May 23
Running the numbers on a developed site can be a little confusing but understanding how they work can really help you value a site and determine where to spend your time and money.
We track Adsense on quite a few sites. Here’s how I parse the data:
- Make sure you set up channels for each site and ad unit. This is absolutely essential.
- Look at your thirty day totals by channel/site to determine highest performing site(s)
- Remember that Google measures by impression not page view. Three units per page (the max they allow) means 3 impressions per page view
- Google eCPM rate is your earnings per 1000 impressions. If you have three units per page then you have to triple that number to get your average revenue per page view
An example: We have a top performing site that, using the tools above, returns 4.8 cents per page view or $48 per 1000 page views. This was surprising to me but the knowledge meant that we needed to focus a lot more attention on driving traffic to this site since even a slight daily bump adds up really fast.
The same site averages 2.9 page views per visit so a visit is worth an average of $.14. A thousand visits a day is worth around $140 so spending anything up to that amount daily to drive traffic is worth it, remembering that sites generating $50,000 in annual revenues (which is about what those 1000 visits per day gets you) are worth a multiple of those revenues to a buyer, probably at least $300k. You could argue that spending far more to drive traffic makes sense because you’re losing in the short term (aka, investing) but building equity in the long term.
Know your numbers- you can easily set up a spreadsheet to track them.
BTW, the site I’m using as an example is in an enormous, information-hungry consumer market involving a lot of spending. I’ve also left affiliate revenue out of the equation to simplify things.
Apr 09
I don’t usually lift a post in its entirety but this one from 37 Signals is priceless:
“A few George Patton quotes:
“A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.”
“Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.”
“If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, you’ll be amazed at the results.”
“Battle is an orgy of disorder.”
“Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.”
“I don’t measure a man’s success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.”
“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”
“Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.”
“Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.”
“Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.”
“The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!”“
Apr 06
Viral marketing is truly guerrilla marketing as this guest post from Techcrunch shows. If you post videos on YouTube it is a must read.
2008 is going to be the year that revenue from online video explodes. I have a friend whose 18 year-old daughter’s music videos have been viewed millions of times. She made them at college and they are just her playing guitar, ukelele and singing original music.
Does she make money at this? She is selling 15-20 CDs daily at ten bucks each (they cost around $.50 each to have made). Because those buying are big fans they often put extra money in the envelope as a gift. She has serious interest from several major record labels and is opening for Ben Folds on tour. Because of the rapid change in the music business she may not need a record label.
That’s viral power…
Apr 01
I have about 20 blogs in my reader that are domaining-related. I read through them frequently and went from initial excitement about the potential of a domain market explosion to frustration at how primitive and out of touch this market is with much of the rest of the online world. We are search marketers and developers and have been for a relatively long time (ten years each). As such I’m mystified by the focus on parking as a business model and on the short-term perspective of many domain traders who are happy to sell for a multiple of what it costs them to register each year. The very short term, least effort approach in other words.
I know this has worked extremely well for some pioneers but, if you read between the lines, you’ll find that most of them are now focused on building businesses around their domains rather than parking. Parking is a holding strategy at best. My opinion of course
Selling Domains
We occasionally get an offer for one of our domains. Since we don’t register unless we can imagine how we would build a business around that domain, we don’t have a lot of things we want to part with. I’ve ranted about some of the silly names people tout but that is really an indicator of amateurs entering the market. If you own something good the only reason to sell is that you need the money- and that’s the worst reason possible (but understandable if you’ve been there). When I think about selling a domain I can’t help but think about what we would do with it if it was our primary focus. That makes it very hard to let them go. It’s like owning hundreds of potentially profitable business concepts.
Finally, I’ve come full circle and no longer consider our company to be domainers because we don’t park, we don’t sell and we develop. That’s no insult to the domain world and I’m going to keep contributing but my perspective has shifted to our core competencies- always a good business plan.
Just posted this and then went on to read Julia on the same subject of domaining and arbitrage. Couldn’t agree more.