So I did in the end apply to Google AdSense just to find out. Turns out the site didn't get approved because it didn't have enough content on it. So I think you would be hard pushed to monetise it quickly by going down the normal display ads route.

I didn't mention in the post, but I had a couple of random ad offers, but they were for things that I didn't really agree with so didn't take up any of the offers.

Thx.

How is it possible that it's not you again who posted this on HN?

Ha. I came on here to post it myself this time. Turns out I was beaten to it.

Hey, I run an ad tech company. Our targets for US traffic are about $10 USD per thousand page views. This is multiples more than what you would get from AdSense, plus we help with strategy and integration.

Besides that, the author did mention several things he tried besides ad monetization. I think the most effective thing would have been to either find an opportunistic brand that wants to advertise here (like a maritime company or something) for like $25 CPM+, or to quickly find somebody to sell it to if you have those kinds of connections that trust you already. Lots of people trying to build businesses based off of a network of "micro sites".

Damn I wish you hadn't posted. Ah well.

LOL, interesting response. Well feel free to reach out to me (check my profile) and let me know why. I'm very curious :)

I think it's because he is the creator of that website. And he missed all that value.

We run a few high traffic websites, and would be great to monetize our US traffic at $10 cpm. But your profile link to your LinkedIn page returns a Page not available error. Please get in touch - would be great to chat.

$10 rpm, lol what do you only accept finance and law blogs?

$10 PAGE RPM is the key here people. Not a great metric to go by. Ad impression RPM is the number to compare. I'd be interested to know the average number of ads/page you need to display to achieve a $10 rpm. At any rate, you can get that on AdSense no problem with very little hassle and net 30 payments.

Ah I wish, those would get far far higher. No this is what we see at typical online newspapers from purely remnant advertising (not taking into account direct sales).

Swag. Set up some shitty designs on one of those dropshipping sites and a storefront. Mugs, hoodies, etc.

Yup, viral content and events are great for 'commemorative' swag, and there's plenty of companies that offer print-on-demand for things like that.

One time I experienced a "trending topic" first (or second)hand; the app we were building accidentally sent a pair of test notifications to 2-3 million people, first the test message, then a second saying "zodat Hajo het ook gelooft" (so that Hajo (name) believes it too). That took the daytime internet by storm; news articles, radio segments, twitter trending topic, etc.

I mainly followed the topic on Twitter, and before long there were adverts on there selling swag related to the trending topic. There's companies (or even bots?) scanning Twitter, making swag-on-demand for trending topics.

And sell what exactly? It’s not like he owns the copyright on the maritime map or on photographs of the ever given.

Commission some basic art about it?

I think some merchandise or some other memento would've maybe worked? A t-shirt or a hat