Having a helluva time getting my website to be profitable, can anyone help me?

I have had my site for about six years now and I started out monetizing it with Google AdSense which worked out well, but wasn't generating very much because the site was new and wasn't getting very many visitors. Unfortunately, I was absent minded (ie. stupid) and had text above an ad saying something like "buy us a beer, click and ad". Hence, my AdSense account got disabled and I have not been able to get it reinstated no matter how hard I try.

I have tried multiple other ad solutions and the one that worked out best was from advertising.com. But unfortunately, earlier this year they decided that they no longer to wanted to serve ads to my site. I think it was a traffic issue, since my site is heavily dependent on the strength of the box office. And some months are slower than others.

So since then I've been trying to find a decent alternative, but haven't been able to. The "best" so far is with Criteo, but it's not very much at all.

I'm getting a good amount of visitors and am #1 with Google searches. Just recently with the Star Wars movie, I got about 40k visitors in one weekend due to the huge movie weekend.

I am starting to have major hosting issues due to the traffic volume, but cannot afford anything better. The next best hosting that I can find is about $60/month. Yet, I only get about $10-15/month from advertising. I wish I could just pay for the hosting out of pocket, but I lost my job recently and also have a kid on the way as well as a teenage daughter to support. There is no way I can pay that.

I'm not trying to make money with the site actually, of course I would love that. But I would at least for it to be able to pay for itself. But no matter how hard I try, I just can't do that. I don't want the site to be covered in ads, but I need it to generate income somehow.

If I can't figure something out soon, I may have to close the doors and I really, really don't want to do that.

 

You need to take advertising in your own hands and get proactive. Find new, cool (physical) home theater products, gourmet popcorn / candy and food related products, online services like VPNs, streaming service, etc. Become an affiliate of these products (on Amazon) or directly through their website. You may be able to strike some exclusive deal with a company by becoming the blog for the ecommerce website or become their blogger / content creator. A lot of companies are looking for content to drive traffic to their website (inbound marketing). You could be the ticket.

For the physical home theater related products you could do YouTube video reviews. Contact the companies, get a unit to review. Sell them on the fact that you'll post the video in the sidebar on your high traffic website (don't forget to monetize the YouTube video). If they gift you the unit, you could sell it.

Test, see what works best.

Regarding your hosting, call or live chat with a small reputable hosting company like A Small Orange. They have services for websites like yours...beyond shared hosting but not your own dedicated server. They run from $20 - $40 bucks a month.

 

FYI, I didn't create the hosting company link above. That was done automatically by digital point.

 

I haven't seen your website but I suggest adding more content. More content equals more targeted keywords equal more traffic.
try these ad networks:
https://adsterra.com/
https://www.adcash.com/en/index.php

 

Did you try http://www.bidvertiser.com/ ? I had them on my sites a while back, can't say anything bad about them. May not be as good as AdSense, but still their PPC for N. America (and I am guessing for Europe) is good.

 

I haven't tried them in a few years, but when I did, I didn't get much. Looking at my stats, I got .07 for 5,183 impressions.

 

That sucks. I too didn't use them for a few years, so I guess it's not the same anymore.