How to monetize a food related site?

[Yorozuya]

So here is the situation: I have a food related website which I have been running for 3 months now. Lately I have decided that its time to get some money out of it to pay for hosting. I have registered to google adsense but for some reason they denied my application. So now I'm looking for other means to monetize my website. Does anyone has any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

 

[Viktori]

You can try some of the other alternatives, of which I would recommend just getting Yahoo ads. They approve a lot easier and they pay relatively well. I'd still prefer Adsense over it and would recommend for anyone to just build their site further and re-apply with Google instead, but if you are in a hurry or would just like something to put up in the meantime, Yahoo is a good one to use.

 

[Yorozuya]

Well I guess I will add some more content to my site and try again... If they refuse me again I'll try yahoo ads, thanks for the suggestion! Ahh maybe I should just sell cooking related stuff from Amazon Thats not a bad idea actually... I think I will give it a shot and see what happens.

 

[vida_llevares]

Food sites would be an attractive venue for advertisers. You could solicit ads from restaurants, suppliers of food ingredients, suppliers of food processing equipment and tools.

 

[Yorozuya]

Food sites would be an attractive venue for advertisers. You could solicit ads from restaurants, suppliers of food ingredients, suppliers of food processing equipment and tools.

Very good idea, thank you! The only obstacle I see here is that I need to somehow geo-target my ads because my traffic is international so there is no point in displaying a restaurant in California for someone who lives in Europe for example. Food processing equipment can also work, I'm sure amazon has them in their store...

 

[vida_llevares]

Very good idea, thank you! The only obstacle I see here is that I need to somehow geo-target my ads because my traffic is international so there is no point in displaying a restaurant in California for someone who lives in Europe for example. Food processing equipment can also work, I'm sure amazon has them in their store...

Yeah. Classifying your ads and your market would be more strategic.

 

[azlan]

One powerful way could be to build a list, so you could offer like a free newsletter with recipes and whatnot. Then you can market to your list in the future with affiliate products or your own.

 

[Nymph]

There is plenty of demand for advertising on recipe and food-related sites, you just need to know where to look and not be afraid to incorporate an ad unit on your site with bold letters stating, "Advertise here! Click for details". It makes the site look more authentic for when you do solicit other restaurants and such to make use of your advertising potential. However, I would wait until I had a decent amount of traffic streaming through each day, even 500-1000 uniques is enough to suffice. This way you can give the restaurant numbers and they will be more willing to follow up on the offer. Obviously, the more traffic you have, the easier it will be to find a willing restaurant. The pay rate will also vary on the traffic. If you can manage to get more than 50,000 unique visitors per month, you'll probably be able to sell the ad space for several thousands of dollars per month.

As for Google Adsense, they want only the best quality and high traffic sites for their advertisers. So constantly create the best content you can possibly churn out with facts, recipes, pictures, numbers, connections to social media, you name it. Eventually you will be accepted.

 

[wasi90lk]

You can try to promote Clickbank products or Amazon products.

You can also try Infolinks, I believe it is a great advertising network.