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What is High Traffic?

High/Mid/Low

         

mbatta

3:26 pm on Oct 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I realize this is a general question but Im real curious. Outside of major sites (amazon, yahoo, etc), or maybe just in the context of this forums members sites, what is high traffic? What was your "goal" when developing your site? It seems odd but I dont know if, on a daily basis, 1000, 5000, or 50,000 visitors is considered "high traffic"? For me right now and my new sites, Id be happy with 50 visitors a day! (I do at least realize that is as good as zero, but im working on it).

Matt Probert

5:27 pm on Oct 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Everybody's concept of traffic levels seems to vary.

We satisfy over 240,000 requests to our http server a day. But this isn't "high". I know this isn't "high" because we use an Apache http server and Apache can not handle "high" traffic.

That said, the traffic we get is far too much for a shared hosting account, so it certainly isn't "low".

Matt

sean

6:39 pm on Oct 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Id be happy with...

Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it... only to find out that your wish was not specific enough.

...50 visitors a day!

Which 50 visitors?

You can make a full-time income from a site that gets 50 visitors a day.

But first you must graduate from the most general questions to more specific questions. Move beyond idle curiosity and focus on the kind of curiosity that puts food on the table. :-)

As for your question about what is high traffic, it depends on the subject of the site.

dmorison

7:32 pm on Oct 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I know this isn't "high" because we use an Apache http server and Apache can not handle "high" traffic.

Apache has no problem with "high" traffic; you'll lose your back-end first.

mbatta

7:53 pm on Oct 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



sean -

I appreciate the reply. Knowing that it was a general question, I tried to avoid a response saying its too general by indicating I understood such point. Additionally, I was looking for general answers, rather than someone pointing out that my question was general (I guess I wasn't clear on that point). To get 4 or 5 replies saying things like " hey I once had a goal of y/day but now normalize to about x per day...." would be helpful to me and possibly some other less-informed lurker. For example, the apache comment was helpful to me (thats what we are here for, to help each other a post and reader(s) at a time, not to help everyone all the time with every post) because it gave me one more bit of information to add to my collection and help give me perspective. The number 50 I used was pulled out of my bung to clarify where Im coming from.

And one last point. I never mentioned income or dollars. My question is pure general traffic and all responses about traffic volume would be helpful to me. What I do with the traffic, high or low, is irrelevent. I may just want to convey information rather than collect dollars (for example).

Thanks again.

steve40

8:18 pm on Oct 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



mbatta
This question is often asked but its never easy to provide an answer .
For a large portal with significant adverting budget 25,000 visitors per day may seem very low due to start up costs staffing , hosting , advertising etc. etc.
But for a small ecommerce site run by a guy on his own and no advertising 500 visitors per day could provide an income and pay for hosting etc.

My own view is your visitors will depend on the following
How big the site is
How much competition in that niche
How much you spend on advertising / promotion
How well the site is SEO
How sticky is your site to bring visitors back and for them to recommend to others

Me I set myself a target for each site I develop that co-incides with man hours to produce and manage day to day , how much i invest in advertising / promotion
Hosting Costs etc.
My target for each site is the number of visitors per day over the first 12 months that will show a small profit on the first years investment , this means on some sites I might set a target of 200 visitors per day and on others 2500 per day

You can only ever use 1 year due to the changes that occur on the internet every day with new sites , new competitors , new SE algo's , ppc costs, etc.

just set yourself a target not to high and if you go over that fine 50 visitors per day seems fine
then read everything you can find on this board and learn
just my 2 cents worth
steve

itraykov

8:23 pm on Oct 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Quality is more important than quantity. 100 visitors in a one niche can be better than 10000 in anohter

sean

9:19 pm on Oct 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I was looking for general answers

My point is if the question is too general, you may as well consult a random number generator. I am trying to help, honestly. The reason I responded is precisely because the less-informed lurkers you mention spend too much time thinking about these types of questions.

At the mininum, a question (and hopefully the site behind the question) should have a purpose. In terms of traffic levels, a server admin would be concerned traffic as it related to hosting, a business person could be concerned with traffic as it relates to market share, etc.

duppyman3

8:58 pm on Oct 25, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



sean put it very elegently...high traffic is what puts food on the table...my site get 100-135 unique ip address a day from google refers.

It results in an average of 5-9 orders and this site is huge like 500,000 parts huge..the more google indexes the more traffic I notice usually in big jumps the more orders i get..its enough now that I don't have to work...I just have a shipper drop ship for me.

caveman

3:53 am on Oct 26, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



High traffic: More than I expected. :-)

Reid

8:44 am on Oct 26, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



a good way to guague it mbatta is to look at your keywords.
Go to overture keyword checker and see how much traffic per month your keywords or keyword phrases generate. This will give you a market size.
You can then guage what percentage of the market you have for those words - all a rough estimate of course.

topr8

10:46 am on Oct 26, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



1000 uniques a day is a really good starting target, because ...

this should provide a big enough sample for you to analyse your logs and see, where your traffic is coming from and what it does when it gets to you.

it will give you huge insight into the type of keywords phrases your visitors are using, you may be very, very suprised - you must get an analysing tool that allows you to see the only used once or twice keyphrases ... imho the single most amusing thing i read on this site, and you can read it every day is someone spouting off about how they are number one for their keyword. give me a bunch of number ones for my 4/5/6 word keyphrases (most of which i haven't though of myself before they were used) over number one for a generic phrase anyday.

once you have insight, then you can use it productively, without it you are stabbing in the dark.