I built a site 10 years back that is still getting traffic. How do I monetize it?
More than ten years back, I launched BridgeURL.com - it's a simple website that is like Bit.ly, but to share several URLs at once. Its USP back then was to generate a "slideshow" of URLs. Here is a sample URL:
BridgeURL generated a good bit of PR then, having featured by sites like Mashable. However, since then there are several other alternatives, and also the slideshow part itself became undone because most sites today block iFrames and so many of the slideshows don't render well in the first place.
Still, the site is still popular and generates between 20K to 50K pageviews each month. I have never considered monetizing it because a part of the usage comes from sharing explicit images and stuff.
I have been considering revamping the site to make the site more modern; removing the slideshows and displaying URLs another way. But I have also been thinking if it is worth it considering that I don't make any money.
I don't code and any revamp needs me to invest money in a developer. So it doesn't make sense for me to put in money unless I can make some off it.
Any ideas on how I can make this a viable business? Thanks guys
Hi Anand – I don't have any ideas for monetizing this, but consider selling the website on a marketplace like flippa. Someone might find the website or even just the domain valuable for the page views and backlinks. Even if it doesn't go for a lot of money, it will free up some bandwidth in your brain.
Hey @nurbo, thank you for the comment. I did consider selling it a few years back on Flippa. And I am very glad that it wasn't successful. As I look back, this website is close to my heart - it has not brought anything monetarily, but when I look at the stats - over 10K registered users and over 600K bridges created till now - all virally without any effort from my side whatsoever, I would have felt terrible if it had switched hands.
Also, I have now gathered a bunch of good ideas to monetize this. Going to implement it over the next few months. Hopefully it pays off.
You can put banner ads or redirect the traffic to other projects which will also ad more value to your visitors and generate revenue for you.
Thank you @loks. I'm considering ads.
Another thing I'm contemplating is a premium plan (something like $50/year). I noticed that several people are using my service to create one page slideshows which makes no sense at all given that the whole point of my app is to share a bunch of URLs.
Very likely that these users are doing it for SEO purposes. My website has good authority (Moz DA = 50), and so a link from here can help with their search ranking.
So I plan to dofollow all links by default, and premium users alone to have dofollow links from the bridges. Maybe later on, I can add other features like statistics, custom templates, and so on.
Yes, it would definitely be a good idea. You can always change the monetization strategy if it does not work.
Wow, that's awesome!
I think it requires a bit of a deep dive on who your customers are and why they use your product.
My first guess would be a tiered subscription model.
For example, if your customers are returning several times a week and rely on your product for their business, then a simple subscription business seems appropriate. If they want even more than X URLs at once, or to use the app more than Y times per month, it can require the premium tier.
But if one uses the site once a year, probably no use in trying to charge them- they probably don't need it enough to pay. These people can be covered by a free tier.
Just throwing out the idea. But again, really depends on who your customers are and how/why they're using the product.
Great points @egavro
People have used this website for a variety of different. But from a traffic perspective, I find two big patterns.
One bunch of users use it to share grey-area content like X-rated pics, torrent links,etc. I have received a few DMCA complaints too from content owners who think it's my website that hosts these things. So not only is this an industry I don't want to be associated with, it's a pain to work as well.
The second major area, again traffic-wise, I see are people using it for "Minecraft server votes". I didn't know this was a thing, but there are a bunch of websites that rank different Minecraft and LOL servers. I think players come to these websites to know which server to log into. The server owners (I think) share a bunch of links to various voting websites and get people to vote on them.
None of these user groups I find are monetizable. I can perhaps try Minecraft affilaite programs, but I don't think the people voting on these servers even play the game. They are probably hired to vote (although traffic is primarily from the US).
I haven't done a deep-dive from merely the content perspective. There are likely PR agencies sharing links to media coverage with their clients. I am going to do that this week. Thansk for your reply,again.
hey man, first off I wanna say thank you. I started writing articles recently and I have an obsession with providing references for them. I had as much as 25 - 30 references in my last article, which is around 1,500 words. the problem is, this was the first of mine that would be in print and I knew they wouldn't let me list that many links. the only option I could think of at the time was to cut as much of them as I could, which really hurt. I got it down to 13 references then sent it off, then the editor cut them down to 5. so that was a loss of 8 references that I felt were absolutely essential to have in there. once I noticed that, I decided I couldn't let that happen again, so I started brainstorming solutions. I use linktr.ee for my social media profiles, so I wondered if there might be something like that, but instead of one static link you could make as many static links as you wanted. after a bunch of digging I found only 2 sites that worked: brief.ly and bridgeurl.com. I was able to use both these to post all the original references. your websites a lifesaver and I plan on using it going forward. my only gripes are that I cant update previously made links and I can't set it to show as a numbered list instead of a slideshow. I definitely think you should monetize this and add those updates
@swaminetero - So nice to come across a BridgeURL user in the wild. I'm glad that the website was useful in your work.
But hey, you can edit links if you sign up an account (which is free). Once you sign up, all your bridges are saved in your profile and you can always edit them. Numbered lists don't exist, but recently, I made a change to the layout so it is no longer slideshows but blocks with a tiny description for every link you add.
Please let me know how I can make it work better for your use-case. Thanks a lot for your comment.
oh ok, dope! i already made an account, but never knew i could save bridges, good to know. id say being able to number the blocks and add comments would be the best updates i could think of right now. id definitely pay like $10/month fora service like this lol just sayin, that could be a very easy way to monetize this. maybe have a free tier with a limit to the amount of links per bridge you can use and amount of bridges you can make. free trials are always the best way to funnel in customers
Great ideas. Thanks a lot @swaminetero - I am currently testing a different monetization model where I am targeting marketers who are using BridgeURL as a way to build links for clients. Haven't really started marketing it yet. Let's see if I have to pivot from there - as for the features, I really love the comments ideas. Will note this down for the next feature refresh.