If you’ve picked up any business magazines within the last year, you’ve undoubtedly heard the rumors that everyone is getting rich online. Yet, somehow even after you worked so hard to scrape together a website and found some fabulous widget to sell your online venture has yielded little to no money, Why? eBizMBA surveyed over 250 webmasters with sites ranked in the Alexa top 10,000 to dispel many of the myths of making money online, below you’ll find the sobering results of that survey.
10. MYTH: Adsense click-through rates between 1 to 4% are well within the reach of most online publishers. REALITY: The average CTR for Adsense publishers with less than 250,000 unique monthly visitors is .20% and the average ad pays out only 50 cents per click.
9. MYTH: My domain name “Everythingyouwanttoknowaboutme.com” is long, but memorable so I can still make money with it. REALITY: Websites that earned over $60,000 in annual revenue on average had a domain name that was less than 10 characters long.
8. MYTH: I can maintain relative anonymity online and still thrive. REALITY: eCommerce websites that add 1-800 numbers to their site see conversion rates rise by nearly 120% across the board.
7. MYTH: Many websites prosper based on organic traffic growth. REALITY: 90% of sites we surveyed cited their viral marketing tactics as the number one reason for their audience growth.
6. MYTH: I can rely solely on Google Adwords to build my online business. REALITY: Most online retailers are spending more than 40% of the cost of a sale to get one conversion via Adwords.
5. MYTH: I'll develop an Affiliate Marketing program and then sales will come pouring in. REALITY: Though the webmasters we polled did believe Affiliate Marketing to be highly effective they pointed out that since the rise of Adsense it has become much more difficult to recruit affiliates. Only four sites in our survey currently maintained 500 or more active Affiliates.
4. MYTH: I’ll develop a profitable online business simply selling my products on eBay. REALITY: Webmasters we polled indicated that downward pricing pressure due to the competitive nature of eBay was bringing profit margins down to a meager 10% per sale even on semi-unique items.
3. MYTH: I’ll be able to optimize my sites to achieve first page raking in Google for an important keyword. REALITY: On average, the webmasters we polled indicated that to reach top 10 for a keyword that had over 50,000 searches per month a site needed at least 5,000 unique inbound links.
2. MYTH: I can use a design template and still develop a compelling site that will inspire repeat visits. REALITY: Webmasters we polled said that users indicated unique design was just as important as unique content in deciding whether to bookmark a site.
1. And the number one reason you’re not making money online is because—well no one is—relatively speaking. The webmasters we polled had a cumulative Alexa ranking of 4,370 and on average, their sites only netted a little over $5,500 a month. What does that mean for your site, which has yet to crack the Alexa top 100,000?
