www,festivalsandretreats.com  was launched in January 2016 and in July 2019 the site got 28,000 monthly visits. In winter this drops to about 12,000 a month.

There are pages for every kind of alternative culture event we can think of – tai chi, contact improv, tantra, yoga etc and these score well in Google searches for inquiries like “contact improvisation festival”. Our posts about small festivals sometimes score higher than the actual festival page.

Most of the festivals listed are unaware that they feature on our pages.

Revenue for paid placements

But in early 2018 I began to offer paid packages for retreats:
https://festivalsandretreats.com/promote-your-retreat/
and for festivals:
https://festivalsandretreats.com/co-promotion-network-for-festival-and-retreat-organisers/

in 2018 revenue from the packages offered came to 1300 euros.
in 2019 revenue from the packages has so far come to 2300 euros.

Most of the ads bought came from Tantra festivals.

I did try to hire someone to sell write directly to the festivals on the list and sell the packages but that only generated 1 or 2 sales. They didn’t have much sales experience though and didn’t try any calls.

Most of the sales have come from the contact form where people have seen our packages or requested a free listing and I’ve responded with our offers. In addition when people try to post in the Facebook group  then I write them a message with a pitch – however many of these messages probably end up in the filtered message folder and thus go unseen.

The site needs a redesign to make it look like it’s worth advertising on and the presentation of our stats and packages could be improved.

Affiliate sales

Another revenue model would be to sell tickets for the festivals themselves. This could only be done, I think, by reaching out to each festival or retreat individually and convincing them to sign up to an affiliate program so that we can take a % of each sale. Or we can sell the tickets and then send the organisers an agreed amount. Even taking 15% of each sale could add up quite nicely with so many festivals listed.

But it would take quite some energy to get this up and running.