hey guys. this is my first post here. I run a small but growing guitar instruction and forum site that I started in late feburary. I plan on starting school in the fall, and I'd really like to just focus on my studies, without having to take a crappy job somewhere. what I'd like to know is if it's possible for me to earn enough from my website to live off of (I could live comfortably on $20,000 a year). I've read posts on here about making much more than that, but how long does that take? is it realistic to make a goal to hit $1600/month by later this year? if so, how do I achieve it? if you'd like to check out the site, please do. it's www.leagueofguitarists.com.
Yes, it is very much possible to make $1600/month, but it depends on a lot of factors, the biggest of which is, what kind of traffic do you get. Traffic is a giant factor in financially success Adsense sites. Just an example: one of my sites does $200/day, but it's a high, high traffic site (100,000 impressions a day on average). Judging by your site's topic, I'm guessing you're getting very low-paying keywords, so in your case I would say that you need very high traffic to meet your goal of $1600/month. So, the question is: What's your average traffic?
it's very difficult for $1600 a month. hmm that's about $54 a day. hmm.. for mine, still set my goal at $1 a day and still not that stable earning. LOL You need a lot of traffic to make that much. Also not sure how much you can earn each click from keywords on your website. how much you earn per day now?
i would say that if your site only consists of a forum, then it's going to be really difficult. the cpm for forums are especially low - forum members are normally ad-blind as they normally go to a forum to participate instead of looking to buy something. as such, i would suggest that you add more components to your site - e.g. a news section, freebies, etc.
I totally agree. I make my living off adsense. I make about 67 dollars a day. If you want your site to get alot of unique hits then you need to have more than just a forum. A good design too.
if you check out the right side of the page, there are about 15 pages of content, including free guitar lessons, with more on the way. hmm, maybe adding some music news would be a good idea. I'm not really sure what my site's traffic is. I can look at the stats, and it tells me "page requests", and that's the best indicator I have. my web host, godaddy, has something I can purchase called "traffic facts", but isn't there an easier way to get the information? this site just went up a couple months ago, and I'm having a hard time getting placement on google. what can I do to really bring in the kind of traffic that I need? right now, I'm averaging about $.20/day.
How long have you been putting Adsense on the page? You can use the impressions you get in your Adsense stats to average out a monthly number.
Very attractive site. The banners for My Space and live journal are unique and would seem to be a great way to get the word out.
15 pages and 8475 page impressions is not enough (and it's worse if from forum impressions) make more contents that help you drive the traffic. mine is about 150000 impressions per month still think it's not enough because get CTR too low. I wish I got 150000 impressions per day.
Your best route to success would be to increase traffic. You might want to check out the Marketing Forum to find out ways to get your site out there to the public. Until you get the impressions up to the 50k at least, you won't approach your goal very soon. I would spend all the time you have doing what they suggest over there. SEO the hell out of the site. And I know you don't have money now, but maybe find some investment capital to drive traffic over. Good luck.
you guys are giving great advice. thank you all. so I was wondering. is 8475 good considering that it was it's first full month on the web, and had no search engine exposure or advertising money? or is it pretty average? I have some clever marketing techniques and I wonder if they're working.
You're going by impressions, and that's sometimes not very accurate. You have a forum, and impressions can get driven up by forums because people refreshes a lot or reads through a lot of categories. I would recommend putting a free stat counter like sitemeter on your site so you will know what your unique visitor numbers are (that is, 1 person counts per day, no matter how many times they visit or generate impressions). To make your goal, and taking into consideration your site's relatively low paying keywords (I'm assuming guitar ads don't pay well, though I could be wrong), you'll need to do around 4k-5k uniques a day to make around $2k/month. Right now I would recommend signing for a free account at sitemeter and try to figure out what you currently have, so you'll know how far you have left. So I checked your site's listings in the three main search engines, and you are in Yahoo and MSN, but not the really important one, Google. AFter seeing your listings in Yahoo, I know why. Your site isn't SEO at all, resulting in a mess listed under your name. I would recommend reading the Search Engine Optimization Forum and the Link Development Forum for the next few days. All the information you need to get your site listed in Google, and to be properly listed in Yahoo and MSN, is in there. I know it's a lot to take in, but all of this is necessary to make good money on the Net.
You shouldn't really depend solely on adsense for your income. You should have multiple sources of income, you never know, something could go wrong and the next thing you know, you're banned from Adsense. There goes your money for electricity and rent..
yeah .... you have a very high target yes it is possible but will take you atleast 6 months to a year your site must be the most popular site on the internet for that results and also your topic.... try to get links from high traffic sites... they may charge some money. But it worthwhile to spend that much as it will pay u back double the amont. regards Aditya
I got 5000 impressions a day, 600 unique visitors I still got only $1 a day,, don't worry. need to improve for SEO and keywords
How good are you at playing yourself? I saw this Simpsons Unplugged video on youtube and thought it was brilliant. The first thing I did after watching was to check the address at the end. Shoot yourself playing a few licks and share it on there.
stick around, learn how to promote your site, learn how to monetize it, and above all, keep on adding legitimate, unique, interesting content and you'll get there. for the record, I'm a 20 year old high school dropout. I got started in this business less than three years ago, and I fully expect to be making more than a million/year (ie, enough a day consistantly that when multiplied by 365, it would be over a million net) sometime within the next 12 months. adsense is not at all your only monetization option, by the way. personally, I'd suggest something like this: add tons of content, promote. rinse and repeat until your traffic is as high as you can manage to get it. then make certain stuff require a membership. done correctly, this could yield a hell of a lot more money than adsense.