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First off, love your site. Great stuff. I have a small monetization feature built in (homepage featured and search results featured). I really want to stay awa

First off, love your site. Great stuff. I have a small monetization feature built in (homepage featured and search results featured). I really want to stay away from Adsense and other "annoying ad" type income generating. I am offering web design service to all the locations in my "welcome packet" in an attempt to generate some recurring income (offering sites for $99/month. Minimum 1 year contract). May I ask what you do in terms of advertising / featured listings etc? If you don't want to share the details, I'd be happy to have you email me as well. I acknowledge that monetization has been one of the overlooked parts of the website, as I wanted to create a resource first, make money second. Your post gives me second thoughts about that.

apowell 17y ago
Desert Drinks is a side project for me -- an experiment in the potential of a focused local directory. Right now, I have a single sponsor (the tall banner on the right). I plan to more aggressively market and monetize the site this year (I just left my day job last month, and I have a to-do list a mile long). Even in the best-case scenario, I think it would be very tough to make a living on Desert Drinks alone. I can see it generating ~$1000/mo in this market of about 400,000 people. I think the key is to figure out the formula and then build nationally market-by-market. In my opinion, that's how I think an individual could bootstrap this sort of business.