5 ms·

How are websites making money?

131 points by lesterbuck 14y ago

DocFeind 14y ago
I was expecting a load of manure, but... the technical data and information was actually very insightful. I would love to see a longer running historical revision of this, say from the late 90s til now. Once upon a time everything was static and monetization almost unheard of. Oh how far the web has come...
- dba7dba 14y ago
  This kind of report/chart would be valuable to some economist/historian/business professor. Because internet moves so fast and web sites can disappear completely (unlike physical books/magazines) in an instant, that kind of data could be lost forever.
danso 14y ago
The first example it mentions, wheretogetmovingboxes.com, has expired: http://wheretogetmovingboxes.com/ http://wheretogetmovingboxes.com/ I was wondering, though, how it did for the search "where to get moving boxes"...its PageRank was 1...I'm assuming that with only 300 monthly uniques (compared to the number of people who must ask that question on a daily basis), it didn't do well. Yet it made $70 a month out of just 300 visitors? That's a pretty high conversion rate.
- garysieling 14y ago
  I did some analysis once about a year ago, and found that a large number of domains were inactive. http://garysieling.com/blog/one-third-site-auctions-abandoned http://garysieling.com/blog/one-third-site-auctions-abandone... It's possible this analysis is over-estimated (e.g. could be defects in the scraping process) but I was surprised even just checking domains randomly how many were later abandoned. I suspect that there are a lot of sites that use various techniques to fake their numbers; if this gets the purchaser banned from adsense it makes a site in the lower price ranges basically worthless.
  - batgaijin 14y ago
    Are adsense bans forever? Are they tied to an identity or a credit card?
    - Rinum 14y ago
      As far as I know they are pretty much permanent. I was banned about 2-3 years ago and I have sent an appeal every year. My appeals are always rejected. Accounts are probably attached to your identity (SSN, domain, etc.) The only way to get another adsense account is if you form a new legal entity.
      - nso 14y ago
        I found that the only way out of the Google perma-ban was to grow large enough to have them call you instead. Their representative - apparently surprised by the fact that my site was banned - clicked a couple of buttons and the ban was removed. The account even had the hundred dollars that was there when I was banned years earlier.
        codexon 14y ago
        How big do you have to be?
        nso 14y ago
        I don't want to be too specific, but the the site yields Google more than 10K USD a year -- which I guess is incentive enough. They still keep pestering me about putting more ads up, tho.
    - garysieling 14y ago
      Seems to be. In my experience it flags the domains, not just you.
  - dyno12345 14y ago
    If you just look at the auctions from a year and go and click on a few of them.... almost all of them are dead. I kind of think this indicates this isn't an efficient market
ChuckMcM 14y ago
So I thought it was an interesting look at what I'd consider 'second tier' web sites. But really they are filling the role that is the 'enthusiast' magazine or newsletter. What this analysis misses is a storefront for a painting company. That is all about lead capture and closing the deal. Harder to quantify. Well, easier for the store but harder for third parties to quantify. So clear business models for client relationship management and review type editorial. Less clear on 'newsy' type sites or reference sites. Game/App as web service seems pretty clear too as a model.
arekp 14y ago
It's interesting to compare the findings with website popularity: http://5000best.com/websites/ http://5000best.com/websites/
- est 14y ago
  I couldn't find some major non-US sites
  - arekp 14y ago
    It lists only websites in English, and the ranking is US-centric.
extesy 14y ago
Here's a more complete set of various online revenue models: https://hackpad.com/Web-And-Mobile-Revenue-Models-(final)-EgXuEtSibE7 https://hackpad.com/Web-And-Mobile-Revenue-Models-(final)-Eg...
thematt 14y ago
The problem with this analysis is it's based largely on numbers provided by unscrupulous people trying to game SEO. Speaking as someone who has purchased multiple sites off of Flippa -- I view any revenue numbers with lots of skepticism. The majority are spammy sites and the remaining sites that are legitimate have often faked/inflated their numbers to entice purchasers.
- unreal37 14y ago
  If median revenue per month is only $133, they suck at gaming it.
  - bigiain 14y ago
    I dunno - if you've got things set up so you can run 100 of them simultaneously… (And I'd guess there's a bit of VC-like speculation going on too - people trying to not lose too much money on the 99 "failures", but making up for it with one single 4 or 5 order of magnitude outlier success.)
marshray 14y ago
"All established websites" sold over the two-year period of 2011-12 amounted to "almost $30 million"?! That's less than three Chipotle Equivalent Units (CEUs). "the price of CMG stock pre-earnings was valuing average revenue per store at $10.5 million" http://seekingalpha.com/article/756011-you-mean-to-tell-me-chipotle-revenue-missed-by-12-burritos-per-day http://seekingalpha.com/article/756011-you-mean-to-tell-me-c... * View-source to read the text of the article. Note the comments about "googleoff" and "googleon" :-)
- snikch 14y ago
  They've referring to all "established websites" sold on Flippa.
Datsundere 14y ago
I'd assume mostly advertisements. Sites like Gizmodo get money from big corporations to review or write articles. Once the sites get big, I think they get free prototypes to test them and review them.
pedalpete 14y ago
This isn't how websites are making money, this is how people are making money selling websites. Completely different, and to me, much less interesting.
Matsta 14y ago
LOL @ Flippa.com Seriously that site has been going downhill ever since they rebranded from SitePoint Marketplace several years back. I remember when they first launched, they used a screenshot of one of my sites on their homepage for at least a year without permission, and this site was listed on SitePoint before they deleted it and refused to say why. Pretty much ever since the whole site is full of scammers. People just put up bogus sites claiming to sell Facebook fans, Youtube views and Twitter followers, that somehow make $5k a month and the domains are barely 30 days old. Then they upload 'legitimate' Google Analytics screenshots, which Flippa never check and then someone stupid enough to buy the site pretty much gets a $10 domain in return for $10k (they take a greedy chunk off every sale of course so they couldn't care less about anyone else) I would guess that a good percentage of the data they use is complete bogus so I wouldn't take those stats seriously. Anyway here's a nice Google search if you want to look into this further: http://goo.gl/qfVAW http://goo.gl/qfVAW

