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advice: what should i do with my website?

iamme

iamme

Lifer
11/02 :just a little update 🙂

the traffic for the month has nearly tripled (~6K visitors, ~220K hits in Oct) from Sept.

i've been updating the site daily and working on streamlining the updating process. i've been looking to get some amateur sports/NBA/pistons bloggers and writers. i've got some interest and i'm hoping to get some more blog content from others.

i've been focusing on content and traffic. this month, i'm hoping that i can hit 8K visitors with the NBA season started. i also need to focus on better design and organization. better organization to help users find content easier and better organization to position ads for max profitability. reality is that i need at least some decent revenue if i'm to support the anticipated traffic increase.

10/12 update: well, i revamped the site with a content management system (CMS) and i find it so much easier to manage and edit. i've been diligently updating the site with news articles and game details everyday.

i haven't upgraded the hosting yet, though. my traffic has been steadily increasing. last night was the Piston's preseason opener and i had over 200 visitors, so that was cool. for the first half of the month, my traffic has doubled from last month's averages.

i have added some ads to the site to see if i can gain some revenue to upgrade hosting. i'm worried they are annoying, but i don't have much choice if i want to maintain the site. let me know what you think of the new layout 🙂



my website (pistonsbball.com, dedicated to the NBA team)is a little under 2 months old. i'm hosting with moreweb.com, which has been fantastic so far, but only has 50GB/month packages available. i'm not complaining, since i'm only paying like $4/mo.

the first month, i had over 1,800 visits with 35,000 hits and about 43GB of bandwidth. this month, i'm closing in on 3,000 visits with 80,000 hits (less bandwidth, because i distributed some files on different hosts and took some vids down).

seems decent for being the NBA offseason and a no advertising efforts on my part. just a few links in my sig at some sites, and word of mouth. the main draw is the video/audio downloads i have of highlight and video mix clips. the total collection is just under 400MB. as the site becomes more popular, the NBA season draws near, and my video collection grows, my 50GB/month limit will undoubtedly be too small.

as of now, there are no ads at all on the site. when i started it, it was more of a hobby than something i thought i could gain any sort of income from. i'm thinking of putting up some affiliate links later on, if invest in higher bandwidth webhosting (i found hostsave.com, 500GB/mo for $13/mo).

question is, is this worth doing, in your opinion(s)? is the traffic i could draw going to earn any amount of money that can offset the price of hosting?

cliffs
1. two month old website uses more than my 50GB/mo limit
2. site may become more popular, will have to upgrade
3. is it worth keeping?

 
I would try blocking people who link to the videos only from other sites, maybe many sites are just leeching the videos off of your's?
 
Originally posted by: AgaBoogaBoo
I would try blocking people who link to the videos only from other sites, maybe many sites are just leeching the videos off of your's?
Click to expand...

i've tried my best to check out where the traffic was coming from. most are NBA/Pistons forums, which i didn't really mind at first. i asked people to include a link to my site.

IF i were to put up any sort of ads, i was thinking about embedding the videos on the pages with the ads on them. *shrug* not sure yet. btw, how do i block direct downloads? i've always found it easy to find the direct link via page source on other sites.
 
Preventing leaching is extremely important with large files. Figure out how to control this before expanding.

Google Adsense works, is easy to implement, and can defray hosting costs.
 
Yeah, you should look into blocking direct downloads first (don't ask me how though)...and with a decent amount of traffic, you might be able to offset your bandwidth costs, who knows. I don't really know how much those yahoo/google ads bring in.

Good luck with the website...it's gonna be a really interesting season 😀
 
Originally posted by: EvilYoda
Yeah, you should look into blocking direct downloads first (don't ask me how though)...and with a decent amount of traffic, you might be able to offset your bandwidth costs, who knows. I don't really know how much those yahoo/google ads bring in.

