Making money from something free?

Hey All,
I have posted a few times about my hobby website which I have been slowly developing over the past couple of years.

I am not a developer myself but have a friend doing it for very low cost. It’s still not what I would call publicly ready but it’s finally not to far off.

I have many ideas to commercialize it as a paid concept but the one that resonates the most with me (and is legally the easiest) is just giving it to the public for free. Without going into too much detail it’s a site built around sports tipping in a style not done before. I actually know a number of people who operate similar concepts using spreadsheets so I want to be the person to deliver them a free platform to do it.

Now I know I’m likely getting ahead of myself as I currently have 100 members only (mostly friends) but thought I would ask anyway as it could play into some ideas and direction with future development.

So what’s ideas and guidance could anyone provide. I think of this very forum which is mostly free with a small fee to business members. But surely the forum operators are making money in other ways?

thanks in advance

 

I expect that site will be receiving money from the ads at the top of the screen.

 

Yeah I know about banner ads but the click through rate is about 0.00000000002%.
And for what I would consider to be somewhat clever users, I don't imagine they would have made much (if anything) via these?

I could be totally wrong though and I guess thats why I'm asking
@Simon Hampel care to enlighten a total novice

 

years ago, I tried/trialled one of those horse betting/tipping softwares which give you tips and overall you come out in front,

I was skeptical from day one, and never proceeded , but the guy who was following up, called me and said as proof, lets go with his 3 tips did his 3 tips on 3 races over the phone, surprisingly, 2 out of his 3 came through and he was up, so I guess his product did work

but ive always been of the belief, if your product works that well, why would you bother trying to sell it, youd just be making zillions betting

im assuming yours is totally different

 

I’m in the same boat. Always been interested but never actioned it. My mates and I semi regularly do a punters club. We have a running joke the surest bet you can make is whatever is against our last leg of a multi. Pre CV I did bump into a mate who was off on a holiday with 2 other mates in his punters club. They did a paid service started with 1k and the guy had them to 16k. In the end he went on a bad patch so they pulled out 8. Still a great result but if you started as they were ending you would be broke.

Nah mine is nothing like that. When I say tips I’m referring to tipping like footy tipping. As in you make selections of who will win something as part of a large competition.

 

@Simon Hampel what a fantastic and insightful post. Thanks so much for taking the time to share!

Maybe if the site gets some traction we can arrange for you to manage another one

I do think about this forum and how wonderful it would be having a site where users create your content for you!

 

I used to be a very profitable seller on Ebay selling an item that was actually free, but could gather up to 200 dollars a piece. It was great! I wasn't breaking any laws. They were from my own personal collection and in mint condition, yet my business partner (my mate) and I were contacted by Sony and threatened with action if we didn't cease what we were doing immediately. We contacted Ebay to explain our situation and Ebay sided with Sony... because they obviously didn't want to fight Sony. We had no choice but to stop. Sony refused to believe that we were getting the amount of dollars we were for what we were selling. We couldn't believe it either! People would go crazy bidding on our items and we'd often get a few sales from one auction as we'd always have multiple inventory of the item up for grabs.

So be careful. Some large corporation might come along and screw you over for no reason other than they can. Yes, I'm still bitter about it even though it was probably a good 10 years ago!

I guess apart from ranting, the moral of my story is to really think about what you're good at and what you have unique access to either via location or knowledge and put that to use.

 

@Simon Hampel this may be such a basic question but im going to ask anyway.

How many visits in your experience is required to translate to making money from direct advertising sales? e.g. what kind of numbers would you typically need to put up for someone to be interested.

TBH that is where I see where my site could potentially sit the best.

As an example its a sports tipping site so im sure if I could generate X traffic a month that could be enticing for betting agencies. e.g. The site is free to play but when someone is entering tips they could see the odds provided by sportsbet

So whilst I myself in no way want to be a gambling website, I have no issue in selling my soul for some revenue to place some banner ads

Again this is probably way too basic because maybe in my example because it is so targeted it could require less visits than something much more broad.

 

Across a couple of precious metals blogs in ~2012 I had 20-25,000 page views/month, enough traffic and email subscribers to make $750-1500/month in revenue (combination of paid advertisers and affiliate income), spending only a few hours of my time each week. I never really started out to make money and it wasn't a focus, so probably could have done much better with it if that was a focus.

If the site is niche with a small amount of traffic I would forget Google Ads and go straight to related businesses, offering banner ads (provide the first month free and measure the clicks they are receiving to gauge an ongoing price per month) and look for affiliate programs that may be of interest to your users.

 

Hey mate,

How is your site any different to the espn footy tips one?

 

Mine allows players to tip on the outcomes of every major sporting event and award around the globe in the same competitions.
Think about it like a giant multi-bet but for tipping.

 

That is a great idea.

 

When I saw the headline I thought 'bottled water'!

Then I thought you take something pretty ordinary and then market it with an air of exclusivity.

If you get 'exclusive' people flocking to it and they see other 'exclusive' people doing likewise then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Eg private education, private health, elite clubs etc. You've take something of little inherent value but made it desirable so people will hand over money for it.