(Newbie) What can I predict as earnings?

[SIlverMane]

Hey Guys,

Just a bit of background. I'm currently 19, and this is my first steps into the world of business, and first attempt at a website/online business in general. I am at the stage where I have refined an idea to the point that I am happy with, and I'm now working at the realities/predictions/lessons I need to take into account before I move on.

On that note, any links to vital information for first time webmasters would be greatly appreciated.

Onto the idea, I have in mind a site which would consist of a few hundred, to the low thousands of profiles, as well as an attached community forum. I am not concerned about getting those numbers, as the niche I intend to target and fill seems very receptive to the idea.

Beyond that, there would be a "classifieds" section, which would be rather busy.

In addition to the main members of the site, all of a certain profession, it would serve as a general resource to the public at large, therefor gathering views from that side.

Eventually I intend to gain money via first hand advertising and affiliate deals, but the thought of using a system such as Adsense intrigues me greatly.

I know it's extremely hard to make predictions, but seeing as I will have rather high amounts of traffic, in my opinion, what could I expect to be earning through a system such as Adsense?

If I could clear 200-300 dollars a month, it would provide me a rather stable platform on which to expand.

Thanks guys.

[londrum]

unless you already know where the traffic is coming from, if this is your first site then i think you might be expecting too much. its getting harder and harder for new sites to rank these days. you need tons of backlinks (where are they going to come from?) and loads of social signals. forums are very hard to get going. it might take you six months of daily nurturing to get some self-sustaining traffic on that alone.

adsense works best when the visitors want to buy something. you have to pre-sell the product, and then they will click an ad to buy it. apart from the classifieds section, it doesnt sound like your site is selling anything. it might turn out in the end that you'll do better with other kinds of advertisers, but its worth a go
if you're just expecting "a few thousand" profile owners to use the site, then your adsense returns will probably get worse as time goes on, as they will become "banner blind" to the ads. you will probably need to focus on attracting new people to get adsense to work.

the truth is that people on here have been using adsense for years, and even we cant predict how much we're going to get from month to month. that is how fickle it is sometimes. my best months of the year are more than double what i get in the worst months, so you cant say that you will get $200 dollars every month, because it doesnt work like that. a lot of it is seasonal.

[HuskyPup]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld SIlverMane

Onto the idea, I have in mind a site which would consist of a few hundred, to the low thousands of profiles, as well as an attached community forum. I am not concerned about getting those numbers, as the niche I intend to target and fill seems very receptive to the idea.

Bear in mind that, generally speaking, a site or community forum with regular repeat visitors has a very low click through rate (CTR) usually owing to ad blindness and/or badly written ads.

I'm told that fan sites have very low CTRs, I'm not sure about sports sites however I would have thought they could be pretty miserable too, direct advertising would be much better.

Earnings? Well, if I told you that only a few years ago I was earning USD 10,000+ a month and I am now struggling to make USD 1,000.00 month thanks to the recent Panda update, what would you say?

If you have the right niche subject, if you have enough unique quality information for the site and if you can market it right and get in a few thousand visitors a day, sure you can make a few hundred Dollars a month but it's not going to be easy.

Does this type of site exist anywhere else or is it a new subject not yet covered?

Is it likely to go out of fashion?

Will it have evergreen information or will it need to be continually updated?

Good luck:-)

[wheel]

Yep, per Huskypup, if the intent is to make money, an online community is not the place to start.

Before you start this, instead you should do some research on what niche you may consider. Or even consider a half dozen and test. But the point is, you skipped the first step of finding out what niches are profitable. You probably had a good idea and decided to monetize it - that's backwards :).

I think the best niches are undiscovered. You are looking for something that pays relatively well, but isnt extremely competitive. Finding those niches will take some research and work.

After that, you are going to have to do some testing. You may set up sites in 6 niches and fail in 5 of them. Or you might fail in all 6 of them. Pick up, dust off, and do the next 6.

You'll also have to do a lot of testing to find out what works. Squeeze pages? Advertising? affiliate offers? ebooks? There's lots of things you'll have to try out and decide for yourself if they work or not.

Reading will give you the universe of possible options. Only testing will tell you which of those options works for you - that knowledge you won't find online.

