Web Traffic and Online Advertising

So, I've been talking to a lot of people lately (yes, real live humans) about web traffic, search engines, online advertising, internet marketing, internet retailers, link farms, and so on. It has become painfully obvious to me that almost nobody I talk with has ever heard of half the stuff I'm saying.

This leads me to this installment of the blog. Let's chat for a few moments about the internet.

If you have a website, what kind of traffic does it get? Do you even know? What would you consider "a lot" of traffic for a "normal" site?

How about if you own a small or medium sized traditional, brick & mortar business. What do you expect your website to do for you? Are you considering selling some product online? How do websites actually make money anyway?

In a word: traffic.

The #1 thing to think about online is how to bring in traffic, and the #1 way to accomplish that is to have timely, relevant content. I know, it's crazy, but nobody gives a rat's ass about your flash intro that takes 14 minutes to load on a dial-up modem that you paid some high-flying design studio 10k to create. They want some real, honest, accurate, useful information. Keep that in mind.

So, what good is traffic anyway? If 1,000,000 people visit your site, but don't buy anything, what good are they? Let me tell you, the answer is a whole lot. Let's take a look for a moment at a little internet startup you may have heard of, google.com.

google.com is a 3 billion dollar per year economic powerhouse. That's right, 3 billion, with a "b". Funny thing is, you have probably never paid a single red cent to use google. So, how in the sam hell can google generate 3 billion dollars in 2004 if the users (read visitors) don't have to pay anything to use their site?

In a word: advertising.

Online advertising, in particular pay-per-click advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry. Just like TV before it, and radio before that, there is no shortage of businesses out there willing to shuck out mega-ching to let the public know about their great product or service. How better to reach tens of millions of potential buyers than with ads tailored to the very things those people are searching for, exactly at the time they are looking for it? Bravo, google. You have changed the world forever.

So, to answer the question, what are 1,000,000 visitors worth if they never buy a single thing from you, the answer could be $500 - $5000, depending on the content your site is delivering. Best of all, these sort of numbers can actually be accomplished. Here's an interesting tidbit: NOT INCLUDING google, The word "poker" was searched for over 1,000,000 times in January of 2005 alone. If you were to draw 50% of those searches to a site, it is likely that you could easily earn $3000 per month. Remeber, that DOES NOT include the most powerful search engine in the world. A #1 ranked poker site probably can pull down 5x that amount, if NOBODY EVER BUYS anything or gambles at the site. Maybe next time, I'll get more specific on how all this online advertising stuff works, but the post is getting long, and the hour is growing late.