When would you think a website is successful? 1000 members? $1000 income $1000 income a month? Any thoughts?
making any profit=successful However, I would consider successful as enough to live entirely off of your website's income.
Success for me would have to be me being able to quit my job. Once I get to that level I should be golden!
Interesting question: I have a site that is succesful - but it doesn't stand up to any of the measures presented here. The site is about 19 Months old. uniques have grown every month since it was created with the exception of Feb 07 (short month down very slightly from Jan). Uniques at 100K/mth Site has required about 20 minutes of work for the last 4 months -and has still grown. Site puts some nice change in my pocket each month after expenses. now, I just need to do this about 15-20 more times and then give up my day job!
I think it's dangerous to consider such things...complacency can soon set it and a complacent website owner is on a downward spiral. Set goals, achieve them, and set further goals...grow...achieve continued success!
Success has two phases: 1. To get it to make you a full-time living with it (when it brings you 1,000$/month); 2. To get it to be that successful, that you can hire people to take care of your web site and you can only pick-up checks - 20,000$/month, with no human intervention.
Since my service has alot of non-web based components and is fairly specialized, I'd say 500 hits per day.
When the number of returning visitors increases each month, and the number of unique visitors always keeps coming in streams. I never really consider how much money I make from a website in it's success, though I guess for most people it would be.