Since I started building my first websites back in 2005 I probably
owned at least twenty different ones, ranging from blogs like this one
to niche websites and service-oriented sites. One pattern I noticed over
these years is that most websites have a natural traffic limit.
By natural traffic limit I mean an amount of traffic (e.g., 30,000 monthly uniques, 200,000 monthly uniques or 3 million monthly uniques, depending on the site in question) that the website will attract once it’s fully developed and established. The graph below (sorry for my design skills!) illustrates the points:
As you can see, most websites start slow, then they go through a rapid growth phase, and then they reach the natural limit. Sure, they might still keep growing after reaching the limit, but that growth will be minimal in comparison to the previous growth period.
The time that it will take to reach the limit will vary depending on the niche/type of website, as well as with the effort put by the owner. For example, a website on a small niche like “white tea” might reach its natural limit after 12 months, while a blog about technology might take years to reach its natural limit.
Similarly, the limit itself will vary, depending on the the niche and on the type of website. The tea website could have a natural limit of 20,000 monthly unique visitors, while for the tech blog this number could be 5 million or more (TechCrunch should be the reference here…).
Notice that the natural limit number includes all traffic sources (e.g., search engines, direct traffic, subscribers, referrals and so on).
One Example
Let me use an example to illustrate the concept. A couple of years ago I had a niche website about the Mafia Wars game (quite popular on Facebook). At one point it reached the first page of Google for the term “mafia wars”, and it also had good rankings for several related keywords. As a result it received around 150,000 monthly unique visitors (despite being a relatively small website, with 20 pages or so), and generated around $400 in Google AdSense.
I tried to add more content and promote the website further, but no matter what I did the traffic wouldn’t grow that much. After a couple of months I figured the website had reached it’s natural traffic limit, so I decided to sell it.
Now don’t get me wrong. Selling the website once it reaches its natural limit it not always the best choice. I only sold the mafia wars one because it was not aligned with the niches I like to focus on. Had it been a tech oriented website, for example, I would probably have kept it as a source of passive income.
The Takeaway Message
The message I wanted to pass is the following: it’s important to know that websites and blogs have a natural traffic limit. Identifying when you have reached it is not always easy, but you should try.
Once you determine that your website/blog has reached it’s natural limit you have mainly two options: sell it if you are not interested in that niche anymore, or put it on auto-pilot to free some of your time so that you can start working on a new project.
by Daniel Scocco
http://www.dailyblogtips.com/
By natural traffic limit I mean an amount of traffic (e.g., 30,000 monthly uniques, 200,000 monthly uniques or 3 million monthly uniques, depending on the site in question) that the website will attract once it’s fully developed and established. The graph below (sorry for my design skills!) illustrates the points:
As you can see, most websites start slow, then they go through a rapid growth phase, and then they reach the natural limit. Sure, they might still keep growing after reaching the limit, but that growth will be minimal in comparison to the previous growth period.
The time that it will take to reach the limit will vary depending on the niche/type of website, as well as with the effort put by the owner. For example, a website on a small niche like “white tea” might reach its natural limit after 12 months, while a blog about technology might take years to reach its natural limit.
Similarly, the limit itself will vary, depending on the the niche and on the type of website. The tea website could have a natural limit of 20,000 monthly unique visitors, while for the tech blog this number could be 5 million or more (TechCrunch should be the reference here…).
Notice that the natural limit number includes all traffic sources (e.g., search engines, direct traffic, subscribers, referrals and so on).
One Example
Let me use an example to illustrate the concept. A couple of years ago I had a niche website about the Mafia Wars game (quite popular on Facebook). At one point it reached the first page of Google for the term “mafia wars”, and it also had good rankings for several related keywords. As a result it received around 150,000 monthly unique visitors (despite being a relatively small website, with 20 pages or so), and generated around $400 in Google AdSense.
I tried to add more content and promote the website further, but no matter what I did the traffic wouldn’t grow that much. After a couple of months I figured the website had reached it’s natural traffic limit, so I decided to sell it.
Now don’t get me wrong. Selling the website once it reaches its natural limit it not always the best choice. I only sold the mafia wars one because it was not aligned with the niches I like to focus on. Had it been a tech oriented website, for example, I would probably have kept it as a source of passive income.
The Takeaway Message
The message I wanted to pass is the following: it’s important to know that websites and blogs have a natural traffic limit. Identifying when you have reached it is not always easy, but you should try.
Once you determine that your website/blog has reached it’s natural limit you have mainly two options: sell it if you are not interested in that niche anymore, or put it on auto-pilot to free some of your time so that you can start working on a new project.
by Daniel Scocco
http://www.dailyblogtips.com/
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