How Realistic is this?

[Sean]

Hey, this is a quote by Chris from another thread regarding someone wanting to make $50 per day by the end of the year:



Really... there is hardly any niche that isn't going to get you to that level if you can manage one page a day of new written content.

Now the post was in early April, so figure by the end of the year thats 200 - 250 content pages. My article writer would probably charge me $1,440 for 200 and $1,800 for 250. What's to stop me from say ordering 250 articles for $1,800, then, by the end of the year, be making $50 per day/$1,500 per month (not a bad ROI). How realistic is this?

It's weird, it feels so obvious to just do it, but for some reason I'm really hesitant. It must be the risk of the initial investment. I think I just need some reassurance that this is the way to go. What do you think?

[vahsi000]

if you want your site to even have a chance at earning that much money per day in that small of a timeframe, you'll need to invest in advertisements first & i don't think a person can earn $50/day in a matter of months unless they really know what they're doing!! That's my opinion anyways, then again i can be wrong.

[chromate]

Sean, I personally think $10 a day is more realistic by the end of the year.

Even with 500 articles, each collecting 3 uniques a day, at a CTR of 5%, that's 75 clicks, which at an average of say $0.10/click, makes you $7.50/day.

Obviously so much of that is variable. But they're the kind of figures I would personally use a guide. So ~$10 a day.

[Sean]

if you want your site to even have a chance at earning that much money per day in that small of a timeframe, you'll need to invest in advertisements first & i don't think a person can earn $50/day in a matter of months unless they really know what they're doing!! That's my opinion anyways, then again i can be wrong.

Yeah, I have several strategies I'm going to use for promotion, related text links, posting on related forums with links in my sigs, etc.


Sean, I personally think $10 a day is more realistic by the end of the year.

Even with 500 articles, each collecting 3 uniques a day, at a CTR of 5%, that's 75 clicks, which at an average of say $0.10/click, makes you $7.50/day.

Obviously so much of that is variable. But they're the kind of figures I would personally use a guide. So ~$10 a day.

Hey thanks, I didn't really think of putting into a formula like that (weird because I always put things into formulas). Puts it in a different perspective.

Let's see...
500 articles (if i can even think of 500 topics) would cost me $3,600.
I'm not sure what the avg. traffic per article, CTRs, or $ per click will be, but I think your estimates would be pretty close (CTR might be a bit lower and $ might be a bit higher) which would mean about $7.50 per day or $225 per month... hmm not bad, but not great either (funny how on the internet a 75% ROI isn't great).

I wonder if that the quote of Chris' was based on some kinda formula like this... I imagine it was probably just a quick estimate based on his experience, but it should be interesting to see what he or other people might have to say.

[Shawn]

$10/daily is a sad realistic figure for a year of work. If you have an average paying niche and have added new content daily to a site for a year, you should be clearing $75-$100 a day with little effort.

[Sean]

$10/daily is a sad realistic figure for a year of work. If you have an average paying niche and have added new content daily to a site for a year, you should be clearing $75-$100 a day with little effort.

Well, it wouldn't really be any work as I would just be paying someone else to write them, but I still see what your saying. But where do you get the $75-$100 figure? I imagine like it's from your experience, but is there any way to formulize it?

What I mean is what variables would you expect would be different from chromates estimation. His formula turns 500 articles into $7.50 per day, whereas what you're saying is 365 articles into $75+ per day, so there must be some big difference in a variable or two.

I'm thinking the difference might be in more than 3 avg. uniques per article per day and/or more than $0.10 avg. per click, but I'm not sure.

[chromate]

In an average niche (ie, $0.10/click), with 365 articles - $75/day? Nah, I don't think so. If each article was averaging say, 5 uniques a day, with a 5% ctr, each click would need to be paying about $0.90/click to get into the figures you suggest.

We're talking purely PPC advertising. Of course, affiliate progs could bump it up a lot.

[Shawn]

Oh, I was referring to affiliate programs.

Generally, I only use PPC advertising with poor performing and untargeted traffic. But, if my traffic is targeted, I make multiples more with affiliate programs.

[chromate]

Yeah, add affiliate progs into the mix and things can vary wildly.

[Cutter]

Don't back away from the $50 a day goal. You have 7 months to go, plenty of time!

How well have you researched the niche you are pursuing? How is the competition, and what kind of search volumes do overture and wordtracker show for your targetted keywords/phrases?

I don't know about this $7.50 a day from 500 articles thing, I have sites with a fraction of that which make more a day. I don't even measure it in articles, but in how many visitors you can realistically attract (which really depends on the niche potential) and how well the PPC ads pay. Even in a niche with poor paying keywords (5 cents a click) you can pull in over $50 from a few thousand uniques.

For Google TOS reasons, I can't disclose actual stats, but I'm going to give you some examples which I believe are very realistic. However, there are a few rules:

#1 You have to build the site in a way which attracts at least 5 pageviews a unique average. I can help you with this personally.

#2 The market has to support a pretty strong volume of searches. If the top term only gets 2,000 searches a month thats not good. On the other hand, if it is paying a few $ a click, recompute the calculations and it might work out fine.

