Question
My partner has been a writer for big name websites in the past. My experience has been in developing, implementing and selling technology solutions.
In the 1.5 years since the launch we have between 25-50K unique visitors a month to the website. The website has covered big name events like the VMA's, the Tony's, and Comicon. We have nearly 1,000 articles on the website with over 100 contributing authors. The brand is getting pretty well known, with people talking about us and an interview that was done but not published for Page 6.
Our business model was to use Google Adwords to put up ads on the website to generate revenue. We would then pay our writers based on the traffic they generated, and keep a percentage of the revenue for ourselves. In one year we have only done $100 USD in Google Adwords revenue. Not even enough to pay the hosting bills for the site much less the writers.
We are now searching for help or a new partner that has experience in this industry, so we can turn this into a business. If anyone is interested in leading the organization they must be NYC based. If you have built a business on advertising revenue in the B2C space and have advice I'd love to learn from you.
Answer
Hi! It seems you have not enough traffic to use media banners like main revenue source. I recommend to use native advertising formats in explainatory journalism genre, when you describe the advantages of different commercial products. You need to follow several points to make it happened and not ruin your media:
1) Make the unit economy model where you should reflect costs of production and price for one article or special project
2) Always mark paid articles that it was created specially for your partners and make it helpful for your users
3) Build a landing page where you describe the format advantages and hire someone who can sale it
Good Luck!
