how to estimate return for 1000-visit site.

[zozzen]

Hi, i've started my first (half-personal) website a few days ago, and within 3 days users go up from 90 per day to 400 now, and seems OK to go to 1000 soon. From the statistics, they view about 10 pages each time they visit.

I'd like to put a small google ad on the site. From your experience, what's the reasonable level of return for a small website like that?

[ecmedia]

As others will tell you there is no good answer since there are literally dozens of variables, but a good website with high quality visitors can home to generate between $10 and 20 daily.

[Hobbs]

A personal site will earn you very little earnings.
I have no idea what a half personal site is, but if I were to guess, it should earn you half of very little earnings.
$0.5 to $2 daily is a reasonable expectation.

Perhaps you can be the one to solve that mystery for me:

Why do people ask for what to expect, is is too hard to slam few lines of code into pages and run them for a month? Not pulling your leg or anything, I really need to know.

[farmboy]

...website a few days ago, and within 3 days users go up from 90 per day to 400 now, and seems OK to go to 1000 soon. From the statistics, they view about 10 pages each time they visit.

That's an impressive start. Where is your traffic coming from - how are they finding you? The source of your traffic will have an impact on your success with ads on your site.

I'd like to put a small google ad on the site. From your experience, what's the reasonable level of return for a small website like that?

The ads will be based on the content of your site, assuming there are people advertising things related to the content of your site. If those visitors you are receiving are interested in the subject of the ads, you will earn some income. How much income depends on a number of factors and probably a lot depends on the answer to the first question above.

FarmBoy

[zozzen]

That's an impressive start. Where is your traffic coming from - how are they finding you? The source of your traffic will have an impact on your success with ads on your site.

It's actually a small online tool for reading some kind of information. Three days ago when i published the site, one forum (>17000 members) put my site on the top and they'll probably do it for at least a few months. Some users also seems to learn about my site from blogs and twitters.

The dilemma to me is that many users seem to hate advertising. If it doesn't generate good amount of money i won't bother to annoy my users. So far, the cost of my website is only $20 per year (including the domain) and if the hosting company doesn't complain my bandwidth usage, my operation cost can be very cheap forever.

[farmboy]

The dilemma to me is that many users seem to hate advertising.

Unless you've conducted a proper survey, there really is no way for you to know how many is "many."

That aside, a neighborhood of people who want things for free and don't even want to see advertising is not a neighborhood where I would even want to visit. And I certainly wouldn't invest any time or money in trying to earn a profit in that neighborhood.

FarmBoy

[leadegroot]

Here's how you can get a ball park figure for yourself:
* First, search for one of your keyphrases on google. Look in the sidebar for the Adwords. No ads showing? You probably won't make any money from Adsense. Stop here.
* Next, go to the Adwords Keyword Tool (google for "google adwords keyword tool" if you don't know where it is).
* Enter your keyword(s), fill in the captcha and hit the button
* In the results, click the show/hide columns' drop down and show 'estimated avg cpc' amount. These figures are indicative of what you might be able to get - particularly pay attention to the long tail words, as you are more likely to get those with a new site. Thumbnail estimate is 33% - 50% of these figures. (Remember that Google takes a cut and the really good bids show here)
(I have a feeling the interface is different in different locations - play with it until you have average cpc showing for your keywords)
* That gives you a CPC figure - CTR is something different again. 2 - 4% is not uncommon, but some niches are better and some websites are worse.

Daily income figure = the number of page views per day x the CTR x the CPC.
Accuracy of the above is predicated on your ability to
1) correctly determine the keywords you would get ads for
2) guess your future CTR

Hope this helps!

Lea

[zozzen]

thanks a lot for the formula.

Assume that ctr is 1%, my website could probably make $150 at the first month. I think i'd better wait untli more users adopted my service.

[zozzen]

just small update:
seems i was too optimistic before. Now I keep about 400 visitors per day and they read about 10 pages each time. Not much different than the time i made this post.

I'm going to submit my site to google and yahoo and make a sitemap on more than 3,000,000 pages of my site. Hope it can attract more visitors.

[Lame_Wolf]

i've started my first (half-personal) website a few days ago,

I'm going to submit my site to google and yahoo and make a sitemap on more than 3,000,000 pages of my site.

Are we talking about the same site ?
A few days old, yet 3,000,000 pages ?

[wyweb]

You have three million pages?

How long did it take you to upload them all?

[Bddmed]

Don't bother making a sitemap. It won't help.

[zozzen]

yeah... 3 million, maybe more. I've started generating the sitemap yesterday and it still hasn't finished yet.

