Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
Right now, after a year of running my site (100 hours spent) I'm making 1/8th what I want to from the site.
If the site continued to grow at the accelerated rate it has over the last 3 months I think the goal would be reached within the next 6 - However I fear that I may have reached my growth spurt.
Then I think, what I'm working on is a niche area.. If I owned half the total traffic in a day, I'd definitely be hitting goals.
Is this the part where I dive in? or are there ways to more acurately evaluate the opportunity before I commit a larger amount of effort?
anx
Umm, I spent over 100 hours on one site in one week. You get out what you put in as long as you spend your time wisely.
"Determining Potential" is the realm of fools and swindlers. Realizing Potential is the reward of dreamers and the dogged.
Time spent has no real relationship, ask a tyre fitter how long it takes to change a wheel, then ask your local preist how long he would take to change a wheel.
Imagine a checklist, and tick each of these. (no order or priority, nor comprehensive).
Title and Description good, body copy keyword weighted, user friendly, easy navigation, all links work, search engine friendly, kind to the eye, spelling correct, easy download.
Submitted to Dmoz, indexed by Google.
This is the minimum level, have you achieved all these at the very least?
Umm, I spent over 100 hours on one site in one week. You get out what you put in as long as you spend your time wisely.
I agree with digitalghost, oftentimes the amount of time you spend on your site is related to your site's ultimate potential. Of course, there are always exceptions.
Niche markets have a vast amount of potential. If you exploit that potential, the rewards are well worth it. But to do that, you need to put in the time, and spending only 100 hours on a site with potential over the course of a year isn't really in the league you need to be in, in order to reap the rewards.
You need to get a plan together in how you can get more of the traffic in your niche, but you will definitely need to put in the time. There are very few niche markets where you can get half the total traffic by only spending 100 hours on it over the course of the year.
This para doesn't relate to any person past or present, dead or alive... but, a novice can spend 100 hours on developing a website and make a real mess.
It isn't time, it is the physical job, the end result... what is done in that time. You can spend 99 of those hundred hours just on graphics that won't make one bit of different to serps.
quality and time are two differing issue,
That said, someone can easily spend 99 hours on just the graphics for their website, but they will need to spend more than just 100 hours overall on the site in order to see any real results from a business point of view.
Time management and effectively using that time are very important when building a business online.
I think people are heading into this discussion with the understanding that we're all professionals. ;) Milking the clock simply doesn't work as a business model unless you get paid by the hour and have no scruples.
Right now, after a year of running my site (100 hours spent) I'm making 1/8th what I want to from the site.
I see two elements, Time spent on the site = 100 hours.
Time of the life of the site = one year.
Putting aside any levels of skill and expertise ... it isn't the time but the end result.
I'm not picking on any particular response, just responding to the thread and the opening statement. :)
I agree that we dream and work our way to to the things we want.. and that realizing is far more important than determining.
Thanks for the insights.
[edited by: anxvariety at 7:43 am (utc) on July 8, 2003]
I was responding to the title and meta title of the thread. We're never limited by potential, we're only limited by our technology and understanding.
Running out of fossil fuel? Develop fuel injection. Running out of disk space? Develop compression technologies. We're only limited by our technology and our technology is unlimited. We've found that we can break rules of physics, rules of logic and rules of "nature".
In philosophical jargon, if you can dream it, it's already a reality. We cannot conceive of that that which we cannot create. ;)
I'm afraid though that I've reached potentential on the first try
Why just one site? Why not 100 quality hrs a week on several sites?
Thanks for the encouragement.
I'm just going to slam the brakes on, screech to a halt, reverse and get back on topic. :)
How and what tools do most of you use to determine the potential of your site?
The potential of your site is related to the marketplace.
The internet can give you the edge over your competition through SEO.
The tools are in your keyboard.
I posted this part earlier;
Imagine a checklist, and tick each of these. (no order or priority, not comprehensive).