So.. lets say you can bring in 2,500 uniques a day. Average pageviews per unique are 5. Clickthrough rate is 6% (very, very achievable.) This brings you to 12,500 pageviews a day. At a 6% clickthrough rate you will be doing 750 clicks a day. Lets say you make a conservative 10 cents a click. Thats $75 a day.

Another factor to take in consideration is traffic source. AOL and MSN will send you traffic that has a stronger clickthrough rate than Google (and incidentally it converts better as well, so "oops" clicks aren't an issue.)

Bottom line, if you want to make $50 a day first make sure your market will support it (if not you will just need to cover 3 or 4 niches instead of one.) Second, be prepared to build a high quality site. This means your pageviews will go up and getting quality links will be relatively painless.

Take your goal seriously and you can achieve it or even exceed it; doubts and excuses themselves are the only real obstacles stopping you.

[Sean]

Great reply cutter!


Don't back away from the $50 a day goal. You have 7 months to go, plenty of time!

Well that $50 a day goal wasn't actually mine, but I think I'm gonna steal it now. heh


How well have you researched the niche you are pursuing? How is the competition, and what kind of search volumes do overture and wordtracker show for your targetted keywords/phrases?

Well there's really so much variation in all the different targetted keyphrases. I have some short term ones with 20-100 searches and some long term targets with 20k+.


I don't know about this $7.50 a day from 500 articles thing, I have sites with a fraction of that which make more a day. I don't even measure it in articles, but in how many visitors you can realistically attract (which really depends on the niche potential) and how well the PPC ads pay. Even in a niche with poor paying keywords (5 cents a click) you can pull in over $50 from a few thousand uniques.

Yeah, one problem I have is that if I'm going to get up to 200-500 articles, some of the topics would have to be pretty obscure stuff, meaning the avg traffic per article is going to go down, and with it the ROI of the articles. At the same time I think it's important to target the obscure stuff... especially for short term results.


For Google TOS reasons, I can't disclose actual stats, but I'm going to give you some examples which I believe are very realistic. However, there are a few rules:

#1 You have to build the site in a way which attracts at least 5 pageviews a unique average. I can help you with this personally.

#2 The market has to support a pretty strong volume of searches. If the top term only gets 2,000 searches a month thats not good. On the other hand, if it is paying a few $ a click, recompute the calculations and it might work out fine.

So.. lets say you can bring in 2,500 uniques a day. Average pageviews per unique are 5. Clickthrough rate is 6% (very, very achievable.) This brings you to 12,500 pageviews a day. At a 6% clickthrough rate you will be doing 750 clicks a day. Lets say you make a conservative 10 cents a click. Thats $75 a day.

I think as far as the whole site itself is concerned (there's going to be more sections than just the articles), I can definetly reach this. The problem I'm having is if I can reach it with just the articles, to be able to have a good ROI on them. For example to get 2,500 uniques a day with 500 articles, would mean 5 uniques per article, but with 500 articles so many would probably have to be on stuff that is too obscure to get that. Like I said though, I do think this is reasonable for the whole site.


Another factor to take in consideration is traffic source. AOL and MSN will send you traffic that has a stronger clickthrough rate than Google (and incidentally it converts better as well, so "oops" clicks aren't an issue.)

Bottom line, if you want to make $50 a day first make sure your market will support it (if not you will just need to cover 3 or 4 niches instead of one.) Second, be prepared to build a high quality site. This means your pageviews will go up and getting quality links will be relatively painless.

Take your goal seriously and you can achieve it or even exceed it; doubts and excuses themselves are the only real obstacles stopping you.

Alright, thanks for the advice, I think I'm really starting to "get it" when it comes to website publishing, but I still have a lotta work to do.

[moonshield]

$10/daily is a sad realistic figure for a year of work. If you have an average paying niche and have added new content daily to a site for a year, you should be clearing $75-$100 a day with little effort.

Agreed.

[aeroguy]

Cutter, in your experience does it matter what pr your article page is at? My current layout for an article site is as follows
Home Pr5 >Categories PR4> Articles Pr0

[Skeewe]

Beside articles what is potential of other pages like those interactive ones on my site
(quizz, ship database, cameras...etc).
What would be the best strategy earnings on those... ?

Thanks;

[Blue Cat Buxton]

So.. lets say you can bring in 2,500 uniques a day. Average pageviews per unique are 5. Clickthrough rate is 6% (very, very achievable.) This brings you to 12,500 pageviews a day. At a 6% clickthrough rate you will be doing 750 clicks a day. Lets say you make a conservative 10 cents a click. Thats $75 a day.

That 6% CTR represents a 30% CT on uniques (assuming 5 page view per unique); That seems high, or have I missed the point of needing higher pageviews?

[Cutter]

You don't need high pageviews, but in my experience its worked better. I guess people just browse the site longer which increase the chance of them running into an ad which is relevent to them.

In order to achieve this you need a site with good content (cookie cutter $5 slop articles won't cut it) and your site needs to be designed in a way to maximize Adsense clickthroughs. Its not just about Adsense placement, size, and colors, it is about the design of the rest of your site too.

[Blue Cat Buxton]

I guess that makes sense, if someone is looking around, more likely that they hit an ad link. If they leave from the entry pagethan the back button to where they came from is likely the way they will go.