131 points by lesterbuck 14y ago

I was expecting a load of manure, but... the technical data and information was actually very insightful. I would love to see a longer running historical revision of this, say from the late 90s til now. Once upon a time everything was static and monetization almost unheard of. Oh how far the web has come...

dba7dba 14y ago
This kind of report/chart would be valuable to some economist/historian/business professor. Because internet moves so fast and web sites can disappear completely (unlike physical books/magazines) in an instant, that kind of data could be lost forever.

danso 14y ago

The first example it mentions, wheretogetmovingboxes.com, has expired: http://wheretogetmovingboxes.com/ http://wheretogetmovingboxes.com/ I was wondering, though, how it did for the search "where to get moving boxes"...its PageRank was 1...I'm assuming that with only 300 monthly uniques (compared to the number of people who must ask that question on a daily basis), it didn't do well. Yet it made $70 a month out of just 300 visitors? That's a pretty high conversion rate.

garysieling 14y ago
I did some analysis once about a year ago, and found that a large number of domains were inactive. http://garysieling.com/blog/one-third-site-auctions-abandoned http://garysieling.com/blog/one-third-site-auctions-abandone... It's possible this analysis is over-estimated (e.g. could be defects in the scraping process) but I was surprised even just checking domains randomly how many were later abandoned. I suspect that there are a lot of sites that use various techniques to fake their numbers; if this gets the purchaser banned from adsense it makes a site in the lower price ranges basically worthless.
- batgaijin 14y ago
  Are adsense bans forever? Are they tied to an identity or a credit card?
  - Rinum 14y ago
    As far as I know they are pretty much permanent. I was banned about 2-3 years ago and I have sent an appeal every year. My appeals are always rejected. Accounts are probably attached to your identity (SSN, domain, etc.) The only way to get another adsense account is if you form a new legal entity.
    - nso 14y ago
      I found that the only way out of the Google perma-ban was to grow large enough to have them call you instead. Their representative - apparently surprised by the fact that my site was banned - clicked a couple of buttons and the ban was removed. The account even had the hundred dollars that was there when I was banned years earlier.
      - codexon 14y ago
        How big do you have to be?
        nso 14y ago
        I don't want to be too specific, but the the site yields Google more than 10K USD a year -- which I guess is incentive enough. They still keep pestering me about putting more ads up, tho.
  - garysieling 14y ago
    Seems to be. In my experience it flags the domains, not just you.
- dyno12345 14y ago
  If you just look at the auctions from a year and go and click on a few of them.... almost all of them are dead. I kind of think this indicates this isn't an efficient market

