"I plan on a launching a targeted niche website in the health and fitness
market. The bulk of my revenue will come from listings of local classes across
Canada and for classified advertising. Later, I plan to sell merchandise. I
also plan to grow the site with quality content. To obtain at launch a substantial
listing of classes for visitors to see, is it wise to provide a free listing
to potential advertisers for 3 months with a provision that renewals on the
4th month will be a specific price?" -- Rhonda Snith
To build an online business these days dependent upon advertising income is
"iffy," since Internet advertising is still just coming out of its slump and
ad prices may be low.
You're right. A directory of health and fitness classes would need to start
with free listings. But instead of removing listings of those who don't pay
after three months, you might instead want to sell enhanced listings -- bold
face, color, more space, etc. Otherwise your directory won't remain very complete
and won't be considered by visitors as a must-see directory. You'll need to
update the directory to list current class schedules. Selling ads to small businesses
is tough. It requires individual, one-on-one selling during which you'll need
to convince each advertiser that his listing in your directory will bring him
more than enough business to justify the cost of the ad.
Let's examine the revenue that might be generated if you built a focused content
site with Google AdSense ads on every page. PPC prices for the keywords "Tai
Chi," "Chi Gong," and "mind body" seem to be in the range of 17¢ to 34¢ per
click, while "protein supplement" is 46¢ to 50¢. Let's assume that as a publisher
you were to receive 30% to 50% of the PPC rate and get an average click-through
rate of 1.5% (that is, an overall 1.5% CTR per webpage on any of the four ads
that appear your site). At that rate, 100,000 page views per month would generate
1,500 click-throughs, each earning you somewhere between 5¢ and 25¢ -- a total
of $77 to $375 per month. If your site attracts ads that have keywords getting
$2 or $5 per click, of course, your income rises dramatically. It looks like
you'd need to generate a whole lot of traffic to earn much money with
Google AdSense on your proposed site.
