Tuesday, May 09, 2006
a failed attempt to make money off a website
3 years ago, I had this idea to build real estate websites for small real estate companies throughout Brooklyn and charging them monthly hosting/maintenance fees. I developed a website and slapped on a pretty front end and approached a local realtor. In exchange for holding my real estate licence (I was toying with the idea of doing sales/rental listings part-time), I created the website for him for free. It also gave me a live site to show my potential clients of what I can provide them. However, right after the first site, my designer partner dropped out, I got caught up with buying/selling properties, and I learned that small real estate companies are too cheap to pay for a website. As a result, the business venture went into sleep mode.
Fast forward to now. The site is still up and running and has been bringing lots of business to the company. A new idea came to mind. What if I add some adsense links and text ads to the website? I spoke to the realtor and he was alright with the idea. So overnight, links appeared under the header bar and text ads appeared under the footer. Over the weekend, I generated about $6 in ad clicks before I got a call from the realtor to remove the ads. He wanted me to take them off because they were links to other realtors' websites, his competition. The ads were a bit inappropriate, but not entirely. There was no way the realtor can compete with these other well-established companies. But, whatever. I respected his feelings and took down the ads.
It was an interesting experiment because I already had the back-end built. I could offer free websites to any realtor if they allowed me to put ads in them. I just had to customize the style-sheet to fit the needs of each site. It was a win-win situation, I thought? Well, maybe not.
So now, I need to figure out how to benefit from this website I created for him. It's not generating any revenue for me, I've not asked the realtor to hold my licence anymore, and I don't forsee myself trying to go through with the original idea. How can I make money from this site??
Well.. I made $6, so it didn't fail completely.
Fast forward to now. The site is still up and running and has been bringing lots of business to the company. A new idea came to mind. What if I add some adsense links and text ads to the website? I spoke to the realtor and he was alright with the idea. So overnight, links appeared under the header bar and text ads appeared under the footer. Over the weekend, I generated about $6 in ad clicks before I got a call from the realtor to remove the ads. He wanted me to take them off because they were links to other realtors' websites, his competition. The ads were a bit inappropriate, but not entirely. There was no way the realtor can compete with these other well-established companies. But, whatever. I respected his feelings and took down the ads.
It was an interesting experiment because I already had the back-end built. I could offer free websites to any realtor if they allowed me to put ads in them. I just had to customize the style-sheet to fit the needs of each site. It was a win-win situation, I thought? Well, maybe not.
So now, I need to figure out how to benefit from this website I created for him. It's not generating any revenue for me, I've not asked the realtor to hold my licence anymore, and I don't forsee myself trying to go through with the original idea. How can I make money from this site??
Well.. I made $6, so it didn't fail completely.
Comments:
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I think you can block other realtors in Adsense, them maybe you would get moving ads that would not be competition.
# posted by 
: 4:44 PM, May 09, 2006
: 4:44 PM, May 09, 2006
Definitely try filtering out the competitor ads. I am sure it will work to everyone's satisfaction. :-)
interesting.. definitely will check it out. however.. just about any realtor is a competitor. is it possible to list out all the URLs? thanks for the lead. thanks thanks.
Google's competitive ad filter guide says this:
"The competitive ad filter works by blocking ads that link to specific URLs. This way, you can easily block all ads that are linked to your competitor at www.example.com. By entering a top level domain such as www.example.com, you'll also block all ads that link to subdirectories below that domain. The following rules apply to the competitive ad filter:
* Entering example.com will block ads to example.com and example.com/sub
* Entering example.com will also block ads to www.example.com and forums.example.com
* www.example.com will block ads to www.example.com but not to forums.example.com or example.com
* example.com/sub will not block ads to example.com/products or example.com/sub/index.html
Generally, it's a good idea to leave the 'www' off of URLs in your filter list to provide for broader filtering."
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"The competitive ad filter works by blocking ads that link to specific URLs. This way, you can easily block all ads that are linked to your competitor at www.example.com. By entering a top level domain such as www.example.com, you'll also block all ads that link to subdirectories below that domain. The following rules apply to the competitive ad filter:
* Entering example.com will block ads to example.com and example.com/sub
* Entering example.com will also block ads to www.example.com and forums.example.com
* www.example.com will block ads to www.example.com but not to forums.example.com or example.com
* example.com/sub will not block ads to example.com/products or example.com/sub/index.html
Generally, it's a good idea to leave the 'www' off of URLs in your filter list to provide for broader filtering."
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