How do you know if a site will make money?

[Zackkoss]

Well I am hoping for some money. I started a blog thats about technology and games and am not getting much so Im trying yahoo ads. Starting small just 15 cents and a 3 dollars a day. No luck with that either. Also another thing ive tried multiple affiates and am having no luck at all so im spreading out a little. But how exactly does one go about knowing if a site will make money on ads.

[MarketLeverage]

As far as making money on a site, you never know if a site will be a winner or not. You are going to have winners and losers. Trial and error will become a part of your day.

Build a lot of good content and promote your site. It helps for your site to have been up for a while.

You will need an attractive site with SEO, a lot of good content and a niche site that has little competition.

Don't build a site that you are going to have a million sites (literally) to compete with.

Come up with a unique site on a different topic.
For instance, I saw a site the other day that was about puppets. I thought that was really unique and that it wouldn't have a lot of competition.

You will have to "Think Outside the Box" to come up with a good niche site.

[Linda Buquet]

Good points Market Leverage.

Zack Asked: "But how exactly does one go about knowing if a site will make money on ads."

Here are a couple ways some affiliates pre-test a niche, product or merchant.

Some do PPC direct to merchant to see if an offer gets enough searches and then also to see if it converts, before building out a whole site. This only works of course with merchants that allow direct PPC.

Some affiliates will throw up a quick free blogger blog, squidoo lens or hubpage since they can probably get higher rankings and a little traffic rolling in faster that way in order to test the waters.

Zack, a couple thoughts on the existing site.

Technology and games - that's about as competitive as you can get.

"Starting small just 15 cents and a 3 dollars a day." So how many clicks have you gotten? Some programs only convert at one sale out of 200 clicks. Conversions could be lower or higher than that depending on how good your ad is, how targeted the KW, if you have a landing page or are going direct to merchant and the quality of your or their landing page COMBINED with the price of the product and whether there are better offers out there - LOTS of variables. So my guess is to get enough data to do any evaluation at all, you'd need at least 500 clicks. Do you have that many?

Have you done split testing on the ad copy and the landing page?

Are other affiliates promoting that product or affiliate program if none are it could indicate the program is a dog - if too many are - it could mean competition is too high and the big dogs are beating you out.

Have you checked for leaks on the merchant site?

See how many issues there are to look at? The reason for lack of success with a particular site, niche, product or merchant could be a problem on your end, their end or several places in the middle. It takes lots of testing, trial and error to find something that works for you.

[Zackkoss]

Ya your probably wright. This is way over my head. Well thanks for smaking me with the hand of reality but it was fun thinking I might have gotten some where with that blog. I have another idea though that might work if I give it time. But what qualities should I be looking for in an affilate so I can do direct ppc. I mean isnt that how some people make money.

[Linda Buquet]

Direct to merchant is a little trickier because many merchants don't allow it and also due to Google's rule about only one domain. I'm not really sure the best way to find the good ones. Some of the PPC guides I've linked to in our PPC forum may provide some tips.

[MasterOfNone]

I would *not* mess around with direct PPC until you have some more experience under your belt. If you've ever tried running a serious PPC campaign, you'll know how quickly you can get burned a bad promotion. It's extremely humbling the first time it happens. My personal strategy has been to work on my organic sites, doing small PPC tests along the way for particularly attractive offers. Keep researching, and try to avoid diving headfirst into PPC until you have a very good idea of what you should be doing. Even then, you'll still fail often, but you have to keep learning.

I'm usually a big fan of the "just do it" attitude, but when it comes to PPC, serious planning and education is required unless you have tons of cash to burn.

[fitnfree]

PPC can be great, but suggestion would be to read up on it first, then start small...very small to get the hang of how it works. A person can easily get carried away and wind up with a big bill. But you can control that! Good luck!

[purplebear]

Patience lol you may never really do well with it, but you have to have a lot of patience and hope you will some day. Some people will just give up too soon. Ya never know. Good luck

[cumbrowski]

I first wanted to post my full response here, but then I noticed that it became a bit too long (again) . I also thought that this general question deserves a bit more attention, so I blogged about it and provided there my suggestions and tips to answer this question. I also referred to the existing responses, which were already very good and helpful IMO.

Here is the link to the post at ReveNews.
How Do You Know, If a Site Will Make Money?

Cheers!

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Carsten,

Thanks so much for expanding on this topic and linking to it over at Revenues where others can read about it. It's a good thread and you gave some good info over there too. Hopefully some others will weigh in too! Thanks again!