make much off PPC or other advertising... and even then you have to worry about bandwidth costs.

But, creating a user base that you can then market other products/services to sounds like the way to go. Not sure what that would be for my site, but I guess I will worry about that when I have more members.

Thought about charging for a premium membership. May try that once I have more members as well. Not sure how well taking away features from members and trying to charge for them would go though.

Thanks again. If anyone is making money off their site, would love to hear it.

[cagefilm]

yourkidding, whats your site?

Premium membership is difficult to make a success off unless you are offering something people REALY want and cant get for free anywhere else... not an easy thing these days!
Post your site up so we can have a look.

[webbootie]

my website is for sale im a making a thread for it right now check that out it is built off of clipshare 4 might be suprised.........

[yourkidding]

webbootie, yes, that is surprising! I would really love to hear your marketing tactics. How do you get that many people to pay $24.99 without giving them anything to look at for free?

Just re-read your other post and see you aren't giving away your marketing secrets... However, if your making that much not sure why you'd want to sell?

[webbootie]

I have a free preview on my site at the top right....... thats all they need to see..... i have thumb images ..... you give away too much and then there isnt anything inside.........


Reason of selling is I have a certain amount i am looking for that would hold me over until my new site would open. Its all a game of making money and flipping it over and over .I have a way of getting millions of users to websites that I then sell and for alot of money and then do it again. Even though the site has made over 40,000 each of the three last months maybe next month by selling it i could make 400,000.

The next month i could have another site open doing the same exact thing i do now and be back to making 30,000 a month. Its all in a strategy of mine to build a succesful site and then sell it and move on and do it again.

[rickygips]

Because of the evolution of technology, more and more people as well as firms are able to come up with ideas that would allow them to gain more profit just like this.

[gmailjon]

Lets face it, ad click throughs are crap, so using AdSense is just a waste of time and energy.

I've actually set up a couple of affiliate links with companies in my niche, not through any affiliate sites, but direct with the companies, and luckily they have good conversion, so only sending them a few visitors a day is paying off.

One pays £120 per conversion (roughly $200), the other £50 (roughly $85.00).

If your going to set up affiliate links, then they have to be so focused to the content on your site, with a pretty high commission rate, it is really tough.

I honestly believe to make real money with a video site, you have to get your traffic levels up to a silly silly number, and genuine traffic, not just blagged traffic, and then get in with a large adserving company to sell cpm.

If you get to this point and can back up the traffic levels by Google Analytics as your trusted source, you should make some real cash.

GmailJon
ShiftMetal.co.uk