Title and Description good, body copy keyword weighted, user friendly, easy navigation, all links work, search engine friendly, kind to the eye, spelling correct, easy download.
Submitted to Dmoz, indexed by Google.
This is the minimum level, have you achieved all these at the very least?
There comes a time in the life of every site when it's time for re-evaluation, and sometimes it needs to be done regularly. After a year is time enough, and especially if you're dealing with a product that has potential for holiday sales the time is right now.
>>If I owned half the total traffic in a day, I'd definitely be hitting goals.
Are you exploring additional ways to get more traffic? How about an assessment of what your rankings are? A-1, or is there room for improvement?
If it's a product line, how are conversions - any room for improvement there?
One of the things you can do for accurate evaluation is to see if you're reaching the maximum keyword potential for your site. Are there other keyword phrases applicable that you're not targeting pages for? Have you been adding content pages to target variations on the keywords you're now going after?
DG, this is where I have to make a departure from your line of reasoning:
I was responding to the title and meta title of the thread. We're never limited by potential, we're only limited by our technology and understanding.
We have to look further than the limitations of a title and description, we have to look at context. And more importantly, we have to take a realistic look at reality.
There can at times be limitations to potential, depending on the niche and the site itself. There are some niches that are low dollar markets and sites definitely have a limit as to potential for income. Then, some sites can have such product line limitations that they max out at a certain dollar amount regardless of how much expertise there is or how much time is spent on the site itself.
It isn't possible to make a blanket statement - too much is site-dependent. That's why a re-evaluation is in order periodically, to reassess, and come as close to the truth s possible.
Really? Expatiate. ;)
It's more like 5 hits from 200 different searches on Google, like:
"widget information stuff"
"how can i get a widget"
"widget pictures"
"cool widget pictures"
"wiggets"
..etc.
It seems like this sort of placement is more broad and less exposed to knockout by someone or the search engines since its scattered everywhere.. the relevancy that is.
So where do I go? Do people seek these tertiary terms? Does this represent what areas I've done poorly or good in?
Hoping there were some definite checkpoints or indicators for different stages of sites.. and like you said I '1 year' is a good time to reevaluate.
A mental reach for the owners manual that doesnt exist..
I definitely have the freshest most useful content on the particular subject on the web and I am aggresively pursuing it with little commercial competition.
Here now at #30 in Google for the main subject keyword - I see the following:
"University of Widgetconsin - All about Widgets" about 15 deep.. So now I'm competing with an educational institution who has very high page rank.. and then perched in the #1-3 spots is a popular international association with the acronym "WIDGET".
Fortunately I've done quite well without really getting any of the traffic for specific requests to my keyword (which gets lots of traffic compared to what I'm getting).
Now I look at both, they seem disjointed, the title doesn't correspond with the subject, that's why it all seems a liitle fuzzy.
Something to consider is how big, really, when all is said and done, is your niche market? One hopes you know who the other players in your market are, but do you really know how big they are? On the www, this is often difficult to do; 'International Widget Corporation' could well be a college student working out of his dorm, and his share of the market might be vastly different, quantitatively, not qualitatively, than you expect. In other words, you might believe he has 50% of the market, but that 50% might be a lot smaller than you think.
I don't know that there's anyway to determine potential, because it's just that - potential. All you can do is what everyone else has said; make your site the fastest-loading, most cross-browser-compatible, HTML-validated, easiest-to-use site of it's kind, and then provide the goods, services, and customer support to match.
I personally have a goal to get X number of new customers per week, and to keep them for Y number of months. In my instance, X and Y are fairly low numbers, but are slowly increasing as things pick up. So far, results have exceed my expectations, but not quite met my hopes. What's the potential of my site? Haven't a clue.
You can have the best site in the world, if you don't put in the effort of SEO and maintenence then its potential will deteriorate rapidly.
Limits are elastic and they'll go as far as you can stretch them.
