Do Informational Sites Make Money?

14 replies
Trying to decide how much $$/effort/energy to put into a content driven informational site. Subject is Marketing. Target Market is business owners/professionals/marketers.

The proposed revenue model is advertising based (banners / affiliate links).

Looking for advice from people who run informational websites as to what type of revenue per thousand hits they earn off similar sites.

Sorry for the vague question. I know there are a lot of moving parts here. I'm really having trouble wrapping my head around whether there's any money in this business model.

Thanks for reading, and thank you in advance for any answers.
#informational #make #money #sites
  • Profile picture of the author Christie327
    Unless you are getting tons and tons of traffic, it can be hard to make money through banners and ads. And at that point it is probably easier to join an ad network. I find it much easier (profitable) to make affiliate sales through articles and blog posts recommending or reviewing products.

    I had a site that had a fair amount of traffic, and 87% of sales were through text links.
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  • Profile picture of the author seven777
    Thanks for the answers so far.

    I do understand that a profitable site requires tons of traffic. However, I'm not sure I understand what consititutes "tons of traffic", or what type of revenue a site with tons of traffic would produce.

    What about revenue per thousand hits? What's realistic for an advertisement supported informational site in this niche?
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  • Profile picture of the author JaisonG
    Well here is a good rule to follow:

    Good Content = Good Money

    Trust me you can make some good money off of adsense if you have good content and good seo on the site!
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  • Profile picture of the author Matthewgen
    jaison is right any information site can make some money for you it just comes to good content, and another trick that you might or might not know is:

    say if your site is about marketing than I would say write couple article/posts on your site about a product that you used that you like and give the link out (clickbank or rapbank ) I find it better to talk about a product and provide them with a link than having ads banners everywhere on your site,

    PS: When I go to any site I never click on any ads, however if say yahoo.com says new information on losing weight revealed, i normally would want to check that out.)
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  • Profile picture of the author Robert Herrie
    As for your 1000 hits question and how many sales to predict for this volume...

    I would have to tell you this : Once you are getting the good traffic after months of tuning and elimninating all the Free bee lookers and simply wrong turn kind of visitors .And then maybe after you have fine tuned your traffic so that every one who enters your wesite is actually looking for your PRODUCT!

    THEN YOU COULD PROBABLY EXPECT THIS TYPE OF CONVERSIONS

    1)Out of every 1000 visitors you could possibly get 5-10% to sign up in interest and would like to learn more about your product..

    Equivelant to 50-100 interested prospects

    2) Out of the 50-100 interested prospects you could possibly expect maybe 0.5%-5.0% will possibly buy as long as your site is targetted precisely and has a great system that is very simple

    Everything is based on how well tuned your site is and also how well IN TUNE you are with your potential buyers...
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    • Profile picture of the author myob
      Driving sufficiently targeted traffic may be problematic in such a very competitive niche. This is very similar to the type of model I use in dozens of some of the most competitive niches (non-IM market) myself. It is based on informational sites targeted towards business owners, corporate executives, and professionals in many fields. Much like the marketing niche, all of my niches are extremely competitive, so traffic from SEO techniques and SERPs may be minimal. However, the marketing methods I use have an effective traffic conversion rate averaging 17% on the low end for affiliate product sales.

      Rather than trying to get sites to rank in the SERPs against so much competition, what I have found to be highly effective is to hitch a ride with the competition. Find sites that rank in the top 1-3 positions for all of your keywords/phrases, then either advertise on those sites or write articles for them. Also getting published or advertising in targeted relevant ezines can provide highly convertable traffic. This seems to be a rarely used but powerful marketing technique that works in any niche no matter how heavy the competition may be.
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  • Profile picture of the author pink321
    Thank you for the information. I started a website helping college bound students to look further for help paying for it. With the economy the way it is we have to be creative in paying for this large bill.
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  • Profile picture of the author shuvo
    Informational sites work well with Adsense. I have few blogs on education niche and I am using adsense there and income is not too bad in there for thousands hits as all they are my expected targeted visitors.
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  • Profile picture of the author Greyhounds
    Banned
    Have you thought about throwing some CPA offers in there?
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  • Profile picture of the author Kierkegaard
    If you really know what you're talking about and you can talk in an engaging and exciting way, then go for an informational site.

    Build up a lot of Social Capital by giving freely. You can have adsense and whatnot but don't be seen to push any products at people. Be active on Twitter, Facebook, etc. and give a lot to as many people as possible.

    The more you give away for free the more social capital you'll acquire. When the day comes to make withdrawals, the more you put in the more you'll have to take out.

    Content isn't King, it is a Kingmaker
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  • If your visitors trust what you write, they'll be much more likely to buy the products you 'recommend' in reviews, banners, etc. That's why I try to provide good content first.
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  • Profile picture of the author Robert Herrie
    Hey MYOB ! How do you advertise on those sites? Are you talking about ppv? And You mentioned Write articles for them..Can you describe a little more about this ..That sounded very good///

    Thanks
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    • Profile picture of the author myob
      Originally Posted by Robert Herrie View Post

      Hey MYOB ! How do you advertise on those sites? Are you talking about ppv? And You mentioned Write articles for them..Can you describe a little more about this ..That sounded very good///

      Thanks
      Display ads, banner ads, tile ads, text links etc; it depends on the website. I try to negotiate for monthly rates rather than ppv/ppc. However, the best option is of course to provide content/articles on a regular basis. This is similar to submitting articles to article directories, although these targeted outlets would be considered more contextually relevant and authoritative within your niche. I don't want to detract from the thread flow, but you can do a forum search on "Article Syndication" for some very detailed documentation on this marketing model.
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      • Profile picture of the author MarkPavic
        Another element you can add to your site is a newsletter to capture names of those who arrive on your site. Selling through newsletters can work as long as the content is of good quality.
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