If you have a website, how much money do you make on it?

[Breakaway]

If you have 1 or more websites, how much total money do you make on it?

[Greg]

I'd be surprised if there were a lot of people generating real income from their sites, but hey, you never know. Interesting question to pose - I'll be following this one.

[Jon]

I live off my websites..

[Robert Avila]

It will be interesting to see how these figures change over the years to come....awesome poll

Robert

[AndrewJ]

I make half my income from the web, but I know a few people earning 4 and 5 figures per month.

Andrew

[dmauder]

This a great idea for a poll/thread!

It would be awesome if the folks who make a full time income ($4K+ per month) from their site(s) would share how they actually do it.

I'm in the $100 or less category...despite having tried since 1997 to make more. Well actually, I've had a few months where I made upwards of $1500 but those were VERY few and far between.

Dave

[CeciL]

I live off mine also... See my sig link...

Greg, you are very correct. I see it happen all the time... I get people setup and they don't lift one finger to get any traffic.

Here is the secret to making money...
It takes something called EFFORT. Once you find the effort be very consistent about it and before you know it your getting what you want... Sitting around wishing all day, watching TV all day, playing video games all day, making someone else money all day or just "hanging out" all day will not get you financial happiness.

1 in 10 actually stick with and are making it where they want to be. 1 in 10 seems to be the general success ratio in the financial world... For example 1 in 10 businesses fail... So if you try at least 10 times your bound to hit success and the needed lessons learned (failures) will be worth it.

Time to pull up those sleeves and get your hands dirty!

[jamestl2]

I don't make much, but I am just beginning in the website publishing business.

[investorblogger]

Originally Posted by CeciL

I live off mine also... See my sig link...

Here is the secret to making money...
It takes something called EFFORT. ...

1 in 10 actually stick with and are making it where they want to be. 1 in 10 seems to be the general success ratio in the financial world... For example 1 in 10 businesses fail... Time to pull up those sleeves and get your hands dirty!

Actually long term success rates in Business are somewhat dismal. For example, tracked rates in the restaurant business:

In a study in Columbus, Ohio, Professor H.G. Parsa of Ohio State University, tracked new restaurants from 1996-1999. In the first year, 26% closed. Another 19% closed the second year, and 14% the third. Collectively, 59% of new restaurants closed those three years. By the way, the "failure" rate wasn't very different between franchised restaurants – 57% — and independent restaurants – 61%.

But then it goes on to say:

• First year: 85%
• Second: 70%
• Third: 62%
• Fourth: 55%
• Fifth: 50%
• Sixth: 47%
• Seventh: 44%
• Eighth: 41%
• Ninth: 38%
• Tenth: 35%

"Once you've hit five years, your odds of survival go way up," Birch said. "Only two to three percent of businesses older than five shut down each year.

Also, worth reading.

I will post more on my blog about this, I think. But my wife needs her pc back!

Kenneth

[CeciL]

I should have said small business in general. No need to break out the links. Most small business that fail are never even heard of...

[da1prophet]

So how do you define "making money from your website"? If I have a business providing a service or product and get all of my customers from the web is that "making money from my website"? Or are you talking about ads, etc, generating revenue? Big difference...

[da1prophet]

Originally Posted by investorblogger

Actually long term success rates in Business are somewhat dismal. For example, tracked rates in the restaurant business:

In a study in Columbus, Ohio, Professor H.G. Parsa of Ohio State University, tracked new restaurants from 1996-1999. In the first year, 26% closed. Another 19% closed the second year, and 14% the third. Collectively, 59% of new restaurants closed those three years. By the way, the "failure" rate wasn't very different between franchised restaurants – 57% — and independent restaurants – 61%.

But then it goes on to say:

• First year: 85%
• Second: 70%
• Third: 62%
• Fourth: 55%
• Fifth: 50%
• Sixth: 47%
• Seventh: 44%
• Eighth: 41%
• Ninth: 38%
• Tenth: 35%

"Once you've hit five years, your odds of survival go way up," Birch said. "Only two to three percent of businesses older than five shut down each year.

Also, worth reading.

I will post more on my blog about this, I think. But my wife needs her pc back!

Kenneth

Your point is well taken, but I'd also suggest that the restaurant business has some unique challenges that might not be applicable to small businesses in general...

[Breakaway]

Originally Posted by da1prophet

So how do you define "making money from your website"? If I have a business providing a service or product and get all of my customers from the web is that "making money from my website"? Or are you talking about ads, etc, generating revenue? Big difference...

