Would you call this a success?

[draggar]

I play a game on Facebook and I got tired of all the groups popping up offering "secrets" and "cheats" that require you to either invite all your friends or buy their eBook for $10-$75.

So I started my own group with game statistics and information (all public) for free and I started a site based on it ((game)fanatics.com).

I launched the site in late December and linked it in the FB group (only 80 members) and I got permission from the super-mods on the official forum for the game to put a link to the site in my signature.

Despite hate mail from the owner of a similar site and offers to buy the site for $5, I continued on with my site (he later got banned on the forums for spaming his site).

I kept the site current with the game's news and statistics, I'd post about it on the FB group and in my profile and I think the first month was quite successful.

For the month of January:

1928 visitors (1189 unique - 8088 page views)
About 30% form the community forums,
About 30% from search engines (mostly Google - half of the Google results were searching for something other than the site name or the domain)
About 10% from Facebook
(the other 30% from other sites - blog feeds, pingbacks, etc..)

Most of the month had 40-70 visitors a day, the lowest was 32 and the highest was 126 (3 days over 100).

$1.29 in Adsense revenue.

These stats tell me:
I should be able to pay for the registration fee w/ the AdSense (woohoo!)
Having the link in my signature is helping with traffic, a lot, but SEO must be good for people looking for information on the game.
1900+ visitors but only 1100+ unique - people aren't coming back (or is unique per day?) but with 8000+ page views they're looking at about 4 pages per visit.

I also see links coming in from other Facebook groups (even one from MySpace which also has this game) plus email sources so people are sharing the site.

The total cost was only $8 (rounded up) for the domain. The site is Wordpress with a free theme and I made all the documents myself (easy to do).

Would you consider this a success? I'm happy with the results. This is my first site to hit 1,000 unique visitors the first month (I have a few others that do this but it took a while (6 months plus) to get that far).

 

[amplify]

For that much time and effort devoted to the site only to make $1.29 in income, I wouldn't call a success. It seems to me as if the users are going there for the hints, you're not going to sell an Adsense click to them.

I would call marketing an eBook for $10-$75 and selling 100+ copies a month with Clickbank a success.

If it's something you like to do and don't hope to make much more than reg fee and hosting for the year, then yes, it is a personal success.

Edit:: Wasn't hard to guess the site, I like the template... It fits it well. Do you really think someone's going to click an Adsense ad about Wheat? I would put some more relevant keywords such as games-- try to get some Envoy ads on there.

 

[tekz999]

Yes, it is starting to be a success. Keep it up.

 

[draggar]

I just started a twitter account for the site, I'll see if / how that helps with traffic.

 

[David G]

If this is your site http://gamefanatics.com/ with the missing images and terrible colors and format etc I can see why it only made $1 - but maybe the url is wrong?

 

[amplify]

Owning and running an online rpg for several years, I have found that a user who play a game would play other games too. That's why I started developing other rpgs-- to keep the user.

In your instance, you don't own a game, rather provide information about one. That's all good, but I believe those players are interested in playing other games as well. Your ads aren't relevant to a gamer, they are for a farmer ("Animals", "Excel Charts", "Wheat", "Harvest", "Crops"). In my experience, your click rate and earnings will improve by doing so, whether the ads are for other online games or console games.

 

[kspd]

You could certainly do better.. Keep building your traffic and offering them the content they are looking for, and then start exploring better ways to monetize it.. such as with better targeted ads. Or some sort of premium service/access

 

[BidNo]

How do you define success? Nothing worse than a new site where the only visitors are the search bots. So you're ahead on that count and potentially have a start on something bigger. Focus on building content that will bring users back and on monetizing that traffic.

 

[David G]

Assuming what I said in post 5 above is correct it sure would help if the site was much improved because from what I recall it was the ugliest site I have seen in a very long time what with the missing images and poor look and feel.

 

[draggar]

February 2010 numbers:

1940 visits (1361 unique).
About:
10% from the community forums
20% from Facebook
20% from search engines

The largest jump was page views - 8112 to 20739. So when people come to the site they are now looking at different pages (nice).

Visitors per day stayed about the same but the lowest was 3 (the day all my sites were deleted from the host) and the highest was 125 with 5 days over 100 visitors.

$2.65 in AdSense revenue. I have not done any customization with the ads yet, either.

Still, no advertising so the cost over Feb was $0. Only the link in my signature and the