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This is the third article in the series on developing out a domain. The first two articles can be read by clicking on the following links; Article 1, Article 2.
So what's happening on the traffic and revenue side of Downwind?  The traffic being generated by the Downwind has largely come from word of mouth. I think that I initially spent about $100 on an adwords campaign because I wanted to run a test with Google Analytics. Right now the site is getting nearly 6,000 unique visitors per month with over 30,000 page views. I reasonably confident that these figures are continuing to increase as the Downwind brand awareness expands into the aviation community.
One of the best things that we did was to build a screensaver (with some software that cost about $30) that we gave away as a Christmas present. The screensaver has aviation pictures that I've taken as well as an RSS feed that updates what is happening on Downwind. If the member clicks on their screen when the screensaver is activated then it takes them directly to Downwind.
At the beginning of February my wife Roselyn began sending a weekly newsletter to the members each week. It has funny YouTube videos, latest Downwind news plus we have now just introduced a competition on who has the best avatar for their profile. The traffic spike each week is instant and what's even better is when people begin to complain if they don't get their Friday newsletter.
We now have a number of core advertisers that are paying a monthly fee for their advertising positions. This is in the aviation directory, the front page and other parts of the site. This has been really good news and we now have a nice sustainable revenue line coming in each month.
As an after thought I put a donation button on the site where members can choose a level of donation that they would automatically like to pay each year. This has been really successful and we're providing a reward back to donators to show our appreciation in the form of a "medal" that appears whenever they make a forum post. This also identifies those members that haven't donated to the whole community....nothing like some peer pressure! The result has been that we have only had the top level gold donations and no silver or bronze level donations have been taken out. As an aside, I think that it's really important that it's an annual donation and that future donations are automatic.....this effectively means that it's a "soft" membership fee.
A number of the articles on Downwind are being sold to the Australian Aviator magazine which is a great way to directly monetize the content. I think that content is often just looked on as a way to get people to come back to the site but it should also be viewed as a way to earn revenue or some other benefit.
The gross revenue run rate is now about $2,000 per month so it's starting to get up there. I get a sense that we are beginning to reach a critical stage where advertisers are starting to take real notice of what Downwind is doing.....fingers crossed!
So am I going to retire on Downwind? I don't think so but it's been a really enjoyable research project in how to best extract value from a domain that previously had no real value at all. I'm confident that it will continue to grow and as it does I'm sure there will be greater and greater opportunities as the Downwind brand becomes more recognisable. In the meantime I'd better get back to my day job at ParkLogic!
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