Whats More Important, Site Traffic Or Site Income?
March 6th, 2008 by
Mark
While there are many different aspects to consider when setting up a new site, one of the main problems which webmasters may have will be when and how to monetize their sites. When to chase the traffic and when to chase the income, while bearing in mind that you are running a long term online business.
So what comes first?
The first factor to consider is that if you expect your site to cover its own marketing and promotional costs from day one, then you will probably be very disappointed. While there are many sites which are “profitable†from day one, in reality these are very few and far between. So what element do you chase first?
While in all honesty the two factors go very much hand in hand, in the early days of your site, income should not be foremost in your mind. You are starting a business which you expect to be around for years to come, hopefully offering you a very lucrative income stream, so at this stage you should resist the urge to push headlong in and monetize your site instantly.
Instead it is vital that you concentrate on getting your site out there, noticed and building up your customer / fan base for the future. Obviously if you are offering a service or products for sale you need to have these available from day one, but you do not need to fill your website with Adsense and other forms of peripheral income streams. If you are a information site, it may be an idea to hold back on the adverts until you are more recognised and well known – there is nothing worse than landing on a site to be hit by a barrage of adverts screaming “click me, click meâ€.
The truth of the matter is that if you attract the right kind of traffic in the early days you will create a reputation for yourself which will hopefully continue for some time to come. Once you have a user base you can then shift up the Monetization of your site and move to the next level, ensuring that you are not overselling yourself with the possibility of scaring some visitors off.
In summary, if you go for the right traffic from day one the income will surely follow with even the simplest of monetization programs. Short terms bucks are great, but a steady long term income stream is much better!
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March 7th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Traffic is obviously much better to have first because then it will drive revenue. I think one problem a lot of bloggers have is they think everyone can become a problogger in two days.
While it will happen in a hurry for some people, this is not the reality for everyone. The people who make lots of money from their blogs are the ones who have tons of traffic.
Traffic begets traffic and THEN you can start to make money.Thanks for your insight on this topic.
March 8th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Build up traffic first. Once you have a decent amount of traffic, income will surely follow!
March 19th, 2008 at 6:40 am
My blog is still young, but it definitely seems logical to build your traffic first. Establishing your style, how often you will post and what your regular readers can expect from you develops over time.
I agree that if you throw too much up initially, you may turn readers off. I myself am one of the readers who is turned off from being inundated with ads and not being able to get to the posts.
However, if you go to a blog that you are familiar with and they’ve done something different, you’re more willing to accept the change.
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