Hi, I've spent quite a bit of time researching and coming up with candidates for my next online venture. I've set myself a rather ambitious goal, to start making $5000 a month online by September 2009. I've finally narrowed down my list of candidate projects to a few. But before I make a final decisions I went hunting for some more information and possibly ideas. I thought it'd be a good idea to look over SitePoint's marketplace of premium sites to see which kinds of sites make most money. I was rather surprised to find that most of them don't even make $1000 a month, and alot of them are in the sub $500 range. This means that I already own a couple of "premium" sites according to those standards cause I already make around $300 per site. So I'm beginning to wonder. I don't doubt it is possible to make $5000 a month on a single site, because there are some (well publicized examples of that and more). What I wonder about is just how common that is? Is there anyone on DP who makes $5000 a month on a single site? Thanks
Sure, I guarantee you 100% that you can make 5,000 a month easily. It all appends on what you do and how you do.
I had a site that made a few thousand a month for a bit before I put it up for sale. Some of the keys are: 1. Stay focused - don't let the little things send you off in another direction doing something else instead. Stick to your goals and follow through with your plans. 2. It takes money to make money - The more you invest (properly!) into your project, the more you are likely to get out if it 3. Research - Keep up with your niche, find out what's going on, make changes to your website before your visitors change on you 4. Don't cut corners - You're better off spending $5,000 to get something done right the first time, then spending $500 in 3 different places and still standing there holding yourself wondering where you went wrong... 5. Marketing, marketing, marketing - You can't get enough marketing. The more effort you put into your marketing campaign, the more results you're going to get. It's a numbers game.
The folks making $5000/month are not selling there site here or Sitepoint. They are busy working on their site! Seriously, most of us have no incentive to sell a good earning site. Most buyers will not pay what we as owners know our sites are worth. I've had big time investors come to me and inquire about buying my site. Even when they offer 4-5 years revenue it still is not worth it to me. So yes there are plenty of folks out there making 5k or more from their site. They just are not typically for sale.
About not selling a site that makes that kind of money, that does make sense. Even with modest earnings I'm hesitant to sell my sites because they still keep me afloat, albeit there are some other reasons like the attachment to the community. Anyway, the advice about focus seems right on. But I'm sort of stuck in an analysis paralysis trying to come up with the best project to go with because I sort of want the first thing to be THE thing I make my goal with. Although, if it doesn't make it I suppose I can make it in such a way that I could sell it and restart and then repeat the process until I hit it. Somehow having multiple sites to maintain implies lack of focus though, but I suppose one way to resolve this is to just dedicate time slots to each site and then spend them on that site alone, and always have one main project of focus. So for example I could take 4 days a week on the main project and 2 or 3 days on the other less important ones. Anyway, those who make $5000 a month are they doing it mostly with advertising or is it usually necessary to get involved with some affiliate, lead generation or direct product sales (e-commerce) business? I heard that lead generation and subscriptions (if you can develop something valuable enough for people to be willing to subscribe) are the best way to go even beyond $5K. This can make tens of thousands or even hundres of thousands from what I heard, but it's probably also hardest to build.
It's possible, but my advice...don't get over extended, and get atleast 7 hours sleep a day. LOL I know it sounds funny, but sleep deprivation can hinder your thinking and motivation!
I dunno man... I've had some of my most creatively inspired and successful moments around midnight or so... On the second night. 48 hours without sleep sometimes can bring forth genius. The famous minds of the past have usually borderlined on insane... Lack of sleep brings about insanity... Creating the perfect balance between the two can make you rich! but no seriously, he's right... sleep is good. It always helps if you have money to invest to keep things going in the beginning, or financing available to you. If you want to go all out and really make a go at a big popular high income site, it's best to do it right from the start... Look at the big sites out there... did they ever have a stage where they started out looking like some 13 year old slapped together a site at angelfire and slowly grew to the top? No, most of them were created by people with the money and resources to get some good brains working together, and pay some staff to get it more than just off the ground. If you'd like a billion dollar idea, I've got one I'd bet the farm on, that I'd be willing to partner up on with the right candidate... I've got the experience, knowledge and resources to go with it, unfortunately I can't get it going cause it's one that would need a decent amount of capital to make it work.
