Do you shut down a website if you don't make profit within a year?

Everett Level X⁴

June 30, 2016, 4:28 pm

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Do you shut down a website if you don't make profit within a year?

Usually you can buy a domain name for a minimum of one year. Say you wanted a small business website, or even a blog. You create content for the website, make the SEO for the website great, and have a high volume of traffic. Here's the thing though, what if the website isn't making profit?

Would you let the domain expire? Would you sell the website? Or would you try to successfully make the website a success? If the website has quality content, great SEO, and a great number of visitors, is there anything you can do to make this website profitable so you can continue funding the website costs?

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TommyCarey

The end goal really decides in whether I stop the website or not. If I go into it and know that I'm not going to profit for at least a year, then I'll keep the website up and running. If I launch the site and want it to make sales the day I start to implement a marketing campaign, and it doesn't, I may take the site down after a month.

The long game: If I'm playing the long game with a website, I'll keep it up and running no matter the profits. The long game is building an authority website and you're either going to start selling ad spots on the pages after you hit XXX,XXX amount of views or you want to sell the website entirely. I've never sold one of my websites because I'd rather have the passive income from ad revenue. Some people prefer to build up a website and sell it once it hits XXXXX amount of subscribers or a certain amount of unique visitors per month. I see the benefit in selling a website that is generating a passive income because you can usually get 10 to 24 months of the profit if the site is branded well.

The short game: The short game typically goes along with service providers like us freelancers

I'll set up a website for myself and want it to make money almost instantly. Maybe a week after I launch I'll want it to be making money because of the ads I have placed for it. I'll set up adwords, facebook ads, Yahoo!/Bing ads and banner ads in order to bring in instant sales. This is high risk high reward since you're paying for all your advertising and it can get expensive. If you're paying $3,000 a month for all your ads and you're making only $1,000 then it's not a good idea to keep going and just mark it up as a loss. You can stop all your ads and reconfigure your numbers to see if that'll increase your sales. But reducing your price will mean you need to make more sales. And if you're already losing $2,000 a month then you'll need to be very sure your website will sell after you update.

8 years ago

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Everett

Very good points. I like how you divided it up in two sections, "short game" and "long game".

8 years ago

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anwebservices

I tried many different things regarding this question. I had some successful websites, some were waste of time. So some of the domain names let expire while some of them i was selling before to another party who can see something in it

I guess it all depends if you bought domain name and created website for possible business and earning purposes, or it's just to have some informative blog. If i create it for business purposes and it's not making money i usually not waste my time on it, specially after a year and i don't see reason why would i. If domain name is brandable or contain some popular keywords in it, could be good idea to sell it if it's possible...

8 years ago

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Everett

Nice, I love to see how you dealt with these instances. Unsure if it was a waste of time, as you have gained experience in what works and what doesn't. If you never had tried, than you may have never gotten this experience.

Also, I have tried selling domains that was keyword "rich" but didn't have much success. This may be due to the domain expiring too quickly before there was any interest in the domain name. Often at times, if the website isn't making money, and the keywords are rich, but the domain expiration is in a couple of months I try to list it on marketplaces to sell. But it never does.

8 years ago

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Lynne

I think if you are creative enough you would be able to generate some money from a website if you have good content, good SEO and traffic.

Although if you make huge amounts of money with other websites then perhaps it is not worth your time or effort trying to revive something or make money from it.

So I feel two ways about this topic.

8 years ago

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ajlancer

Hi Everett thanks for nice and very related question with me. From the starting of freelancing career, I bought so any domain and make several website or blog site and many of domain now expired due to inactivity or domain bill. Though some of my website had most profitable fro some times and after than I lost business for several reason and eventually most of them expired. Though there has good content, and I did excellent SEO and on search engine has top pages and I got 3-4 PR too. Still I have some website or blog site and both are successfully running.

Regards by Ajlancer

8 years ago

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MasterA

This is a good question! I normally don’t let the domain just expire and sell the project if I don’t want to continue with it because at least I get something back that way. If the website gets good traffic but no profit, I will try to make changes and keep working on the project because it probably has some potential. I don’t like giving up on projects unless I know that there is no way I can succeed. In some cases, I may find an investor if I do not want to keep funding it but see some potential in the project and in the case of a loss, I don’t lose as much money.

8 years ago

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vinaya

This is what I am doing currently. I get moderate traffic on my sites, however, I am not earning moderately. I will be making some changes on my website so that there will be a conversion. I let few domains to expire because I was unable to sell them and renewal was costing me too much. I am having hard time to maintain some of my websites, I wish I could flip these websites.

7 years ago

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vinaya

Usually, I play a long game. Therefore, I don't shut down a website if it does not earn anything in the first year. I will continue working for the next year. Actually, I have a couple of websites that are almost two years old and yet they have not even earned the domain renewal fees and hosting cost. I may not earn monthly revenue however, the website continues to age and the domain and the website value will gradually increase. AS the website gets old, I can flip it for higher price.

7 years ago

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Corzhens

I have talked to several website owners in the past about the profit opportunities. Their common opinion is to shut down the website when it doesn’t earn in the first year. But that has to have the needed effort for marketing. That means if you have exerted effort and had done what needs to be done and yet the website did not even reach the break-even point then consider that venture a failure. You can open another website or maybe turn your eyes to another kind of business.

7 years ago

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SEOClerks

Do you shut down a website if you don't make profit within a year?

Do you shut down a website if you don't make profit within a year?

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