Why a sitemap doesn't help? it seems that submitting such a large sitemap can boost my pagerank in google. Anyway, considering that what i do is to click a few buttons and a very large sitemap will be generated, it's okay to do it.

[StoutFiles]

and if the hosting company doesn't complain my bandwidth usage, my operation cost can be very cheap forever.

That's a big if. However, < 1000 uniques a day shouldn't cause any problems. I also agree a sitemap won't help.

[Bddmed]

it seems that submitting such a large sitemap can boost my pagerank in google

No it won't. But if it does there certainly seems to be something defunct at Google's side.
Most of us in here are perfectly capable downloading wikipedia or whatever free database and putting it on-line on another domain. What is it you're adding to the web? Is there any reason Google might want to give you a high place in rankings?

[zozzen]

perhaps it's about value adding? :>

[StoutFiles]

Let's give zozzen the benefit of the doubt; maybe he wrote 3,000,000 unique pages with original content.

[farmboy]

Let's give zozzen the benefit of the doubt; maybe he wrote 3,000,000 unique pages with original content.

A few days ago the question was about the estimated return on a small website. Now it's about the return on a 3 million page website. Either way, the answer is basically the same.

The moderators have locked some other threads along these same lines recently. I understand why they were locked and I'm curious what is generating these type questions all of a sudden, but it's interesting reading these type threads for the educational value.

FarmBoy

[BigDave]

Creating the sitemap only tells Google about the pages, it does not guarantee that they will be crawled. You need incoming links, and pagerank for Google to crawl your entire site. While every single one of those pages will have its own pagerank (only if it is crawled) it will be an incredibly minute amount. It is incoming links that make the real difference.

While you may get an initial burst of activity indexing a small portion of your site after submitting your sitemap, I would say that a general rule for young sites is that Googlebot will follow any incoming link to your site three clicks deep. I'm talking real incoming links, not comment or guestbook spam.

What is most likely to happen is that your site will get flagged by Google as probable garbage, given a lack of incoming deep links to those 3 million pages. Then you will just be left with whatever Yahoo and MSN send your way.

[StoutFiles]

There needs to be a separate "Get Rich Quick" section of this site where topics like these can be dealt with.

[zozzen]

ha, i'm not aware that there's another one on the same boat with me. It's only a small tool helping people to overcome a political constraint and help free access to information. (does it match your conspiracy theory? huh )

Considering that i only spent very small time on making this tool, and today 500 people is using it, any extra pocket money earned from this site to buy a cup of coffee is a bonus, but not important.

it's perhaps interesting to read this thread for entertaining value too. ;p

[BrandNewDay]

But what does "a small tool helping people to overcome a political constraint" need with 3.000.000 pages? I really would like to see that clarified a bit more before I invest time in advising you.
Do you at least understand why some of us are a bit worried about this?

[BigDave]

There are lots of sites that dynamically generate all sorts of pages, even useful pages. But you have to ask yourself: "from the user's perspective, so all these pages need to be in Google?"

So, you have a tool that provides useful information. shouldn't you just worry about getting people to that tool right now, instead of trying to drive them to the results page?

[zozzen]

ha, i'm not aware that there's another one on the same boat with me. It's only a small tool helping people to overcome a political constraint and help free access to information. (does it match your conspiracy theory? huh )

Considering that i only spent very small time on making this tool, and today 500 people is using it, any extra pocket money earned from this site to buy a cup of coffee is a bonus, but not important.

it's perhaps interesting to read this thread for entertaining value too. ;p

[Bddmed]

Groundhog day?

[BrandNewDay]

Hi, i've started my first (half-personal) website ...

[purplecape]

zozzen, no one is seeing a conspiracy. Someone noted that there have been other threads recently asking "how much money can I make from a site of X size with Y number of visitors?" The point is that if you had read the OTHER threads you would know that your question can not be answered.

Don't get defensive--people do start to question someone's motives, though, when what they say doesn't add up. It IS strange, for example, that you started off this thread talking about a small site and now are talking about 3 million pages. Are they your pages, or are you running a proxy server or something?

[Hobbs]

If it's a proxy that frames other sites:
You are in violation of the AdSense TOS
As well as pissing off every webmaster here
You are going to make a site map of what exactly?

[edited by: Hobbs at 7:44 pm (utc) on May 12, 2008]

[mbennie]

Looking at the OP's other posts, it's a scraper site and he's relatively new at it.

[BrandNewDay]

If that indeed is true I stop putting time in his questions.
I hate scrapers and do not wish to contribute to that kind of material.