Firstly, I'm coming from a similar background, albeit that my site is guitar related, but just somewhat higher unique visitor and pageview rate.
Totally agree with the first suggestion - Google Adsense will definitely generate income, not huge, but if you carefully select from their options the promo which best fits into your site, noticable without being obtrusive, you'll have a reasonable basic return.
From my experience, I would avoid the affiliate 'middlemen' like CJ and research sites in the fishing industry who either already have affiliate programs, or where you can pitch your traffic to interested webmasters/site owners and work out either a pay per click or sales-based affiliation agreement.
Don't by shy about selling the benefits of working with you, you have a strong base of fishing enthusiasts who obviously love what your site offers and who will trust any honest recommendations you make. Make them prove to you that they will deliver value to your visitors with their product, whether it be tackle, boat hire, or any of the myriad commercial sites in the fishing milieu.
My site has been around for 10 years - when my
SEO efforts started to produce traffic I initially signed up for standard affiliate programs. Over the years I forged relationships with site owners and worked out much better terms based on my own site traffic than they were offering thru their ( mostly farmed out ) affiliate programs.
This type of affiliation allows for a really flexible arrangement where they can provide content for your site ( with your affiliate code embedded ), and give discounts, special offers etc. for your loyal visitors. Win/win situation for everyone.
Obviously if you can move from a free service to a monetized subscription basis within your existing capabilities this would be ideal, but from my own experience people like free sites like ours, but are predisposed to accepting recommended commercial products in the same arena, based on the trust built up from the free but valuable service provided.
The important thing is to ensure that the sites you partner with can prove that they will deliver quality and value to your trusting visitors.
PJ
Quote:
Originally Posted by Prometheus
A lot of us have this same question, how much should I make, what can I make, how to do it?
Network ads like Google - easy, get a copy of "The Adsense Code" or similar book for a quick boost in it.
Affiliate ads like you find on commissionjunction.com or shareasale.com may pay better.
Internal ads where you do the hard work of contacting fishing manufacturers, suppliers, retailers, magazines, etc. They're usually willing to pay more.
Subscriptions and merch like upgrading your account for $19.99 per year, bumper stickers, hats, t-shirts, etc. Cafe press will do a lot of that for you if you can get some designs together and then you just send your users to that site.
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