How many visitors would be considered "economically viable"

maxwell smart

Firstly, I'm totally new to this forum, so apologies in advance if I've posted to the wrong section.

I have (what I consider) an excellent idea for a website. If I was going to run adverts on it, how many hits do you think would make it viable? Are we talking about millions??? '(and am I understanding the premise behind AdSense?). I am an optimist and think I might get quite a lot...but perhaps not that much of an optimist!

Thanks in advance:D

Evil Phil

I'd recommend that you get in touch with the ad companies you're considering and get exact payment details from them. Then work out how much its going to cost to get the site up and running, this means development + hosting costs. Then work out how the time and cost of running the site.

From this you'll be able to work out how many vistors you'll need to cover your costs.

mneylon

The number of visitors isn't the only factor. If the visitors to the site are the "right" ones, then your site is "worth" more to potential advertisers.

Having said that, however, the amount of money you can make these days from selling pure banner ads is considerably less than it was in the past.

Adsense and other contextual based advertising might work better.

As for the economics ...

You probably need to work out costs of:

- initial design / development
- domain registration
- hosting
- ongoing maintenance / upkeep / content updates

Moonstar

If you don't have experience with Adsense already you should probably set a small site or blog, doesn't have to be anything fancy, apply to Adsense and stick some ads on it to see how the whole thing works.

As well as what has already been mentioned, there are a number of other factors to consider such as the type of ads your site will display (if using contextual advertising a la adsense) and the click-through rate on displayed ads.

CoNfOuNd

I'm intrigued by what your excellent idea is....go on, tell us!

I wouldn't advise you to be too optimistic on the ad revenue front, unless your idea really is excellent, but most ideas have been done before. You'll need a great site first to attract lots of hits, and good ad placement etc. to get people to click on them and generate revenue for you.

jmcc

CoNfOuNd wrote: »

I'm intrigued by what your excellent idea is....go on, tell us!

Not another web directory? It seems that the operational lifetime for the average web directory in Ireland is about 18 months. While Adsense might have lengthened that somewhat, most barely cover costs.

Regards...jmcc