• by Allan Levy , March 22, 2007

With the advent of self-publishing tools, anyone can get a Web site up in under an hour. And a surprising number of people have done just that. From blogs about design to music review sites to investment advice, millions of Websites with original content have appeared, seemingly overnight.

But, even with respectable traffic numbers, most of these sites make very little money. While many publishers didn't start out intending to make a profit off these ventures, now that online advertising is booming, they see new monetization possibilities. Yet making money off these sites isn't as simple as it sounds. There are strategies, however, that can help publishers become more profitable:

Analyze traffic. The first step to growing revenue is to know your visitors' purpose and refine your site with their needs in mind. You have only seconds to keep them once they land on your site, so make those seconds count.

The next step is to build strong traffic. Attracting more visitors starts with looking at traffic patterns. At a minimum, publishers should know: how much traffic their site receives; what portion of traffic stems from repeat visitors; average page views per visitor; which pages are most popular; and whether their traffic originates with search engines or comes from links on other Web sites. A high percentage of traffic originating from search engines often means one or more search engines tagged the content, meaning the site's content is viewed as high quality. This increases the viral power of the site.

Survey visitors. Once publishers determine the nature of their site's traffic, they should survey visitors to learn which features are most important to the audience. For instance, say you publish a soccer site geared toward kids that offers athletes and their parents information about matters ranging from local soccer camps to clinics to teams. A well-constructed survey will offer insight about which of those categories is most important to users.

The survey vehicle can be a question on the registration form, embedded questions in an e-mail or banner pop-ups - whatever works best for the site. The key is to sample a significant audience size over a period of one to two months before making content changes.

Find niche advertisers. Let's say your soccer-site survey reveals that visitors were primarily parents who want information about nationally ranked soccer camps and the best equipment. You can now refine content based on the feedback. Your niche site should now appeal to a wide range of advertisers and, in my experience, will allow you to charge between $1 and $5 per 1,000 impressions for banner ads.

Create a user database. When you have detailed information about site visitors, you can show the right offers to the right people. What's more, with accurate, current data about your traffic, you can partner with a lead-generation company that is capable of optimizing post-registration revenue.

For example, if 600 offers are available in the registration process, a consumer should typically see eight to 10 prompts, such as ads for softer hands, whiter teeth, online education, and the like. If you know what areas most intrigue your users, you can match offers to them based on their interests.

Say one visitor, a 26-year-old woman from rural Oregon, previously clicked through on an offer for whiter teeth. Once you have that information, you can use technology to send her similar offers, while also weeding out ads irrelevant to her.

Registration revenue should generate anywhere between $1 and $3 per member. On the e-mail marketing side, revenue should generate between $5 and $10 per thousand per mailing.