Monetize my site?

Jana Bess

Hi, just thinking about this.

My very successful fansite sexynaveen.com had around 20,000 visits and 60,000 pageviews this year. Should I be considering monetization? Is there a way to do this on Smugmug?

Thanks,
Jana

denisegoldberg

You can sell your photos on SmugMug with either a Portfolio or Pro account, https://www.smugmug.com/plans.

Keep in mind though that visits / views does not translate well into sales. You will need to actively market your site to drive people to it, and even then not many buy. You might want to look at some of the conversations in the Mind Your Own Business category on this site, https://dgrin.com/categories/mind-your-own-business

Jana Bess

Hi, I do not sell photos on my site. It is visited by fans. Lots of them. So my business model would be completely different. It would be ads that appear on my site, i.e. I would be selling eyeballs as they say in the advertising industry. I do very little promotion for my site; just basic maintenance of a Twitter and Instagram account that points to my site. The site is driven entirely by existing interest in a celebrity (Naveen Andrews).

I'll just guess here about how much pageviews earn. Let's say, if I earned $10 for every 10,000 page views, I would earn $60 per year. Probably not worth it. If it's more, than maybe. I would be looking to cover my yearly cost of SmugMug plus my GoDaddy Url (I live on a fixed income). But the site is obviously better without monetization, so it has to be worth it.

Part of my inquiry is if this is even an option on SmugMug. And I don't own the content on my site, so this might all be mute.

Just checking it out.

denisegoldberg

@Jana Bess said:
...It would be ads that appear on my site, i.e. I would be selling eyeballs as they say in the advertising industry.

Ads are possible on your site. The only source supported is Google AdSense. You will find the content block under "Services".

From the help page at https://help.smugmug.com/fine-tune-my-design-with-content-blocks-HJ37leDJVrG:

AdSense: Have a Google AdSense account? Insert your ads on any folder, gallery, or page.

> Oops, I missed the announcement that AdSense will be removed, see link in @Big Red post below.

Jana Bess

Thanks for that info! I appreciate the replies.

BigRed

@denisegoldberg said:

@Jana Bess said:
...It would be ads that appear on my site, i.e. I would be selling eyeballs as they say in the advertising industry.

Ads are possible on your site. The only source supported is Google AdSense. You will find the content block under "Services".

From the help page at https://help.smugmug.com/fine-tune-my-design-with-content-blocks-HJ37leDJVrG:

AdSense: Have a Google AdSense account? Insert your ads on any folder, gallery, or page.

Have you seen this? Apparently AdSense is going to be removed from the SmugMug platform:
https://dgrin.com/discussion/comment/2099357

denisegoldberg

@BigRed said:
Have you seen this? Apparently AdSense is going to be removed from the SmugMug platform:
https://dgrin.com/discussion/comment/2099357

Oh, thanks, I missed that!
I've updated my post above.

joseafc

Great move by smugmug. 😒

Instead of figuring out a work around they just decide to take ads support off. I've been waiting for a while because they were supposedly working on a fix to the adsense issue. I guess I'll have to start looking for a new platform to host my site.