1,000,000 hits, no monetization

[cowest]

I am fairly new to web marketing, am in the process of developing several real estate/lending related sites that serve to generate leads for our existing companies. I have a very good friend that has an extremely successful website and her exposure is over the top (60 minutes, good morning america, etc. ) There is no monetization at all on the site, its funded by members only. Traffic- over a 1,000,000 hits a month. So my question is this, I'm comfortable developing a site from scratch and creating links, adsense and affiliates to create traffic. I'm a little shaky when the site has gonzo traffic and no monetization. Besides adsense/google, what about direct advertising, affiliates and partnering. Thanks in advance.

[tkinbk]

you gotta be kidding me

give me a site with 1million hits a day and you will make 1k usd a day no problem

[eljefe3]

That's great your friend has gotten that kind of exposure. One thing though, 1,000,000 "hits" isn't 1,000,000 visitors. In fact if there are 20 different files on the home page, then divide the million by 20 to get total visitors, which would actually be 50,000.

I wouldn't worry too much about getting that amount of traffic at the beginning of your new endeavors unless you're spending a ton of $$ on advertising as you're in a compeitive space that will take time for your sites to rank high for money terms.

Yes direct advertising, affiliate links, banner ads etc. should make you some decent money once you have the traffic along with adsense, YPN etc.

[cowest]

traffic is 1M a month, site is five years old and is ranked #1 in google, not page 1.

[trillianjedi]

Hi cowest and welcome to WebmasterWorld!

traffic is 1M a month

What is "traffic"? Unique visitors, page views or "hits"?

[cowest]

thank you for the welcome. she is receiving 1M visitors a month. alot of the traffic would be directly related to press exposure (curiosity seekers) but she has over 7,000 paying memebers, so i would say traffic would be rather consistent.

[trillianjedi]

OK, having re-read your original post I'm not really sure what you're asking and the relevance of the thread title?

Do you want to somehow partner with this existing site - is that the idea?

TJ

[cowest]

what i'm asking is what is the best path of monetization for a site that has grown by a engaged community of people along with awesome public exposure. we all know how to develop a site from scratch with the intention of building traffic and monetizing it for profit. what do you do with a site that has become extremely successful (traffic wise) that has no focus on capitalizing on that traffic. i'm not looking to partner with her, i'm just trying to steer her in the right direction. thanks.

[shri]

The easiest options are Adsense and YPN for now. A good affiliate program in her niche might also help monetise.

If you have an overture or adsense account you can quickly get an idea of what people are paying to advertise for those keywords that the site ranks for. Look at the logs, find the keywords, put them into the bidmanagers and then do some simple math on what the visitors are worth.

[forex]

In fact if there are 20 different files on the home page

If a website has "about us", "FAQ" & such other 10 different links & each of the links directs the same visitor to separate page(html file) for that link.
The "hits" from the same visitor would be 11. Is it correct?

[percentages]

>Traffic- over a 1,000,000 hits a month.

If you picked the worst possible affiliate sites in real estate you will make at least $30k per month.

If you picked the best possible real estate partners you will make about $80K per month.

If you picked Google Adwords for this program, or something similar, you will make about $4k per month.

I do exactly what you are attempting to do. Merchant partners pay, Ads also pay, but less, so if you miss the primary goal, get the secondary!

[forex]

If its not against forum rules could you name some good affiliate sites in real estate or real estate partners

[DaStarBuG]

I donīt know how anyone is getting figures like 40-80k a month with 1M HITS

We are making around 5M hits, 50,000 uniques 900k pageviews and are making aprox 300$ a month with adsense.

It totaly depends on your niche and content you are offering!

We are going to sell advertising directly with our new version but my highest hopes are 2k a month (at the moment)

So donīt trust the numbers some members are throwing in.

[Alex_Miles]

If you can't make 1c per visitor on a real estate site using Adsense theres something wrong, and 5c should be do-able. So I make it $10-50k a month.

If you need help with click through ratio, PM me.

[Red_Eagle]

You should be able to make 2 cents a visitor on Adsense, bare minimum. I do that on sites with international traffic in niches with barely anyone advertising in them.

If your friend already has 7,000 paying members, she can upsell them lots of stuff. Webmaster World makes it pretty hard to help people out on specifics because of the rules, so you'll have to do your own research into this stuff. Check out the major affiliate programs and Adsense. Do as much testing as possible and it should add a nice amount to your friend's bottom line.

[cowest]

red eagle,

thanks for the response. my feeling was that with the high paying membership, she would want ads/banners/affiliates that were synergistic and relevant to her audience. yes, mortgage ads might pay a higher ppc, but is that really what someone concerned with adoption/child rearing/siblings really wants to see on a regular basis when they visit the site.