So far, I have been working on building an audience painfully slowly. Since I am also working on getting myself well, content does not go up as regularly as I would like. My feeling has been this is probably a good thing for now because the first thing I have to do is win over my audience and the world just does not believe this can be done. Maybe I am completely wrong (about needing to build the audience this way)? But without participating in email lists and hearing what other people are asking, I also don't really know what to talk about -- I don't just psychically know what is different about what I am doing compared to other people. So for me that relationship to the audience is important and there has been a huge barrier for a long time. It is gradually coming down. Maybe I do know exactly what I am doing and it just takes time. Or maybe I am an idiot and someone else would have no problem slapping some content onto the site and generating an income.
Thoughts?
It's a health site where I talk about getting myself well when doctors claim it cannot be done.
Besides your Mom, no one cares about getting you well.
Since I am also working on getting myself well...
Supposing I were sick, I'd care mainly about getting myself well. It sounds like you don't have the answers, so why am I bothering?
It sounds like you aren't selling solutions. So your best bet is to sell sympathy and motivation. My suggestion: make it more of a forum, allow other people to tell their stories as well. Focus on sharing emotions as much as sharing solutions.
Monetization will probably come from ads selling snake oil. Near as I can tell, that's the primary method of monetization in health related sites - selling homeopathy and herbs to desperate people.
As noted elsewhere: The site exists because there are people who are interested in what I did to get well, not because I had any plans to create such a site. It gives them clues as to how to get themselves healthier when all else has failed. I talk about what worked for me in large part because I have zero interest in giving advice per se. I think that is part of what is wrong with conventional medicine: Doctors routinely prescribe treatments with short term benefits and long term costs, which is not so bad if you are basically healthy and can take the hit for an acute problem. But it's deadly if you have a chronic health issue. And the fact that they take this basic approach is no secret. It's done quite openly: We all know about the huge fold-outs detailing the negative side effects that come with most prescription drugs and the waivers that have to be signed before they will perform surgery. Since getting myself healthier relied heavily on trading short term costs for long term gains, I have zero interest in replicating a system that I am convinced is part of the problem.
So your best bet is to sell sympathy and motivation. My suggestion: make it more of a forum, allow other people to tell their stories as well. Focus on sharing emotions as much as sharing solutions.
I own several email lists. I cannot for the life of me get conversations going on them. I also briefly had a forum for the site. It was overrun with spam and had maybe three members (myself included). So I've tried that route and failed, quite consistently and miserably. It works better for me to try to get people sharing info when someone else owns/runs the discussion space. And that is a piece I am working on elsewhere, for the purpose of helping people help themselves. I'm also not interested in selling sympathy or motivation per se. There is a saying that "an example is the best lecture" and I have found that to be true. So I do offer myself as an example in hopes that it inspires people to feel "If she can do it, I can do it". But I have zero interest in being some cheerleader.
Again, I was not asking about monetizing the site. Only about getting traffic, a question you have not addressed. As stated earlier: I have several websites. I really don't expect this site to be where the money is. But it is the most mature/developed of the sites I own and it basically serves as a proving ground for me to learn stuff.
My expectation is that at some point there will be an app and that will have more potential for being monetized. For now, I only want to know how to get more traffic. Can anyone address that specific question and leave out your opinions that I am crazy to try to monetize this?
Thanks.
The point of your health regimen is to get yourself well. The point of your health site should be to help you get yourself well -- by motivating you to stick to your plan, by helping you keep records of your own plans and thinking and data, and by recruiting folks to help encourage and coach you and share advice and conduct experiments along with you.
Don't screw up your own priorities and motivations by introducing an additional profit motive. When your health is at stake, you need to do what you need to do, not what your audience wants to pay for. If, after all your experiments, it turns out that the healthiest path for you is the most boring thing ever, something that nobody wants to read about and that can't be sold for money but that is nonetheless effective for you... great! Mission accomplished, you're healthy. Don't bias your judgement by asking a market to vote with its money. They'll end up (e.g.) steering you to the latest fad, whether it's healthy for you or not.
A) I am well on my way to being well. Although I continue to learn, the site does not exist to get me well. It exists because I made some off-the-cuff remark on an email list where I was held in high esteem, got attacked for it, was politely asked to "prove" what I had said and I said "give me a day or two to get back to you so I can put together the information". The response to the next email where I backed up my remark was stuff like "Can I forward it to someone I know who has a child with the same condition?". So I began working on putting the information on a website so people can share the links without asking to forward my emails.
B) It turns out that there is actually research that backs up some of what I kind of stumbled across. But it doesn't get much press because it won't make any drug companies rich.
C) I don't mind helping people but 1) I have bills to pay myself 2) if it benefits others and has value, why shouldn't I get something in return? and 3) people don't take it seriously when it isn't "for profit". Just being some nice person who got well and is willing to share what I know is very unconvincing for helping others.
D) I often contemplate just taking the site down. I am okay with just getting on with my life now that I am healthy enough to do that. But other people have made it clear they don't want it to come down. Both this year and in a previous year, donations paid my hosting service renewal when I couldn't afford it (this year: Thank you HN!).
As for the ethics question, I have had that thrown in my face before. People are dying from what I have and doctors can't really help them. Is it possible for people to misuse the information on my site and wind up with a problem because of it? Yes. Is it likely that doing nothing is worse? Very much so. My approach is much more conservative than what doctors do and much safer.
Thanks very much for responding.