ChuckMcM 14y ago

So I thought it was an interesting look at what I'd consider 'second tier' web sites. But really they are filling the role that is the 'enthusiast' magazine or newsletter. What this analysis misses is a storefront for a painting company. That is all about lead capture and closing the deal. Harder to quantify. Well, easier for the store but harder for third parties to quantify. So clear business models for client relationship management and review type editorial. Less clear on 'newsy' type sites or reference sites. Game/App as web service seems pretty clear too as a model.

arekp 14y ago

It's interesting to compare the findings with website popularity: http://5000best.com/websites/ http://5000best.com/websites/

est 14y ago
I couldn't find some major non-US sites
- arekp 14y ago
  It lists only websites in English, and the ranking is US-centric.

extesy 14y ago

Here's a more complete set of various online revenue models: https://hackpad.com/Web-And-Mobile-Revenue-Models-(final)-EgXuEtSibE7 https://hackpad.com/Web-And-Mobile-Revenue-Models-(final)-Eg...

thematt 14y ago

The problem with this analysis is it's based largely on numbers provided by unscrupulous people trying to game SEO. Speaking as someone who has purchased multiple sites off of Flippa -- I view any revenue numbers with lots of skepticism. The majority are spammy sites and the remaining sites that are legitimate have often faked/inflated their numbers to entice purchasers.

unreal37 14y ago
If median revenue per month is only $133, they suck at gaming it.
- bigiain 14y ago
  I dunno - if you've got things set up so you can run 100 of them simultaneously… (And I'd guess there's a bit of VC-like speculation going on too - people trying to not lose too much money on the 99 "failures", but making up for it with one single 4 or 5 order of magnitude outlier success.)

marshray 14y ago

"All established websites" sold over the two-year period of 2011-12 amounted to "almost $30 million"?! That's less than three Chipotle Equivalent Units (CEUs). "the price of CMG stock pre-earnings was valuing average revenue per store at $10.5 million" http://seekingalpha.com/article/756011-you-mean-to-tell-me-chipotle-revenue-missed-by-12-burritos-per-day http://seekingalpha.com/article/756011-you-mean-to-tell-me-c... * View-source to read the text of the article. Note the comments about "googleoff" and "googleon" :-)

snikch 14y ago
They've referring to all "established websites" sold on Flippa.

Datsundere 14y ago

I'd assume mostly advertisements. Sites like Gizmodo get money from big corporations to review or write articles. Once the sites get big, I think they get free prototypes to test them and review them.

pedalpete 14y ago

This isn't how websites are making money, this is how people are making money selling websites. Completely different, and to me, much less interesting.

Matsta 14y ago

LOL @ Flippa.com Seriously that site has been going downhill ever since they rebranded from SitePoint Marketplace several years back. I remember when they first launched, they used a screenshot of one of my sites on their homepage for at least a year without permission, and this site was listed on SitePoint before they deleted it and refused to say why. Pretty much ever since the whole site is full of scammers. People just put up bogus sites claiming to sell Facebook fans, Youtube views and Twitter followers, that somehow make $5k a month and the domains are barely 30 days old. Then they upload 'legitimate' Google Analytics screenshots, which Flippa never check and then someone stupid enough to buy the site pretty much gets a $10 domain in return for $10k (they take a greedy chunk off every sale of course so they couldn't care less about anyone else) I would guess that a good percentage of the data they use is complete bogus so I wouldn't take those stats seriously. Anyway here's a nice Google search if you want to look into this further: http://goo.gl/qfVAW http://goo.gl/qfVAW