Feasibility of advertising revenues

Is it profitable to run targeted websites in todays advertising market

[OlafurT]

(I´m not really new, joined in early 2001, my login got removed in the inactivity purge (read posts mostly))

I run a small website, it has very targeted content and users.

I have been wondering about receiving advertising (or sponsorship) for the site, and I have been wondering about the feasibility of focusing on continued site building as a full time job. The content is unique, ultra targeted.

The traffic is about 600,000 pageviews to 800,000 a month and I know that I can easily multiply that with some hard work. I get good traffic from Google which harvests about 50,000-120,000+ pages each month. (stuck at pagerank 5, though. Could be due to the specialized content)

Being with such a narrow content, I am wasting users bandwidth using advertising from companies such as Fastclick or Burst.

I am working now on a write-up on the site, explaining, its functions, intent, future plans, target group and such. But I really want to know if I am wasting my time, and should just continue to keep it a hobby site.

Can a website of this scale support its infrastructure (bandwidth, hardware, software cost)+one full time employee using only advertising?. Considering that the advertising planning is thoroughly done.

(as a side note, My main targets for sponsorship/advertising are going to be rather large companies, I have identifed many of my targets and they are
owned by companies such as Néstle, Mars Inc, Heinz, Procter & Gamble, Del Monte, Colgate-Palmolive)

Oli

[Jenstar]

With your traffic, and the fact it is a small niche market, I think you would likely have difficulty attracting the Heinz and Procter & Gamble sized companies. In my experience, they mainly advertise on sites that have millions of page views per month, or through one of the large online media advertising companies. But, I could be wrong ;)

Just because it is a hobby site doesn't mean you can't attract advertiser, but the companies would likely be on a smaller-size scale than the big brand names. An "advertise with us" link on your navbar can gain advertisers with little effort. I have a small niche hobby type of site with a little larger amount of page views, and all of my site's advertising comes through a page with my advertising options, which is linked on every page.

If you decide to do an "Advertise with us" page, here are a few things you should and shouldn't include:

1. Availability dates - can my ad be placed within the next week, or are the ads booked weeks or months in advance. And I want to know that this site is current and active.
2. Detailed advertising options spelled out - I want to know how much the ad spot is that i am considering. Autoresponder information is fine, but "email us for information" is a pain.
3. When should I expect a response, and when should my ad appear online?
4. No PDF rate cards.
5. No auto-responders for rates (when I purchase advertising, I rarely, if ever, will send an email to the autoresponder).
6. Full stats (page views, unique visitors, etc).

Can a website of this scale support its infrastructure (bandwidth, hardware, software cost)+one full time employee using only advertising?.

This is hard to say. Is it income for you PLUS an employee? Or are you the full time employee you refer to?

Some sites pull this off successfully and make a decent income, while others can barely make enough to pay for the hosting and bandwidth. A lot will depend on your specific niche, and if there are potential advertisers of the "mom and pop" variety as opposed to the corporate variety. You do already have a fair amount of traffic to justify charging for advertising though, so give it a shot.

I hope this helps. And welcome back to WebmasterWorld ;)

[rcjordan]

>Can a website of this scale support its infrastructure (bandwidth, hardware, software cost)+one full time employee using only advertising?.

Yes, but it's tricky. Much depends on the value of the eyeballs, i.e., are they researching a high-end resort vacation or free coupons?

I'd suggest signing up for adsense, see what revenues google matches with your site. [webmasterworld.com...]

>large companies

Don't hold your breath waiting for them. They don't get it yet, at least not with small, independent publishers.

[universetoday]

You've got enough traffic to attract some bigger ad networks, so you should try them out. You want to think in terms of revenue/page on your site. Once you've got all your ads running on the top, sidebar, mashed into the content, affiliate programs, etc.

You should end up with a total revenue/page across your entire site.

Don't expect some single advertiser to come along and just buy all your inventory. Instead you need to patch it all together in bits and pieces, always trying to figure out ways to increase the income/page.

After a while you'll hit some number that you can't really increase much higher. At that point, the only way to make more revenue is to increase your traffic. In theory, your revenue should scale up nicely as your traffic goes up.

It's a long, hard slog, though, so don't expect any kind of easy solution to pay all your bills.

But then, if you've got 800,000 page views, you already know the meaning of long, hard slog. So keep going!