galvin Posted May 11, 2009 Share Posted May 11, 2009 Just curious if anyone knows much about traffic and how much you need to have to make a living off a website. I remember a 60 Minutes story about a girl who started a site that offered creative myspace designs and they said she makes a million dollars a year, all in advertising. I checked Alexa and her site is ranked about 18,0000 in total traffic. Does this mean that EVERY site with more traffic than her makes around a million dollars in advertising, or more? Or is there a lot more to it than that (i'm sure there is). But in general, if you have a site that is around 10,000 in total traffic (or better) in Alexa rankings, is it a safe bet that you could make a living off of advertising? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
galvin Posted May 11, 2009 Author Share Posted May 11, 2009 I meant 18,000 (not 18,0000 ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel0 Posted May 11, 2009 Share Posted May 11, 2009 PHP Freaks is ranked 24,843 on Alexa. Our advertising revenue is in the low end of the four-digit numbers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
premiso Posted May 11, 2009 Share Posted May 11, 2009 I think advertising makes "some" money. I mean you might as well put ads on your site if you do not care right? Any little bit helps. Where a lot of the money, such as myspace, comes into play is they sell advertisements spots. Because of how "widely" it is used etc, to buy an advertisement spot on their site costs a lot of money. Same with Facebook etc. To put your ad in one of those sites, you have to pay quite a bit. Because you know your ad will be viewed by tons of (unique) people each day. Where as a site like phpFreaks, no one really "wants" to buy a spot because it is extended only to certain individuals and generally it is a 1 shot deal without returning customers persay. If you make a site that is as desirable as myspace or facebook, yea you can make a ton of money by ads, but not by yahoo or google ads, by selling ad space to individual companies. That is where the money really is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mchl Posted May 11, 2009 Share Posted May 11, 2009 PHP Freaks is ranked 24,843 on Alexa. Our advertising revenue is in the low end of the four-digit numbers. On the other hand, a celebrity gossip forum with similar traffic would probably earn much more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
galvin Posted May 11, 2009 Author Share Posted May 11, 2009 Strange. Are celebrity-gossip loving people a better deomgraphic, ad-wise, than computer programmers? Must be, but I don't see why. If anything, I know programmers are smarter than most celebrity gossip fiends . Do computer prorgammers not react to ads? haha. These are all rhetorical questions. Just seems strange to me that a site ranked 18,000th in traffic can make that much more ad money than a site ranked 24,000th (i.e. $1 million vs. low four digits). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
premiso Posted May 11, 2009 Share Posted May 11, 2009 To answer your question, no. Most, and I use that term loosely, programmers tend to understand what can happen by clicking on an advertisement. Whether it be spyware infected etc. Or if an AD popsup saying you have a virus etc, most know not to mess with it. Where as other computer users do not understand this too well. They see something big and flashing they assume something has gone wrong. Such as facebook, they have an ad that says "You have 1 new message, Click here to read it". They assume that is a facebook message so they click there and viola they are now at the advertisers site. As for me, if it is a google AD I may click on it if it interests me. If not I tend to just ignore them. The big flashy ADs I do not see cause I have them blocked with FireFox plugins. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asheeown Posted May 11, 2009 Share Posted May 11, 2009 It all depends on the ads you have on your website. Low paying, strict one category ads go on normal websites such as this one. Then on general public sites ad agencies can contact and offer a certain amount for a spot if they feel they'll get a lot of hits there. It's all about your community of people and just what they are looking for. If you have a site for older people (50+) you can put ads for life insurance, etc. and most of those ads will be scams because they realize that it's easier to scam an older person than a younger one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam Posted May 11, 2009 Share Posted May 11, 2009 Also take a look at the advertising services Facebook offers, and the range of departments they employ: http://www.facebook.com/advertising/ http://www.facebook.com/careers/ I'm assuming PHPFreaks just doesn't have anywhere near this at hand... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Posted May 11, 2009 Share Posted May 11, 2009 On one of the sites I've been developing, we used to run under the 1,000 mark, now running around 3,500 and I can tell you we're not making millions upon millions of dollars. I'm not saying we're losing money, but we're not becoming the world's next Google Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ohdang888 Posted May 14, 2009 Share Posted May 14, 2009 Also take a look at the advertising services Facebook offers, and the range of departments they employ: http://www.facebook.com/advertising/ http://www.facebook.com/careers/ Well very, very, VERY few companies based on the internet employ that many people. I'd say only a dozen, if that. I'm assuming PHPFreaks just doesn't have anywhere near this at hand... As far as i know, phpfreaks doesnt have any full time staff, just admins. Also, the value of your site depends HUGELY on your demographic and site trust. Facebook ads are worth more because companies can target 22 year olds in maine that wear blue sweaters on tuesdays. (That's a joke, just pointing that out for the slow ones...) Users TRUST faceobok, so they enter REAL information into it...so companies know the ads are raelly targeting the people who they want. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
waynew Posted May 17, 2009 Share Posted May 17, 2009 Depends on the age group. If your site brings in alot of clicking-happy young teenagers, you'll make a bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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