New Projects: How long do you give them?

I've just opened a new, high quality website about football. Apart from enjoying the content, I hope it will also earn me a decent amount of money in adsense and other advertising revenues.

As someone who is new to this side of the web, as I'm normally in the corporate sector, how long do you give it before you cut it off as a general rule? It's going to cost me a bit in bandwidth and hosting etc etc, but I hope it will more than pay for itself in the future.

Bit of a "how long is a piece of string" question, but would appreciate any advice and guidance from experienced DP'ers.

Thanks

 

Since getting traffic to a website is a long term deal, because google takes the age of a website into account in ranking issues, getting rid of an old website is really comparable to getting rid of an investment.

In other words: the work I do today, will get me (with an old, established website) money in 3 months or so. For a new website it's more like 6 months to a year. I'd say, don't give up till you've been at it for two years at least. You should be learning about SEO, online marketing, online promotion and link-building (these are overlapping fields) in the meantime.

 

In my own cases, I usually give about two months. If the site is not making money by then, it's not worth my time and effort to keep managing it.

 

To be honest it all depends on you and how hard you are willing to work to get the site to start making money. Now a days it is not enough just to build a site. You need to get traffic to the site. In order to do this you must promote the site by advertising, link building, seo work on the site, ect. The more you put into this type of things to build your site the quicker you will see a return in your investment. If you put time into this you will normally see a retun in anywhere from 3 to 6 months. If you just build it and do nothing then you might never see a return.

 

well personally i want quick results,but i will give them,may be,one year if i have to

 

This is totally up to you and how much work or money are you willing to invest. Could happen in one week or never.

You don't have to wait for Google to do something and only after 1 year or so to start working. Google is not the only traffic sender.

 

I think it also depends on the rate in which you write new content, as a regulary updated site will get picked up by search engines more quickly, and it will also get more returning visitors.

 

When I start a new site, here's my own personal timetable for it:

First month. I expect absolutely nothing from the site. I just add content, do SEO, and don't worry about ad placement or ads or money, etc. I expect to lose money and earn nothing.

Second month. I expect to start getting a trickle of earnings, but still not enough to pay for hosting, etc. I continue to add content and do SEO. It's sitll too early for any expectations.

Third month. I should start to make some money now, at least pay for hosting, if not more. I will start to add affiliate products to the site. At this point, content has slowed to a trickle or a crawl. I expect the SE's to have indexed the previous two month's content if I have done my SEO correctly.

Fourth month and onward. I should be making more than enough to pay for hosting and make profits off the site by now. If the site proves successful, I continue adding content at regular intervals. If the site doesn't prove successful, I will continue to add content every now and then, but no more than 30 minutes a week.

After a year, two things happen: Either the non-profit site has propagated throughout the SE's that it starts earning me money, after which I start working on it again, or it never does, and I just let it die, or use it simply to link from, using its age to help with PR.

That's one man's "plan", such as it is. The bottom line is, when I start working on a site, I go "all in" or I don't go in at all.