Mad Men image courtesy of Wikipedia
(Sidebar: I am a huge fan of the show Mad Men. Not only do I have a major fan crush on Donald Draper (my husband is aware), but I love the script, the art direction, the sets, the window into the 60s – well the entire show, really. It also helps that I kinda sorta come from a advertising background. Not really actually – I was in web consulting. I cannot wait until Season 3 starts (vaguely listed as Summer 2009 on the AMC site). )
I’ll be doing a few posts on advertising since I am starting to think through the mechanics of it for my stroller site. My main revenue will be from directory listings, affiliate programs and of course advertising.
When it comes to determining the monetization of my web site, I seem to feel like I’m going through some kind of 10 step process to get to what a lot of other people already know. While I know a lot about building web sites, my knowledge is limited (right now) about monetizing them. But here’s what I know (apologies if this seems basic, but you can be a witness to my pain):
Step 1: Realize Google will not make you rich.
I’m sure there are people out there who have made a ton of money using Google in some get rich quick scheme. I think I was wooed by them and believed for a moment that I could do the same.
At first, I thought that if I crowded my site with Google Adsense that I would be ridiculously rich. When I calculated how many pageviews I needed to make any amount of money, those hopes were quickly dashed. According to CalculatorsLive the average CTR (click through rate) is 1.5%. If you use their Google Adsense Revenue Estimate Calculator, you can determine how much your site might generate, assuming that you have two Google Adsense ads running on your site. Not only do the assume the industry average CTR of 1.5%, but they also place different CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) rate on each of the categories. So, for example, if your site is getting 1000 pageviews a day (that means that your visitors are collectively viewing 1000 pages on your site) and it features hotel and travel content, you will earn a daily income of $4 and a yearly income of $1460.
$1460? I know money is money, but that is certainly nothing to quit your day job over.
Now take that calculator with a grain of salt since that calculator is pretty buggy and right now my limited knowledge doesn’t know if their assumptions are anywhere near correct. But regardless, the basic message rings true: I need a heck of a lot more than Google to get me to be self sufficient. I would need to garner a flood – actually an ocean – of traffic on a consistent basis for Google to make me any money.
So in realizing that Google would not make me rich, I need to find other streams of income for the site.
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