Well not really! The title was deliberate to get your attention. I got you and now you are here… I had an important question on my mind today about internet marketing so I thought I would call all of you to help me figure it out. Here it goes… This question came across my mind this morning as I got out of my bed. Is traffic really equals money as it used to be in the past? Is it still hopeful to make money by placing Google Adsense on a site and hope that people will click on it? Or do you need to build yourself a community around you to make the most money? Many say more traffic means more money – yes that was true in the past and is somewhat true now but I believe your business model will dictate whether you are making more money from traffic or other sources. Keep in mind, like I always say, every startup is different so you may be making money off of traffic but others may not be. Either way it is good to get this question answered – because if you are only relying on making money off of people coming to your site and clicking on ads, then you are really making 30% to 50% of what you should really be making. A good business model that harness the traffic that comes to your site in a creative way will eventually make 3 fold compared to those that purely rely on new traffic to come to your site everyday. Ask yourself this question, does your business model contemplate unforeseen circumstances such as a server crash – a circumstance where you can’t have your site up for few weeks because you forgot to backup your latest data? Does it support you so that your income does not go down to zero for those days OR does it support you in a way to make at least one third or more income even if your website is down? Well I guess going back to my question; if your website relies on fresh traffic everyday to make money then your net income for the downtime will be zero. If your website is built around a community and that you have other ways to reach your visitors (newsletter, etc), then your can continue to make money while your site is being repaired. What do you think is the best business model for an online startup now days? - that relies on Google Adsense or similar pay per click advertisement (based on traffic) - that relies on other direct advertisers (based on traffic) - that relies on the above two plus a network of previous visitors (traffic + previous leads) - that relies on the above three plus ongoing income from affiliate referrals (traffic + your network) In my opinion the latter one is the best to have – it not only provides you with income through traffic but also through many other means – a guaranteed income. Well with this thought in mind, I couldn’t really say if you really need high volume of traffic to make decent income. Google Adsense doesn’t pay as much as it used to in the past. Sometimes you need like 1000 visitors to get $1 worth of income. Does it really worth it or should we look for a creative business model? So why did I have the title – one is to catch your attention and then second is that every marketing tip talks about building up traffic as the first key element of success. Well I think that is somewhat true now days – yes you need traffic but you can make big bucks with less targeted traffic as well. What do you think is the answer to the question? What is your business model? I am going to use the results of this discussion on a blog post on my http://www.startupbooster.com blog to help others do better. Your input will be used in the blog post if you like and I can refer to your site. Let me know in the discussion.
If you're trying to build a lead-based affiliate marketing business, drop AdSense. It will cost you leads that could turn into opt-ins and sales. I wrote an article about it here: Monetization Tip: Should I use Google AdSense? I seriously recommend you drop AdSense if you are getting into serious product marketing. PS. This article doesn't take into account the number of visitors who will be scared away by your ads! Many people will leave a site when they see ads.
About six months ago I had similar thoughts and abandoned plans for a blog to instead take advantage of web 2.0 and how a community can work for you. Attacking your website monetizing goals from all directions is just as important as diversifying your investment portfolio. However, all of your points are directly based on traffic. Traffic is the holy grail of any sort of income online. I’ll save you some time marketing an online startup and share with you a collaborative article posted today titled, “Squawking Parrots Infect Website Traffic Building Strategiesâ€
Joe, good point. Yes I agree with you, if you one is making good money building leads, then they should get rid of adsense because they are basically sending leads to Google! Do you really think that ADs turn off people? any kind of ads or just Google Adsense? I am not a big fan of Google Adsense submerged into contents.