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Originally Posted by artwilliams
But is the relationship straight line, as you suggest, or exponential? I don't know and maybe some of the more successful people can straighten me out but is there a threshold of sites and links at which you make more money than just a 1:1 ratio?
---art
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Well, this is a little complicated.
With the submit and forget strategy, it's pretty much a straight line decline. Over time fewer and fewer links will bring traffic to the site, and even if you are using unique keywords the SE traffic will also collapse.
If you support freesites within your own complete network, the length of time that the site draws in signups is much longer. This is what I do, and it's what Linkster is talking about, or rather, a part of what linkster is talking about.
But, when you analyze a freeites performance over a year, you will see for yourself that, on the average, it's possible to asign a value, a number of signups, for each freesite you make.
My measurements suggest a good free site builder can expect to get about 3 full value signups per freesite.
Why is this so low? Because you have to constantly vary niche, site type, and sale stechnique in order to get your 5 sites accepted to the big guys each week.
You can't always use the best content, the best sales method, the best banner, in the best positions. One does one's best, but some percentage of freesites are going to have dissapointing sales. For the freesite that makes ten sales there are two freesites that make a half sale each, or no sales.
You get an average.
Over on GFY blue_spade suggested that figure should be about $60, two $30 signups.
I think for me the average works out to about 3.25 sales per freesite built. I prefer $35 sponsors but you have to factor in the lower value signups. So lets be generous and average it out to $105 per freesite.
(edit: I need to amend this, it was that figure for me at the beginning of 2003. Now, that figure is much lower, but I haven't done the math. I estimate it at about $80-90. But, blue_spade's 2 signups could be closer to my current figure than I like to think.)
Now, with good overall strategy you leverage that out over time, so the freesite maybe makes 3 sales the next year, two the following year, and four the year after that.
Over time, that means we folks with older networks start making pretty decent money.