Is spending all this time on out sites really worth it, ok some people make a decent earning from adsense, but the majourity of people spend ages working on there sites (I know I do) and earn between $1 and $5 a day, is it really worth all the time and effort when you could probably just go and get a second job and earn (im in the UK but at todays exchange rate) about $7 to $10 an hour!!! I'll continue with my sites as working for one company is enough of a pain and I want to chose when I work outside of this time, but I think you see my point, 15 hours a week working on a site for about $10 when you could get $150 with another job.......
if you might consider working with site is fun, then everything is ok. how many guys can achieve $500 a day, I am wondering....
Yeah, I think of maintaining a site more as a good experience. But if I make a little money on the side, such as the money used to pay for hosting, that's good too.
well if your site can make 5$ a day, create 5 more so its 25 bucks a day. and after its up and stable, u can update it once a week or 2 with quick content.
Well, the majority of us make websites hoping one day that it would take off. So if you are working hard keeping that in mind, you should not be too concerned about what you are making in the short term.
I work on my sites to increase the income but if i did not work on them for months the income would continue. Compare that to a job where you do not get paid if you are not able to show up for work. Another way I like to think of the website income is to compare it to what a savings or investment account would produce. How much money would you have to have saved in order to create $5/day of interest income? I realize that is a little artificial, but think it is a more accurate perspective.
I agree with mhdoc, it's passive income you can't beat that. If you work hard enough for it, you will have a popular site.
nice point. The idea is to work parallely. Do not quit your job till you are making more than ur day job and more imp till the site needs all ur time. As a part time income any money is good and even $5 day means $150 a month. But if you have a good site ... stress is on the word "good" .. ie a useful site, eventually people will find it. The world has billions of people and so many people are getting on the internet every day ... and the chances that more people will reach ur site are increasing every day. So sooner u get the pages in.. u will be ahead of the other sites and more ppul will reach it sooner. IMO content is very very imp ... people waste a lot of time on design ... design is imp only when u have the content going. So experiment and only when u see ppul like ur site, then u can work on the design. Spend as much time as u can ... and give it a shot ... becos even if u stop updating ur site, ur adsense income will not stop ... best of luck. Hope this made sense.
Making a website shouldn't be about the money. You should create a site because it's about something you love and enjoy and would like to share with other people. To me it's more about having fun and learning new things. Making money from it, is just a nice extra. Also consider that for most sites, after the content is written, design is done and the site gets decent traffic... then the revenue will keep coming day after day. So a website should be seen as a long-term investment.
you should also see long term. when i began my first site (my only site money earner as of now), i guess my "hourly pay" was around 0.2$ per hour spent working on building my site. --> a lot of work, little revenue this month, some 18 months later, given that now this site is going well and i spend very little time on it, just need to update it once a month, and add a few stuff now and then, my hourly pay would be between 50 to 100 bucks per hour working on the site. --> little work, better revenues and, i think it will go on increasing so, if you believe you can make your site take off somehow, then i think the initial investment (working for almost nothing) is worth it, long term. also, as far as i am concerned, working on my site, making it go from nothing into something, is something i'm proud of, and i'm also proud of the little $ i earn, as it is my sweat, my $, my ideas, anyway i'm prouder of the little $ i make out of my website than of the big $ i make out of my "real life" job. prouder, also means happier, and should one day i make big $ from my sites, then, woah, it will just feel better for me than making big $ out of my day job. is all
"this month, some 18 months later, given that now this site is going well and i spend very little time on it, just need to update it once a month, and add a few stuff now and then, my hourly pay would be between 50 to 100 bucks per hour working on the site. --> little work, better revenues2 You say you are earning $100-150 an hour, but how much time are you putting in? If you only put in 2 hours a month, it means you are earning around $200-300 a month.
and so? it's quite natural that i did not indicate how many hours i was putting in, as i'd like not to tell everyone how much i make. the point however was, at the beginning you work for nothing or quite, and you'd probably make more working any other job, but then later, when your site has grown and find a market, you work for a hourly rate which is not to be dismissed, and in the long term you will probably earn more $ spending 200 hours developping a website than you will working 200 hours for 10 bucks an hour. that was my point
If you're only making $5/day on a site that you are spending 15 hours a week on, I think it's obvious it's not that you're not working hard enough, but you're not working SMART enough. I would take stock of what you are doing, your approach, and find out what it is you are doing wrong. Then again, maybe it comes down to working on a site that just won't yield more than $5/day.
Loads of good opinions etc I wouldn't say I'm not working hard enough on it I've given up my friday nights out to work mainly on one site but also on a couple of other bits. The main site I work on is about Koi fish which is hard to really push as its a bit of a niche subject. I don't want to go putting my link everywhere like I could with a finance or similar site, which means I have a small amount of places to target for links and for traffic. Google picked me up quick for the keywords I was aiming for "cheap koi" now I'm trying to get it on to the front page for other related words. Another problem is apart from forums its hard to find places to get links as most of the decent PR related sites are shops which makes me kinda limited in scope. Its true that this is more of a hobby writing about something that interests me and I know a bit about, so its not all about money with this. I was more thinking if I put some of my time towards something for a purely money making point of view that it would take forever to reach the levels of income that a lot of people say they can make. For September so far I have 1,925 hits and 82 clicks. I would need this amount of impressions and clicks a day to be smiling about using adsense and I can think of no ways that a viable to get that kind of consistent traffic day in day out with a niche subject matter. Then if I did make a site that was targeting a much more broad subject where I could get that kind of traffic I'd have to be fighting against lots of other sites as most subjects are pretty overcrowded with sites. Sorry guys thinking out aloud here lol
Aron Wall at seobook.com has lots of good information. In your case it might make sense to look at which of you pages get the most traffic and see if you can expand your niche in those directions. Koi would seem to have obvious connections to garden pond information for example. That would put you into the home improvment & gardening arena which might work for you.
If you are trying to get on the front page of Google, Yahoo, MSN search results, you can look at the pages already on the first page and get some understanding from where/how they have placed their keywords/content. Those sites may be much older than yours so it may take time. Also if I were you, I would have at least TWO "main" sites, not one. And Friday night while your friends are going out to party may not be the best time to work. Can you be focused on this time? I have some SEO tips here: http://www.themostclicks.com/seo1.html
That's your problem right there. You're getting almost no traffic. How long have you been doing this, and have you worked on SEO? A site that is more than one month old SHOULD be doing at least 500 unique visitors a day with proper SEO done. If your site is that old, and you're not getting that traffic, you've not done the work that matters -- getting the traffic.
jack - give the guy some hope. Depending on the niche, that's just not the case for a site which is only one month old relying solely on SEO.