And don't give up. Failure isn't failure. It's A-B testing - keep testing until it works.

[SIlverMane]

Thanks for the very prompt replies :)

I will be the first to admit I'm na?ve when it comes to this, that's why I'm here asking these questions. This is my first business venture, and I'm viewing it more as an experience than a cash cow.

To provide some more details, the site is based in what I've read as a "undesirable" niche, that being music and is for musicians. I intend to create a national community for my country, and I am exploiting a few gaps that I've seen in my own capacity as a musician.

It also extends into other realms such as entertainment. My mindset is to provide the best tool possible for those who use it, and put money as the secondary focus.

I do believe with my ideas I can essentially easily market it and grow it through real world marketing and word of mouth in the correct circles, as quite simply I would jump to use this site myself.

Therefor the traffic would be ideally from the real world, fans and musicians alike.

Due to the fact of the limited geography of the users, I'd imagine I could do quite successfully with private advertisers. Even if it doesn't work, the experience will be invaluable.

Although I'd imagine I would have to have a certain status to attract advertisers. So I'm just curious as to how a system such as adsense would do.

Perhaps I could affiliate market with music related suppliers on the classifieds.

In short, if I were to pull it off successfully, my site would be the go to place for the national music scene. The ultimate resource.

One can dream :)

[wheel]

In my experience, forums take two years to build to the point where they are stable. In those two years you will be working at the site all the time and making no money. After that, you will be working at the site all the time and making hardly any money. Think about that - two years, every day looking at the forum and nobody posted. So you post something yourself and nobody responds. Day after day. It gets real old, real fast. And I say that having built both a reasonably succesful forum and a wildly successful forum in the past. I wouldn't do it again.

Forums are hard to build, and when the do work (which is rare) still are very poor performers for moneymaking.

And it sounds like you don't even have forum experience. It's not anywhere as simple as build it and they will come. Running a successful forum takes a reasonable amount of specific know-how. For example, moderation is an absolute nightmare. Take me for example - I've got thousands of posts on this site and I still go off on tangents that give the moderators headaches. If you're going to moderate a forum, you need to realize that you're not moderating a forum. You're babysitting insolent children. Sound like fun yet?

In other words, I'm specifically advising you that if you're looking to do something successful or for experience, you are doing everything incorrectly.

You want to do something you know about, fine, do something you know about and are interested in. Music it is. I've no idea if that's a profitable niche or not, but either way a forum is not the way to start learning about the online world. Those days are past.

At the very least, try a blog instead. Other users can still comment on your site and interact, but you have control. And you'll get to enjoy wracking your brains for 3 posts a week, week after week, month after month, year after year :).

I believe you'll find a blog easier to get traffic to as well and monetize. Again, not as simple as that, but less obstacles and faster turnaround than a forum.

[HuskyPup]

Ah...music...from my experience with music sites in the UK, as a promoter of music for festivals and clubs etc, for actual bands themselves and as a sound engineer, it's nearly impossible to satisfy anyone!

There are a very few successful sites in the UK but trying to get people to engage in them is a nightmare.

What type of music are you considering, anything specific?

Plus in all the years I've had my music sites I've not even earned USD 200 yet!

First lesson YMMV...Your Mileage May Vary:-)

[SIlverMane]

Thanks again :)

Firstly, a forum isn't my main idea, it's more akin to a sidethought
to it, one to create a sense of community and encourage discussion, in
what to me feels as quite a disjointed collection of people. Although, I
do take what you say in consideration, I need to do a lot more research
before implementing it for communities sake.

Husky, I intend to create a broad "tool" for pretty much
any and every genre. Personally I'm everything from soul, too
Hip hop, to rock, and I'd like the site to represent how diverse
my passions are.

I really do think its a underdeveloped side of my locale.
There are local magazines that sort of half attempt what
I plan, and they are rather successful.

My next step after doing the technical and financial side is to
hit the streets and see if it really is worth it or not.

Youthful ambition and all that :P

So does it seems that adsense would not be the system for me?

If I could make 200 per month I'd be happy, although
ultimately in the long term I would love to exceed it,
I'm off to university next year, and some spare change
would be lovely.

