How do I monetize a website with 11 million unique visitors per month?

NOTE: I'm currently consulting with Survata. Have you considered a SurveyWall to gate your articles? Your visitors would fill out a short survey before accessing some or all of your content. We pay between $0.20 and $0.50 per validated response to publishers in our http://survata.com/publisher-network/?utm_source=quora.com. The entire experience happens on your site, no popups or new tabs, so the interruption to the user experience is minimal. We also integrate extremely quickly and easily. Shoot a note to for more info.

I think working with an SSP is your best option.  You have a respectable amount of traffic per month.  Did any of the ad networks or exchanges offer you revenue share instead of straight CPC or CPM?  Also, do you know the traffic breakdown by desktop versus mobile? A few SSPs were mentioned, Pubmatic and Rubicon.  The company I work has an SSP named Marketplace by AdTech.  I would encourage to check them out along with other mentioned options. Disclaimer: I work for Aol Platforms if it wasn't clear already. http://www.marketplacebyadtech.com/ by AdTech http://advertising.aol.com/platforms

I'd say the best type of ads is of course AdSense, but I also know quite some people have troubles with it or cannot use it for whichever reason, so there are great alternatives out there. Taboola, AdBlade, OutBrain are the most known ones. Another good one is Nster, they are much smaller than those ones I've mentioned, but it means much better customer care and satisfaction and lots of things that they will adjust to your needs and linkings.Most of these guys work with widgets, which is very nice because it does not look like ads and ad-blockers don't block it and visitors are not annoyed with it. It has content relevant to your website and it looks just like more of the similar articles, which they are, just not on your website but on another one, which is still relevant to yours.

Consider selling your audience data.  Travel websites in particular are quite valuable to targeting firms that help advertisers better match ad inventory  to visitors. I've written more details about how this works here: http://www.fuse-data.com/monetizing-websites Disclaimer: I run Fuse Data that helps websites monetize their traffic, without advertising.

Along with suggestions given by others you can also try few innovative things  - Add Facebook Connect along with normal sign up Get Users Facebook Data [likes, interests, activities, etc.] Understand demographics and psychographics of your users Customize your website to serve personalized advertising and e-commerce stuffs You can also use elements of gamification to drive participation & engagement - use this for enhanced social loyalty and brand advocacy

I also faced a similar problem with almost 70% traffic coming from India but not such high figures as you. I did some research and came across a health affiliate network that works in India. If your site is weight loss focused i would suggest you check out http://healndeal.com/. Their products target Weight loss, high blood pressure, acne, and snoring health problems. With with morbid obesity affecting 5% of the country's population (That's about 30 million) and as many as 60 percent of people who live in India’s cities estimated to be obese. 29.8% of the entire population Suffers from hypertension or high blood pressure and we all know that acne and snoring are common problems. I believe that with most of your traffic suffering from one of the above problems you'll be able to effectively monetize that traffic.

You can have sponsored links on the site and tie uo with Indian ad netwokrs who can help you leverage the traffic from Indian sub-continent. Also, if you can tell what exactly your site URL or what it deals with, it will be helpful in giving you good pointers.

You can offer premium accounts with an ad-free experience (plus additional perks). I've seen websites ask users to fill out surveys (either randomly or even force them to do so in order to access certain content). I'm sure those surveys generate income.

My name is Scott and I work with Lijit Networks. I love to chat with you about how you can better monetize your International traffic - feel free to shoot me a note: sstevenson (at) http://lijit.com