How many hits . . .

When to know you're ready to sell online.

[jlr1001]

I've seen this briefly mentioned in other posts, but a site search yields nothing.

I want your quick, or not so quick if you have time, thoughts on how many search engine queries a month should your product or service have before its feasible to sell it online?

My memory says that 1,000 searches was a good indicator. But then again I want to say 3,000.

If the number is high, do you take into account whether or not your product and/or service has a relatively small market niche?

-jlr1001

[kjs50]

I'm not sure about the number of hits required to have a sustainable business, but it might be interesting to sell some of your products on eBay to see what kind of demand it has.

eBay works out well as a test market and it helped me launch my business without too much investment.

But not knowing what you are selling, create a model and assume a conversion percentage of 2% (orders per visitors). I think that is an industry average for medium ticket items.

That way, if you had 1000 visitors a day, that would equal 20 orders / day. If (20 x Product Margin) > (Costs / Day) ... Go for it!

Hope that helps.

[Crazy_Fool]

even if (20 x Product Margin) > (Costs / Day) is false, it could still be worth going for.

every visitor you get now while you don't sell will go away empty handed and your competitors will gain. they won't recommend your site to anyone.

but if you are selling online, visitors might recommend you to others. they might come back and buy again.

and once you're selling online, bump up your visitor numbers with PPC listings, yahoo listings, optimised pages etc etc etc etc etc ......

don't wait for things to happen, make them happen.

[kjs50]

Yes, that's right. I over simplified it, and you can't discount repeat customers and referrals.

But if you need any further help developing your idea, let me know and I can point you in some ways to cost effectively start up your business.

Thanks.