Kurgano - 4:34 am on Jun 11, 2007 (gmt 0)

If you search for the keywords your site is targeting, and you find that on average 300 people search for that term a month, could your site survive financialy with 3 to 15 hits a month?

On higher trafficed terms... can you create a site capable of challenging the already existing sites and draw 1 to 5% of their traffic? ie: 10,000 to 50000 hits on a 1,000,000 hits a month term?

Those are two extremes. In extreme number 1 there is likely little competition. In extreme number 2 there will be 100's of sites competing.

If you start out shooting for the moon you'll likely quickly realise that you simply cannot corner the heavily competitive market. Shoot too low and you'll do well but the ceiling is very low.

Find a happy medium or even better create a site with content that you are passionate about and ignore the figures.