This was originally posted in May 2010 and is part of my Traffic Tricks Series.
Sure, I know you want 10 gazillion hits a day. Who doesn’t?
Let’s be serious here; you’re not going to get 10 gazillion hits your first day or your first month. So how much traffic do you really need?
One thing I find helpful in determining how much traffic I want is to look at my purpose. If my purpose is to make money and I am selling widgets for $10 each and I want to make $1,000 a month then I will need to sell 100 widgets each month.
If 1 out of every 50 visitors purchases a widget (and I want to sell 100 widgets) then I need 5,000 visitors each month to earn $1,000.
Here’s a quick video explaining how to run the numbers in Excel:
Take action
Take a few minutes and figure out how much traffic you need based on your monthly income goal. If you’re currently not making any money then a good monthly income goal is $30.
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
really helpful spreadsheet.
Too many beginners in IM set their goals unrealisticly high by not including profit per item and conversion rate in their calculation.
What the examples in the video show is that right after traffic generation you have to focus on conversion rate (but that is not this blogs topic
)
Good point about conversion rate. I am pretty good at getting traffic but getting traffic to convert into an actual sale is still something I struggle with.
Nick,
I just bought 'Honest Seduction' by Scott Brinker, Anna Talerico, und Justin Talerico some days ago. Very interesting as they recommend going away from just simple landing pages and offer the visitor a landing experience instead. Highly recommended!
Btw, good to see your 30 day course. Will follow it to the t.
Is Honest Seduction a good course? Do you recommend it? I'd like to know you think.
Good to see that you are re-publishing a few older posts – they are really evergreen and very useful.
Sorry that it took me more than 11 month to reply to your comment above. Honest Seduction is not a course but a book compiled of blog posts by the 3 authors mentioned. The main message is that traditional landing pages are dead and that you should concentrate on 'message match'. Meaning having a perfect match of keyword/phrase searched for, message in the ppc ad (or organic listing in the SERP) and the landing page. Being consistent in your message to your prospect is the key message here.
Amazon currently sells the book from 11.49 (kindle edition).
Me too.
Lots of traffic but what are all these people doing on my sites?
.-= Internet Marketing Coding's last blog ..How to Turn Your Content into Multimedia =-.
Exactly. This was a hard lesson for me to learn. The truth is most people don't care about what you're talking about and so you must find the few people that do care.
HI Nick,
revisiting this post about 1 year later I am quite interested in your efforts regarding conversion rate. Did you manage to raise it? And if yes, what did you do to accomplish this?
Thanks for the feedback and keep up the good work on this blog.
I find conversion rates are usually raised by making sure your products are an exact match for your visitors.
Targeted traffic would certainly increase conversion rates. But laying it out in a video and spreadsheet is a great help especially for visual people. Thanks Nick
.-= Self Help For Women's last blog ..The Linden Method Review =-.
Thanks for video and spreadsheet Nick. It's a great help in showing how much traffic exactly is needed to achieve the site's goal.
Natural Colon Cleans recently posted..Natural Colon Cleansing
I'm still struggling with getting traffic. I find the hardest part is getting searches from the search engines.
Darren @ Lean Body F recently posted..Secret Training Tip 991 – Lying Cable-Curl Crunches – A Unique Exercise For Shredding the Upper Abs
Hi, I have been in the same boat for a while now – i.e. a fair amount of traffic but little conversion into sales.
I have been doing quite a lot of back linking on and off for the last 6 months and my traffic has increased a bit more and hey presto I've started making sales.
Could this be a fluke or is there a "critical" traffic level for getting decent conversions?
Magssno recently posted..How To Get Rid Of Bed Bugs – DIY
> Could this be a fluke or is there a “critical” traffic level for getting decent conversions?
I suspect that either you're getting more traffic than you used to or the quality of traffic is higher i.e people coming to your website are more interested in your products.
First thing that came to my mind when i read the title was "the more the better".
But i guess the best thing to do is reach that number you feel satisfied with, and then work to maintain it.
We can work all day long to increase it, but then when will we get the time to actually spend the money earned?
Maria Pavel recently posted..CNA Continuing Education
Good points Maria.
I want to start doing Internet Marketing but where do I start?I know about eBooks, affiliate marketing and the like. I even have a plan that I want to earn from the Internet full time in two years. It's just that I just seem to have difficulty "putting pen to paper" Should I pay for mentoring because I seem too overwhelmed by it all?Thanks.
At the end of the day you make money by selling stuff. So figure out what you want to sell and try different ways to sell it.
Check out this: http://nickstraffictricks.com/2656_video-how-much…
I don't think you need to pay for mentoring. You just need to find something to sell.
This spreadsheet is a perfect explanation of how much traffic we need for our sites to sell our products and a proper way too manage our site business. The statistics that this sheet has shows will really help the beginners set their goals for the starting months of their business and then how to raise the parameters as per the profits of the previous months. But this only gives the idea for a business which has a linear graph of profit with time but what about the businesses which fluctuates.
Angela@dog fleas recently posted..Treatment For Dog Fleas
I agree, the excel work is motivating and should be of great help for beginners specially. There are various techniques to increase traffic in fact I read too many of those but was able to implement only a couple. I think more traffic is definitely good news but we should be able to handle it well.
Traffics not a problem i only need local visitors and seem to get them what i need is for the phone to ring I sometimes think the hours i spen on my website may be wasted as it looks like i could be expencive which im not a cheep looking one page add may have been a better idea…. and i would have more time to play golf
I made a spreadsheet once and it said I would need 1,000 visitors a day to reach the goal I had (for traffic and revenue). I'll keep at it until I reach my goal. The sky's the limit.
Thanks for the info. Everybusiness has different target traffic. If you have a free forum site, it may not be enough to have 1000 uniquie visitors, but if you are selling high ticket item having 500 unique visitor may be enough for your business, sure all are targeted traffic, not a junk one.
Exactly. Sometimes it's easier to sell a few high-priced items because you don't need a ton of traffic.
Targeted traffic is what that matters. No matter if we get 10k hits daily as they will just go off.
Naser @ Best Tips Fo recently posted..Traffic- How Can I Get Them?
This is indeed an informative post.I think, targeted traffic varies depending on the niche of the products/ services being offered.