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Re:Ask HN: How did you 'accidentally' make money? by kadavy on Monday July 12, 2010 @01:33PM (#1508655)
I cried because I realized snakes are just tails with faces. That high.

Wow, that's funny. And you just have Google ads and stickers? Seems like you could make much more off of direct advertisers, or even find something on CJ.com

EDIT: had to add this link. Haven't laughed this hard in weeks! http://www.thathigh.com/stickiest/

Re:Ask HN: How did you 'accidentally' make money? by endlessvoid94 on Monday July 12, 2010 @01:42PM (#1508694)
Glad you like it. I honestly have very little experience, I'm learning as I go. I'd never heard of CJ.com. I was thinking of contacting local businesses, dispensaries, and doctors (heh) to see if they'd like to advertise on the site. Not sure of the legality of that though...
Re:Ask HN: How did you 'accidentally' make money? by kadavy on Monday July 12, 2010 @02:02PM (#1508776)
I'm having trouble thinking of what offers on CJ would be right for this. There are Marijuana delivery services in SF, right? You could sign them up and serve ads locally using Google Ad Manager.

What about HighTimes.com? Maybe they would advertise. Better yet, see who advertises on HighTimes, and contact those companies.

Do you have a newsletter? You could collect email addresses and send out a weekly digest or something. Put in a little more time, and offer articles and tips (?) on smoking weed. Email lists are extremely valuable.

You can definitely make way more than you are already. AdSense ("Webmaster Welfare") has pathetic CPMs. The ads its serving up on your site are irrelevant. I know creatives like to smoke weed, but Adobe Creative Suite? Seriously?

Re:Ask HN: How did you 'accidentally' make money? by endlessvoid94 on Monday July 12, 2010 @02:18PM (#1508826)
Those are great tips, thanks. I actually have some high profile people following @thathigh on twitter, namely, Snoop Dogg, Sarah Silverman, Doug Benson, Bill Maher, and Guy Kawasaki. Not sure how to capitalize on those, as twitter doesn't send a ton of traffic to the site. Any ideas? :-)
Re:Ask HN: How did you 'accidentally' make money? by kadavy on Monday July 12, 2010 @03:13PM (#1509035)
Wow, that's interesting. I guess I would start by just trying to have a conversation with them on Twitter or something. A retweet from Snoop would be great!

Or, you could create a little badge on your site for social proof. "We're followed by..." Keeping it up to date would be a challenge, but they probably won't unfollow you.

Seriously, e-mail those advertisers though, it will be the easiest money you ever made. They would love to advertise on your site.

Re:Ask HN: How did you 'accidentally' make money? by cheesey on Monday July 12, 2010 @02:25PM (#1508860)
Did you write the entries at first by yourself? They're hilarious!
Re:Ask HN: How did you 'accidentally' make money? by endlessvoid94 on Monday July 12, 2010 @02:51PM (#1508964)
I wrote them at the beginning, but with 7K visitors / day (24k pageviews / day), I haven't had to contribute in quite awhile :-D
Re:Ask HN: How did you 'accidentally' make money? by kadavy on Monday July 12, 2010 @03:16PM (#1509050)
I bet you could squeeze $10k a month out of that.

"Hi, I can give you 720,000 impressions/mo to weed smokers, would you like to advertise?"

Re:Ask HN: How did you 'accidentally' make money? by endlessvoid94 on Monday July 12, 2010 @03:25PM (#1509079)
So, how do I go about that? How much do I charge advertisers? I'm a complete n00b here.
Re:Ask HN: How did you 'accidentally' make money? by kadavy on Monday July 12, 2010 @03:50PM (#1509160)
Step 1: send a message. "Hi, I operate ThatHigh.com, which gets 720k pageviews a month. I saw that you advertise on HighTimes.com and thought my audience would also love your product. I'm currently looking for an advertiser for the 728x60 leaderboard on the home page. I'll split the traffic between you and one other advertiser, so you'll get about 360k impressions a month. I can offer it at $3000/month [try for about $10 CPM]. Let me know if that works for you."

Step 2: Send an invoice using Freshbooks or Blinksale.

Step 3: Install the creative using Google Ad Manager.

You can also try setting up zones through BuySellAds.com, and advertisers can buy directly when they visit your site. They take a cut, though.

Re:Ask HN: How did you 'accidentally' make money? by endlessvoid94 on Monday July 12, 2010 @03:51PM (#1509168)
Great advice, thanks alot.
Re:Ask HN: How did you 'accidentally' make money? by Vindexus on Monday July 12, 2010 @11:26PM (#1510271)
You should post here once you do this and tell us how it goes. I'd be very interested to see how much you increase your revenue by.
Re:Ask HN: How did you 'accidentally' make money? by endlessvoid94 on Tuesday July 13, 2010 @11:59AM (#1511735)
Sure thing :-)