Good luck with the website...it's gonna be a really interesting season 😀
Click to expand...

thing is, i'm not sure if my traffic is even that great to gain any revenue from ads(maybe someone who's more experienced can tell me). if it weren't for the crazy bandwidth, i'd just keep the site up w/ no ads. but of course, without the videos/audio, people wouldn't be coming to the site in teh first place 😀

but yes, i'm ecstatic about the season starting soon 🙂
 
Sports fan sites can become very popular and PROFITABLE. But just like any business (think of it as a business not a hobby) it requires money to invest in it. Right now the only money you really need to invest is quality web hosting with a lot of bandwidth.

A few quick questions:
  • 1) If you're serious about this, it's going to take effort, time and money. $4 or even $10 a month web hosting will not cut it. If you can afford $50/mo I would highly recommend a VPS.
  • 2) Stop the bandwidth leeching videos, or at least turn off hyperlinking. That will probably cut your bandwidth down to 15GB a month or so.
  • 3) Definitely consider getting some advertising but stay away from annoying flash, super large tacky banners, pop-ups, spam, or anything else questionable. If I could see your traffic stats, count me in for $10/mo advertising.
  • 4) It looks like you currently don't have forums installed? This is both good and bad. You seem be doing ok with a WordPress blog format right now. You might even get away with a good $20/mo resellers account for a while unless your site gets some media exposure and the sh!t hits the fan. Then you'll wish you had a VPS or dedicated server. All it takes is a plug on a radio station, newspaper article or TV spot and your traffic will skyrocket.

Good luck 🙂
 
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?pistonsbball.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|mp3|wmv|avi|mpg|mpeg)$ http://www.pistonsbball.com/dontleech.gif [R,L]

putting something like that in an .htaccess file should work (if you use Apache as your web server).

EDIT: looks like you are using Apache, and you are able to use .htaccess files. just put that code above into a text file, and then save it as a .htaccess file (make sure this is the exact name, it cant be .htaccess.txt or anything else). create a small gif named dontleech.gif (with a message that says something like, please go to www.pistonsbball.com for any content) and put it in your root web folder, along with your .htaccess file.

I cant guarantee this will work, you may want to have someone else check me.
 
i think with that much traffic, you'd do fine on google's adsense program. plus it'd be an enjoyable hobby. maybe if you get some actual sponsors for teh site rather than just adsense advertizing that'd start bringing in a lot more money... considering how many hits you get and how targeted the market is i'm sure there are people out there who'd love to get some cheap advertizing on your site...
 
These are nba clips/videos?
I looked at it before when you were concepting your logo.
You were worried about copyright infringement.
If you start making money, you'll find out all about copyright infringement in no time at all.
 
well, regarding the videos, i'm going to take it slowly and see where it goes. i'm going to try and give credit for any pics i include in the gallery and put as much credit for the video clips as i can.

i haven't put up any ads yet and i've been researching hosting options. again, thanks for the tips, guys. on a productive note, i've revamped my site with new CMS software. my next tasks are to embed the videos on the webpages and try to prevent leeching from other sites, and setup the image gallery to finally work.

 
Originally posted by: superjohnyo
I like the new look. The old one was okay, but this one is more... professional.
Click to expand...

thanks. i love how the script i'm using now is so easily customizable. it's called Joomla and it's from the team that created Mambo.

i do want to change the main menu and put it up along the top banner, giving the more room for content.
 
11/02 :just a little update 🙂

the traffic for the month has nearly tripled (~6K visitors, ~220K hits in Oct) from Sept.

i've been updating the site daily and working on streamlining the updating process. i've been looking to get some amateur sports/NBA/pistons bloggers and writers. i've got some interest and i'm hoping to get some more blog content from others.

i've been focusing on content and traffic. this month, i'm hoping that i can hit 8K visitors with the NBA season started. i also need to focus on better design and organization. better organization to help users find content easier and better organization to position ads for max profitability. reality is that i need at least some decent revenue if i'm to support the anticipated traffic increase.
 
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