[Mister X]

Originally posted by webmiko
Really what im curious about, is with the information available, a working site, fresh content, time spent advertising, how is the success rate? (i know this is highly subjective, but isnt everything)

I really only see warnings about opening paysites that people are getting in over their heads, and how hard it is to retain, convert, and build traffic. Its hard not to get discouraged with all the negative information about it. =^)

There are no statistics kept for success rates but I think that first sites probably succeed less than half the time for sure. Mostly because of inadequate preparation and unrealistic expectations. Definitely it is hard to retain, convert and build traffic. Nobody is going to succeed the first week. And it might take 6 months to really get some money flowing. But it is possible. And sometimes you get lucky and have a big hit in a short time. Most of the first sites that fail are from guys that think it's easy money and buy a bunch of good or shitty content and put up a site that looks like 10, 000 sites that are already out there.

It's like any other business, including the software biz. You need a product that people want to buy. And it has to be better or cheaper than the competition. Of course it's pretty hard to make money by selling yet another new and improved popup killer so it only makes sense to try and market a unique product. Because little or no competition is best.