Bogie, I ran banner ads across those 1250 or so pages for Impact Guns, as part of their affiliate program. I gave it a month or two, and IIRC I made about $60. The percentage of any sale tends to be pretty low.
Impact Guns was a direct competitor for every shop on my site. Yet, none of the shop owners complained.
I've had a couple of shop owners ask how much extra I'd charge them to have their shops be the only stores in their state on my site.
I have webmasters who run for-profit sites really laying into me because I'm not making as much money as they are, yet I'm getting more traffic and page views than they are.
To those webmasters' credit, they first looked at which niches would attract the best-paying advertisers, and then built their sites around those niches.
I, on the other hand, was focusing on how to give gun shops more internet exposure, and make an income for myself at the same time. (See my thread titled, "Business savvy").
The site I've built works. It does what I've promised. But I've built a site that is more time-intensive than many other sites. That's why I'd like to run some ads that generate enough extra revenue so that I can hire on another person to help with the phone calls, which are the most time-intensive part of the job.
Carebear: "If folks use you as a resource, that could get a little more word of mouth going for the site as a whole."
I'll ask Pax if she wants to exchange some links. I thought we already had.
As for my traffic, my site brings in more visitors than does Sigarms', or other major manufacturers.
I've had permission from Taurus for over a year to add photos and product descriptions of their guns to my site. Just adding Taurus alone would boost my traffic by 15-20%.
The folks at Benelli wanted to wait and see how my site developed. They were concerned that shops on the site would say that they sold Benelli's when, in fact, those shops were not in the Benelli-direct program (a stupid idea if I ever saw one). At any rate, I can now prove to Benelli that every shop that mentions the Benelli name is in their ridiculous dealer-direct program.
Adding Benelli would boost traffic to my site by perhaps 5-10%.
But adding all of these brands takes time. Taurus alone would require seven solid days of downloading photos, re-sizing them, copying the product descriptions, and creating new pages.
That's seven days that I wouldn't be able to work the phones.
Again, thank your for all of your replies and suggestions. Please keep them coming.
Rabbi, why isn't your store on my site? I've had a long-standing "offer you can't refuse" for any store owners who are THR members, and you should have been invited long ago. PM me if you're interested.
