The SciFi Money Pit
Commenting on last Sunday’s post, Awake in Rochester commented: “You’ve mentioned Sci - Fi I like it too. My favorite is Star Trek the original, the 2nd generation is good too. Anyways…Do you have a Sci - Fi blog? Maybe have a Sci - Fi store in the blog? The economy sucks so I would keep the price of the merchandise low. But it’s a good nitch!”
I did (do) have a SciFi site. It’s one that’s been long-neglected. I ran it pretty full steam ahead for about a year, and it’s been on life-support for about two years now. I keep hoping to get back to it at some point and give it another go, but things that pay the bills–or have a higher likelihood to do so–are the ones that take priority.
Without looking up any actual figures, I spent at least several hundred dollars on the site (probably more), as well as a lot of time. I put a good amount of effort into promoting the site, and even set up a MySpace page for myself where I tried to steer SciFi fans toward my SciFi site, inasmuch as you could on MySpace at the time. I got a fair amount of traffic from all sources, but that was generally not traffic that converted into anything.
I had ads from Google AdSense on the site, but never got much out of that. I ran affiliate programs for related merchandise, but no sales at all from there. I did direct some traffic to my rubber stamps site where I have some SciFi related stamps. Had a few sales, but cannot be sure how much of that were a direct result of people coming in from the SciFi site, as I didn’t have sophisticated tracking running on the site. I had some items on CafePress, from which I “earned” $3.98, which is still sitting in the CafePress account because it doesn’t meet the payout minimum.
So, that was my attempt at earning something from SciFi.
I have a hard time getting into Sci - Fi . With the exception of all things Star Wars!
Anything I write tends to turn to SciFi at some point. I tried a non-scifi story, and just couldn’t get it to work at all unless I started thinking of science-fiction twists to throw in!
By the way, tomorrow (November 17th) is the 30th anniversary of The Star Wars Holiday Special. Don’t forget to celebrate!
It sure isn’t easy making money on any website if you don’t have a niche. I’ve had Google Adsense for years and don’t think I’ve made a dime.
You know what has worked, however, is http://www.text-link-ads.com/ I usually make enough to pay for my month VPS account. CafePress has been just ok for me. I made enough to pay for shipping for my own purchases.
I have other sites that Google AdSense does better on. Still not a whole lot. I’d love to be one of those people that get the checks by FedEx every month.
TLA is good. I’ve been lucky that it’s been steadily increasing too. If it keeps going up, maybe one day it will be able to pay my hosting bills!
The BIG market is selling Uhura Dolls with a lazer gun, Scotty and Spock never do well.
James T Kirk: “SPOCK (pause) …. the, VULCAN ….. mind …. is so (pause) …….. humorous”
Spock: “Interesting Captain”
Speedcat: “WARP 10 … do it AGAIN!!!!!”
Sorry about all that. I know the Japanese Manga stuff is real popular now and they have conventions and all that stuff that the sci-fi fans do.
There are probably profitable niches if you just want to talk about certain “brands” of science fiction, rather than maybe science fiction in general or original science fiction.