What is the minimum number of hits per day

M Young left the first question in my recent Question and Answer Session post, which means he is the lucky winner of a cool prize. I’ll contact you within a week or so when I collect the prize. His question was… 

What is the minimum number of hits per day/week/month you would say is necessary for a new site (such as a blog) to benefit or get any substantial revenue from by including advertising? And what options would be best for new sites with a low number of hits (banner ads, google, etc?)

Interesting question. Firstly, I just want to touch on something with regards to contextual or banner advertising. Although you receive revenue when someone clicks on an ad, you must also realise you’ll loose the visitor. This can effect sites in different ways depending on the sites target. For example, if you are running a Blog and want to build up a community, you want the visitors to run through as much as you’re content as possible, so they make the decision to either subscribe via RSS or return back in their browser. On the other hand, if you have made a content based site purely to provide the visitor will static content, you’ll want them to lick on an ad when they leave you’re site, and not worry about them returning.

Different Blogs/sites generate different revenues with different advertising programs, this is why it’s important to learn what works best for your site and visitors. The same rules apply for a high traffic based site or a low traffic based site. In order to give the advertising programs a fair trial, I recommend testing on a site that has 1,000+ visitors per day. Obviously, the more hits you have to play with the better.

As for the best way to monitize a site with low traffic, I always say to others “If you’re going to monitize, then make sure you MONITZE!”  Use as many different ad networks on your site as possible, never stop testing other’s to see if they convert better, tweak the style of ads you display and also test different placements.

I’ll leave you with these 3 golden rules:

• Research advertising partners with terms and condition that suit your business (Revenue split, payment frequency, support, promotional material etc.)
• Testing - Every niche web site has a different target audience, you need to find what works for you and more importantly, what works for your visitors. Try and offer your visitors with something that a) is related to your site and b) is worth while buying.
• Tweaking - You need to tweak with different sized banners, colours, text link placement to know what converts the best on your site.