Any form of income, even if it's selling products or services.

[investorblogger]

Originally Posted by da1prophet

Your point is well taken, but I'd also suggest that the restaurant business has some unique challenges that might not be applicable to small businesses in general...

Indeed the restaurant business does have unique challenges, but then so do most businesses have unique challenges. They're just different ones. If we cut out the businesses facing unique challenges, there won't be much left.

The second link reported:
“The data show that, across sectors, 66 percent of new establishments were still in existence 2 years after their birth, and 44 percent were still in existence 4 years after. (See chart 1.) It is not surprising that most of the new establishments disappeared within the first 2 years after their birth, and then only a smaller percentage disappeared in the subsequent 2 years. These survival rates do not vary much by industry.”

That means by year 2, across sectors 34% failed and in year 4, it was 56%. These stats weren't much different from the stats from the stats for restaurants: 30% and 55%. Now we can go on and split hairs about the statistics and how relevant they are. But that would be interesting to do, however, we're wondering what the percentage of websites are that fail...

Anyone?

[Eggzachery]

Originally Posted by investorblogger

Indeed the restaurant business does have unique challenges, but then so do most businesses have unique challenges. They're just different ones. If we cut out the businesses facing unique challenges, there won't be much left.

The second link reported:
“The data show that, across sectors, 66 percent of new establishments were still in existence 2 years after their birth, and 44 percent were still in existence 4 years after. (See chart 1.) It is not surprising that most of the new establishments disappeared within the first 2 years after their birth, and then only a smaller percentage disappeared in the subsequent 2 years. These survival rates do not vary much by industry.”

That means by year 2, across sectors 34% failed and in year 4, it was 56%. These stats weren't much different from the stats from the stats for restaurants: 30% and 55%. Now we can go on and split hairs about the statistics and how relevant they are. But that would be interesting to do, however, we're wondering what the percentage of websites are that fail...

Anyone?

Those statistics are certainly less gruesome than the oft repeated "4 out of 5 businesses fail in the first five years." (Or is it one year?). All in all, most people are both entirely too pessimistic and far too distracted to succeed in anything that relies solely on their own personal effectiveness, websites not excluded.

The poll results seem to be spot on. Most people I know who make any sort of living "on the internet" got in early and treated domain names like the real estate that they are. One in particular that I'm thinking of owns something like 12,000 domains and most are rather commonplace. Could you imagine having the foresight to register cheese.com? Or go.com? or amazing.com? All the stuff that's now taken and used for lord knows what, but someone was willing to pay a hefty sum to own.

[Brian Lee]

What kind of effort does it take to get traffic? Are you talking about SMO? Message boards? SEO?

I've got the work ethic, I just don't know where do direct it.

[Brutha]

"Once you've hit five years, your odds of survival go way up," Birch said. "Only two to three percent of businesses older than five shut down each year.

Someone who is that bad with math shouldn't be trusted when he publishes a statistic.
If after five years 50% shut down and after sixt 47% shut down, then 6% of those who lived after five years shut down the sixt year.

[gc3833]

It does require a lot of effort. People don't realize it but it is like working a full time job. I make a little bit from each of my niche markets that adds up to a decent amount.

Once I stopped messing with adsense my income went up through affiliate income.

My goal for 2007 is to eliminate some of my sites and produce more income with less overall number of sites.

We shall see!

[Joe826]

Originally Posted by gc3833

It does require a lot of effort. People don't realize it but it is like working a full time job.

I'd say most of the effort is in getting started. When I first got into the Internet biz, I "worked" 10-14 hour days for a few months. I say that tounge-in-cheek because it was more like fun to me.

The Internet is a very unique place. All these statistics about failed offline businesses are completely irrelevant. Start-up costs are almosts zero and your consumer base is much bigger and easier to access, among other things.

The best piece of advice I can give to anyone is to avoid getting trapped in other's experiences. Most people on this forum talk about blogging as a way of making money online, and it is a way, but there are far better ways. Blogging is cheap and relatively easy to learn, but you have to really put alot of time and effort into it before you start seeing a decent return (decent meaning $500 / day or more).

Just keep your mind open and go read a bunch of different stuff from a bunch of different sources.

[Minsc]

Originally Posted by CeciL

1 in 10 seems to be the general success ratio in the financial world... For example 1 in 10 businesses fail...

1 in 10 businesses succeed?