Making My Site Pay...

Do I have Enough Traffic?

[mmiller]

Hi;

I have a website hosted in the US that's coming up for renewal again. For the last 4 years I've been paying for it myself and each year I find myself wondering if I should renew. I've put up a PayPal Donations link but to date have only received about 80 USD.

I'm wondering if there are other ways to make it pay and if so, how much income do you think I could get? The majority of traffic goes to my forums and stats on the whole site typically look like this;

Visits per Day = 5,490
Average Visit Duration = 4:43
Median Visit Duration = 1:58
Page Views = 17,749
Hits = 133,833

The site is usually visited by more then 100 different countries each day and Google has more then 1,000 pages of it indexed. It ranks #1 or top 10 in a lot of popular searches.

Can it make money? How much could it make? What's the way forward? and would you renew it for another year?

Best & Thanks;
Marvin Miller

[dcheney]

There is no way to predict what it would make. The best way is to simply experiment. Try adsense for a month (or however long you have before you have to decide) - and see if the results are enough.

[ken_b]

Depending on the type of site it is that's more than enough traffic to make a fair income from. Not all sites qualify, but if yours does, Google Adsense would be one way to earn a few dollars.

Keep in mind that some topics pay better than others.

[ControlEngineer]

With those numbers, Google Adsense is certainly worth a try. You probably won't get rich (but who knows?). You might not get anything worth while, but there is a good chance that you will cover your expenses and make a little extra money.

You won't know until you try, but there is certainly a reasonable chance that it will be worthwhile.

[mmiller]

OK, so there's enough traffic to warrant trying it out and Google AdSense would be the way to go? Then I might as well renew for another year - this time with some ads :-)

The site actually has a lot more going for it then I've described. It really owns some top keywords and has some real international appeal as well as some very specific appeal.

And away we go.... Thanks everyone!

[mmiller]

Way to go guys! After a few hours of having AdSense up and running I already made 1.29!

That's pretty cool and as mentioned, I'm sure it will pay for my hosting. I can only go up from here!