website, business-model, web-development, advertising, internetI have ideas for a few simple websites. None of them are going to be the next Amazon or Facebook. But based on some preliminary research, I expect each site to receive a minimum of 10K views per annum.
Outside of people viewing (and perhaps clicking) advertisements on these sites, there are no other sources of revenue that are likely to be profitable.
The sites will be fairly low bandwidth: only text and small images; no video or audio.
The cost to purchase appropriate domain names will be negligible. Hosting costs, on the other hand, will need to be part of the equation.
Do sites that have no source of revenue except from advertising typically generate a profit or a loss? Is there an economy of scale that generates profit at a certain point?
That depends on what kind of value proposition your website will have.
Often people underestimate costs. True, hosting and domain are cheap these days, but you should also factor in your time involved in building, promoting and maintaining the website.
You should bear in mind that CPM rate for general display is on average $1.90, for video is $24.60 (according to http://www.adexchanger.com/agencies/2014-forecasts-global-ad-dollars-surge-driven-by-mobile-social/).
I reckon this may be true but not sure it takes into consideration websites that aren’t well known, for which CPM may be far lower.
Click through rates are usually well below 1% for new websites and won’t bring in lots of revenue. Especially if you think your website won’t have big traffic in the beginning.
To sum up, the more page views and clicks you get the higher the income will be. I’d also consider other monetisation strategies.
Are the sites something you will enjoy doing anyway?
If it is something you want to do and can afford to do then do it. If you make back the hosting cost from click throughs then great. If the sites get busy then it will be worth our time to try monetising.
Are you building a community? If so, that is a good investment even if you don’t know now how you will monetize.
People can spend $$$ on keyword EMD domains for traffic, don’t dismis a good domain. They can sell for millions.
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