i think those making $5000/mth will surely not going to sell it off. I'm also wanted to know what kind of site that make that amount of money
I think it can easily be done it just takes consistency and organization. I a starting a new site and will be making that kind of money a year from now with consistent organzied marketing make a check list of daily minimums for marketing then on a few days a week go a step ahead then slowly raise the standards of marketing and advertising efforts
Yeah i have been constantly making $200+/day online but not from a site Its from forex trading. For me its impossible to earn even $10/day from my blog
I beg to differ. I've bought several sites in SP making that kind of money and more. What's annoying is that it's taking longer and longer nowadays to find one. But therein lies the secret. The quickest way to making $5,000 a month is to buy that income stream in. The main drawback is, of course, the capital requirement which may prove a bother if you don't have ready cash. Plan B is, as you've astutely identified, to discern the best opportunities from studying successful sites. In this unofficial examination of the top ten resources to make money from home, Sitepoint came in at #1. That's not suggesting you buy a Sitepoint but that you start your quest there (or site marketplaces like it). libervisco, you come across as an articulate chap. Maybe creating a quality content site with passive income (like Adsense) is the right road for you. Perhaps you're good at building and managing an affiliate network. Or being an affiliate for someone else. Identify your strengths and play to them. $5K a month is not a big deal. At all.
I agree. I think our points are the same. I know you CAN find them for sale, but they are few and far between... Since most folks running them are happy with the income stream... particularly low maintenance sites pulling in that kind of money. I work from home... Take walks with my dog any time of the day I want... and make money while I sleep. It is tough to sell that... and tough to put a value on it.
I have 100 sites, make 1000 a month. My friend has one site makes $10,000.00 a month. He has a PHD and can code Java when he is half asleep. He working on that site for about 3 years (part time) He dp not promote at all.. SE traffic + word of mouth + people linking automatically. (whatever comes goes to his pocket atleast 95%)
I know a few webmasters who clear this monthly simply on content (Adsense/Kontera/CPM Banners, etc). Also, for ideas, read the google webmaster success stories...
Good Point, I have made a post about this on my blog http://nbridges.com/blog/why-not-lend-partially-sell-your-websites/ suggesting a positive alternative since SP marketplace is filled with junk sites and may be we need to think from a different angle
Regarding investing or buying an income stream I don't have much of a surplus. I certainly couldn't afford to buy that kind of an income stream so starting from scratch OR trying to grow existing sites to that level is all I can do. Right now I have about $200 which I can invest, but I probably wont have the same kind of surplus every month so.. ongoing investements would need to be limited. I'm frankly not too afraid of that though if I start a project for which there actually is enough demand for. In that case I wouldn't need to try too hard to convince people to visit my site or use my service, but merely to just get the word out and provide the means for existing users or visitors to easily spread the word themselves. Foggy, thanks for that link. I've went through it and started sifting through some idea sites. Interestingly as I was going through it I thought of a small idea myself, which might seem almost obvious, to put up a site that searches all these good idea sites so you have a one-stop access to idea links and can tailor the results to the topics you actually need ideas for. Guess what? Thanks to the ease of Google Custom search I allowed myself to just go and do it. It was perhaps a couple of hours work: Behold IdeaProbe.com. You bet I'm gonna use it myself to search for ideas I need too, and who knows maybe it is useful for someone else too. It costed me 2 hours and 7 bucks to do. (If I decide there's potential in it I already have some more advanced ideas for it, which could increase its usefulness, like being able to submit specific idea links to a digg-like voting queue). That said, I still didn't made the final call regarding the next big venture, but I'm thinking of ceasing "over-thinking" and just giving one of the candidates on my roster a go. So long as I can sell it, I'm not necessarily bound to it so if it doesn't work, sell and move on to the next candidate, until I have both the right project and the right skills to reach my goal. Makes sense? Oh and yeah, I agree sleep is good too.. I sleep, but my schedule is rather frakked up. Mostly I end up working good deal of the night and sleeping the whole morning. Cheers
Darn just as I was writing above, three new posts are up! Checking out the links by Sockmoney and poseidon..
Its possible, just really needs to be a sticky site where users create the content and continually add to it. A site like a blog where you are basically a one man show will have a real hard time getting there though.