How do you define value?
Marc’s comment on my last post ,“I have to say it sounded like a piece of PR when it hit the news but I wasn’t sure what somebody would gain by sending people to that website.” Got me thinking on the value of website promotion, which I did intensively, as well as extensively for a year. What is traffic worth to your piece of cyber real estate?
The top ten look like this.
1 google.com $29,474,299,422
2 yahoo.com $18,551,630,085
3 amazon.com $11,501,285,068
4 myspace.com $7,122,577,773
5 ebay.com $5,622,551,932
6 facebook.com $4,013,132,251
7 msn.com $3,590,841,842
8 aol.com $2,801,871,716
9 youtube.com $2,743,146,950
10 cnn.com $1,057,698,410
To put these numbers into perspective I once saw an illustration of a billion dollar notes in a pile. The top ten figures work out to be 87 odd billion dollars, put it into a pile, and you could comfortably park two Boeing 737-200 jets nose to tail, and still have space for your Lear.
As matter of interest a Boeing 737-200 jet is 30.48 meters long.
They could also easily absorb the South African annual budget without feeling it.
Those are the sites at the top, lets get back down to earth, and take our sample case which was the guy playing a prank on his best friend, and look at what could be the value of sending traffic to his site.
The site itself is a good site, minimal ads, as in adsense or any of the other pay per click ads. The ads which are there are selected; the ads or promotions in the different categories are again selected and well presented the “shop” is affiliate based. So there is plenty of opportunity to earn money from clicks and deals: in order to get clicks and deals you need traffic. One of the reports I read put his daily page view just over 2000, with just over 2 page views per visitor; means almost a thousand visitors a day (Not hits: Visitors) A rough gauge for sales 3 in every 100 will buy, 30 sales a day; £10 per sale = £300 over thirty days £9000.00.
All the above is pure conjecture on my part to illustrate the value of traffic.
If you use one of the many, better to use a few of these sites on line: which claim they can tell you how much your site is worth. Is it real? I personally don’t believe them. Why? You can try three different sites, and get three different answers. I tried it with my own site;
http://www.hibiscuscoastvibes.co.za
it went from $6.00, – my hosting fees per month is more than that- to $3000.00, ( I should be so lucky!) having said that, I used them as a basis for this blog post. Is it real? I don’t know, is the value of having traffic real? You tell me.
January 4th, 2010 at 6:33 am
This is exactly the gripe I have with many of the SEO consultants who make promises about all the “traffic” they will generate for your site and how it is going to “boost” your value.
When I look at our publishing interests I can put a physical “value” on the websites by the size of the cheques I pull in at the end of the month. I’ve also put many of our websites through these “value calculators” and believe me the disparity between them and the actual revenue they generate is enormous.
Value at the end of the day is what somebody is prepared to pay for them and comes down to supply and demand.
January 4th, 2010 at 6:39 am
The only other way that I suppose you could define “value” (if you are not running a site for commercial purposes) would be by the influence it exerts.
If you put out a call for a certain community to respond in a certain way how much influence would your website have?
Answering the above question comes down to credibility of website and having really niche and targeted traffic so again QUANTITY of traffic does not necessarily convert into QUALITY of traffic
February 11th, 2010 at 3:19 am
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February 11th, 2010 at 9:51 pm
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February 15th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
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February 16th, 2010 at 11:25 pm
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February 19th, 2010 at 7:25 pm
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And according to this article, I totally agree with your opinion, but only this time!
February 21st, 2010 at 12:44 pm
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February 21st, 2010 at 10:47 pm
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February 23rd, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Y’know I’m inclined to agree with you on this one, I think it’s amazing, but then again, different strokes for different folks!
February 25th, 2010 at 9:29 am
Great post I must say.. Simple but yet interesting and engaging.. Keep up the good work!