Turning a small niche community into a business that has benefit from all stakeholders takes creative thinking. In this post I’m going to review BackofTheNet.info and come up with some ideas that could help move the site forward. I’d also like to open the comments up for further montisation ideas, so please post your ideas in the comments!
Site: BackofTheNet.info
Communtiy: PES and FIFA (football games) on the Xbox & PS3 (players community)
Current montisation channel: Adsense
Size of community: >10k
Strengths: Active community; Links from xbox.com
Owners comment: “We get [>5k] unique visitors a day, most of them come for FIFA information, and the others are returning members. We have a custom built shoutbox (ajax + php) which gets most of our page hits as it’s where members go to chill out, chat, and arrange games & stuff.”
Ideas On Revenue Channel Growth
Ok, off the bat, this is a challenge. Gaming users want to play games not click ads, pay for upgrades, so we’re going to have to get pretty creative and try out lots of things. Key point here is try lots of new ideas, and trust the data you get from testing.
1. Increase The Community Size
Get more members, lots more. To give yourself the best chance you are going to need more users and traffic. Simplify the home page making a a sign up form with information why they should sign up and post sign up take them straight into the action. Also consider letting users get involved without signing up initially.
2. Build a Premium Feature
With enough loyal members a paid premium feature builds an instant revenue channel, and if that product is virtual you build it only once and sell it thousands of times, giving a huge gross profit (like software, drinks or wordpress themes)
Idea (i) – Paid Membership
By winning games all members earn virtual money, but to spend it on the site, (on cool stuff like virtual stadiums, fans bases, cups and medal cabinets etc), they need to become a paid member. This is same model as club penguin runs so effectively. There has to be real value to warrant the user wanting to spend their virtual money.
Idea (ii) – Gameplay Recording and Publishing App
Perhaps a stronger idea is to build a paid app to make recording and publishing goals (and other gameplay) super easy & and have these goals published on your site. This software would be expensive to build but may have application not only in football games but all types of console gaming and once you have built in once you can sell it again and again.
3. Simplify The Site
Streamline the site, take out anything unnecessary, make the design as professional as possible and benchmark it against the competition. Make the site clear and direct into the core proposition you are focusing on.
4. Chat Monitisation
Try monitising the chat system, Meebo is offering a simple way of doing this but I’ve haven’t tried it.
5. Content Library – Build The Adsense Revenue
Build a huge gaming library full of useful football gaming content and get your users to help you. Backofthenet has links from xbox.com so must have some level of search authority. Capitalise on this by building out an excellent resource which will gain traffic from search. This search traffic can then be monitised through adsense or what network or affiliate scheme works best. Blend the adsense ads, make the links the same colour as your normal links and put them in the navigation places for high CTR.
Trial, Error and Time…
To turn this site into a revenue machine is going to take lots of hard work, a splash of investment into new models, time to roll things out and building on ideas that work. In my view it can be done, but you’ve got to be in for the long haul. Good luck!
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Tim,
Would you like to give me a few ideas in a similar post for Freshome.com ? I’m currently using mostly Adsense and a few CPM ads, and have a traffic around 30.000 unique visitors/ day.
Hi Tim
Thanks for the review (sorry I have been so late getting back to you, I went on a much needed holiday!)
I think all your points would result in an increase in money. I am a particular fan of 4 as I am becoming something of a clean / simple freak!
Now I just need to find the time to develop the site.
Thanks again
Chris
@Michael – your site looks perfect for affiliate product promotion, everytime you review or display a product, make a link to where your readers can buy it. As long as you give your readers a subjective view on the product you can even disclose that it’s a an affiliate link. Perhaps try the adsense block blended at the top of the post for better CTR. Also try selling ads directly, add a page with all your stats on together with advertising options, sizes, prices and how to buy (BuySellAds.com makes it easy to sell CPM ads through their system). Finally hunt for a niche ad network that specialise in your subject area to get higher CPM’s.