How much traffic before you start making money?

[lludawg]

How much traffic does a forum need to get before they start making money? By making money, I don't mean cents per day. I am talking at least a couple dollars per day. I am going to guess you need a lot right? 1000+ pageviews per day maybe?

 

[Neverz]

This depends on your niche. Are you targeting buyers keywords? Some offers and niches convert better than others. For example adult traffic is one of the more difficult types to convert, due to all the free content that exists. Some sort of acne product ranking highly in the search engines however would do well with less traffic than an adult site.

 

[Goat of Departure]

Well that's a tough question to answer because there are no standard answer for that. It depends on a lot of things really but for the most part it's your niche. If you have a niche that's going to really kick in then you can expect a decent amount of money coming in your way but not soon, you still have to do a lot of building up.

Also page views won't really transfer to money that easily not unless you're generating revenue just by views which in most cases is not, well the not the case. But if half of those 1000 views get to click on your ads then you might get luck and earn at least $20 - $50 a month on the first half. And to answer your question, simple put it this way; to earn money on a site you need to as much traffic as you can possibly muster.

 

[tmgenterprises]

There are so many variables to your question that it makes it impossible to answer accurately. As GoD mentions, your niche will play a role, but the biggest piece, to me, is how you're monetizing the forum. If you are depending on Adsense or something similar, it will take a lot of traffic to get anywhere. If you're using other methods of monetization, such as premium memberships or affiliate programs, you could be making money from day one from a tiny amount of traffic.

 

[Lindsey Phipps]

There are a lot of factors that you need to consider. Firstly, your niche is the most crucial thing that decides the traffic rate.

 

[JLogan]

A few thousand unique visitors at least. Clicks are what generate cash. Only a small percentage of people click ads, so you're gonna need a few thousand visitors to get a few handfuls of clicks.

 

[Michael]

I wouldn't think that you were just instantly earn money after a few members. I would have to say after a few thousands. I assume that the way how money is made is similar to YouTube.

 

[Vampa]

There are some micro-niches where you won't be getting a lot of traffic. Microniches which could make you a lot of money even if you got only 100 visitors your site in one day.

However since there never is a guarantee that people will buy the products you promote on your site, to make money your aim initially, to make the venture worthwhile, is to make enough money from ads to pay for all the overhead costs of managing the website. 100,000 views will make you about $100 [for average CPM rates]. That would mean you need about 3,000 unique visitors on your site every day.

If you are getting that kind of traffic to a forum I'm sure you'd make a lot more because some of the visitors might buy the products you promote.

 

[PenguinManiac]

As others have said, it mostly depends on your niche, but, as a rule of thumb, you can start thinking seriously about monetization after you reach the 500 daily visits threshold (even for very small niches), which translate to 15000 visits a month, but I think the general consensus is that 10.000 visits a month can still make you earn a decent amount of money.