[explorador]

Having a site with good traffic is not much of a mystery considering the valuable information you can find here, including the checklists. But getting X amount of money or predicting it, is something else.

There is very little to add to what the other webmasters already said, except to share with you that many here have no way to compare the mechanics of one of their own website to another (still theirs), that explains how many variables including the domain, keywords and source of traffic make it harder to just predict or replicate one method or proven result (that including myself). The problem with communities or anything specialized (too focused) is it develops ad blindness and people just won't click the ads.

The only answer would be to go on and work on the idea, then test adsense on your project, besides that I can only take the risk to say that 600 unique per day would cover all your hosting and domain expenses for sure.

I think, if your idea has potential and you believe it can help others being useful, then it is worth trying even as it won't make money with Adsense. Why? because any useful personal project can boost your work profile to get a job, improve your resume or just get you lots of great contacts for other business. That's what happened with one of my sites, it performed poorly with AS but it marked the beginning of something else.

Good luck.

[ember]

adsense works best when the visitors want to buy something

Disagree. We don't sell anything and do quite well with Adsense.

[JCKline]

You can't predict a thing with AdSense.

[netmeg]

I have extensive experience with forums and extensive experience with musicians, and you're probably not going to hit $200/month for years, if then. The type of site you are talking about setting up is precisely the type of site that many well-paying advertisers would block. They want people who are coming to your site and willing to buy whatever they're selling. (Many advertisers started blocking MySpace as soon as Google began delivering ads on it - people click, but they don't convert) If you're in the music business, you know as well I do that musicians don't have any money. And forums rarely do well either - there's ad blindness, there's the problem that one stop word posted by a user and suddenly your ads are no longer showing till you find it and remove it (and then the users cry censorship) seriously, I don't think you'll see a return for your effort spent.

[explorador]

netmeg: there's the problem that one stop word posted by a user and suddenly your ads are no longer showing till you find it and remove it (and then the users cry censorship)

thats a very important point to take in count, communities create content but you take the risk or must review everything. When you create the content the risk is null except if you cross the line.

[ember]

I just read an article in the NYT that said forums are dying out in favor of social media, etc. Apparently, that wave has passed.

[SIlverMane]

It looks like I have some more research to do.

I'm inclined to agree with the "musicians don't have money" sentiment,
and once I figure out my hosting costs I'll have to do some serious thinking.

I intend to get a steady stream of fans from all socioeconomic strata
however :)

Thanks for all the help guys, I think I need more hard data before I
can progress on this idea.

[netmeg]

I'm inclined to agree with the "musicians don't have money" sentiment, and once I figure out my hosting costs I'll have to do some serious thinking.

I used to manage a southern rock band with former members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Molly Hatchet and Blackfoot in it, and none of us, band or crew, had two nickels to rub together the entire time. Only the top tier has any money these days. The rest are taking roofing jobs (or running websites) on the side.

[HuskyPup]

I intend to create a broad "tool" for pretty much
any and every genre. Personally I'm everything from soul, too
Hip hop, to rock, and I'd like the site to represent how diverse
my passions are.

Hmmm...ok, my perspective on this?

As you know there are many musical genres, my favourites are original blues and what's known as rock n blues or blues rock. I would never go to a generic site for information on this type of music since there are loads and loads of sites that specialise in these genres.

I suspect, but I honestly do not know for certain, that this could probably be said of most music genres. The sites I know have to work extremely hard in keeping visitors entertained and I'm pretty sure it's for the love of it rather than for financial gain.

The problem, as I see it, is that the majority of visitors go to sites for downloads rather than for real-world band/group/singer info or to discuss what's happening. I see this on two regional music forum boards, realistically it is mostly musicians seeking a replacement member, talking about recent gigs, upcoming gigs, good gigs to play and sometimes asking for obscure advice.

I'm not saying it can't be done, this is simply what happens in our region, I see in some towns bands supporting other bands in the audience yet in other towns they are seen as deadly enemies and would never watch another band!

If you do make it work, let us all know and we'll copy you:-))

[SIlverMane]

I'll be sure to keep you guys updated :)

As it stands, I have a lot more research to do, and I think a site like this will help me immensely.

*off to work*