website revenue examples

[Cider]

Hi All,
There's some info around the web on website revenue, things about the biggest earners and people promoting possible earning...etc etc etc

I'm a realist, so I'm certain there's plenty of work involved in any decent earnings.

Be interesting to get examples of real world earnings from websites from people here. Anyone willing to give examples of their sites and examples of what the advertising earnings of them are?

Do most people just go google ad types, are there better ones?

Thanks
John.

 

[Shane]

My adsense sites don't make a huge amount, but my decent ones are making around $60 a month, my average ones are making around $15 a month and some of the duds are making just a couple of bucks. Back in the mid-2000s I had an automotive site bringing in around $250 a month from adsense, but the niche went out of fashion and now it makes around $30 a month.

I have some other sites which I sell leads from, and they bring in around $300 a month each.

It's just a part time thing for me, I probably spend more time on DNtrade than I do developing my domains!

 

[James]

Adsense seems to be paying worse and worse these days. Even if you have 100,000 of page views you can not make much..

Sure some niches pay ok but really nothing can be made like the 2006/2007 period was soo higher CPC's and CPM's.

Alternatives suck too mostly...have tried Adbrite and a few other CPC companies like adsense never really made $$$.

 

[Cider]

Thanks One and James,
I'd be happy, especially early on, for a site to just cover its cost.
Would anyone have links to any of their sites that are doing ok or even poorly, with what they approx earn, so we can get some sort of reference?

Thanks
John.

 

[James]

Mate a good idea is just to head over to Flippa.com and get some ideas what websites are selling for. You can look at their revenue history and they niche the website is in.

My .com.au websites do not really make much money atm, my US/ European targeted websites usually make more money for me...

 

[payattention]

Flippa is like a car yard; it's all autos and 99% are lemons. Thankfully, they're going to prohibit people from selling sites on potential which is good because it's full of scammy crap at the moment.

As for Adsense, Adwords revenue continues to grow each year ($28 Billion in 2010) so it would make sense that publishers are also earning more. Given it's a numbers game, more traffic = more Adsense revenue. It wouldn't be fair to say that Adsense earnings are down across the board based on your own experiences.

 

[courier]

I have a couple of adsense sites however I only really have ads on them because I have not developed them yet - Would like to see examples of high rev adsense accounts

 

[Chris.C]

I'm a reasonably recent entrant into the Australian domain/site market (6 - 12 months).

My strategy for the most part is throw up a minisite with some content on a semi decent domain and try and monetise via AdSense (initially). Ideally I try and develop my sites for under $500 (that includes the domain, hosting, website setup, content creation and minor link building) that said I'd suspect that my average site cost is a bit little higher than this.

My experience over that period using AdSense for monetisation has been that I'll be lucky if a minisite I have developed earns on average $1/day (less than 20% of my Australian minisites achieve this).

That said I'm not too concerned as I have found that often a little bit of time is required for site's search results to improve and the income of some of the better sites offset some of the poorer performing sites.

Ultimately it has been quite a learning experience over the last 12 months on what makes a domain worth developing, and I predict my success rate will improve over the next 12 months.

As for Google AdSense as a monetisation method, I have personally earned over $250,000 via Google AdSense in recent years with a diverse range of sites and it has been my experience that the trend has been falling CTRs but rising CPCs.

So I don't think Google AdSense sucks, I think ad placements are often poor plus web surfers are getting savvier about what is an ad and what is a link.

That said when it comes to website monetisation AdSense is just one piece of the jigsaw puzzle these days, but with AdSense alone it is very possible to achieve a eCPM in most industries of around $10 - $50.

I hope this helps you work out what is "realistic".

 

[James]

Flippa is like a car yard; it's all autos and 99% are lemons. Thankfully, they're going to prohibit people from selling sites on potential which is good because it's full of scammy crap at the moment.

Yeah well that is why you only look at sold listings, you can easily weed out all the crap.

But really good listings and good niches get removed very quickly.