5.5 Million 'hits' / month = $300.00

[domainduck]

This news article is a diamond. 50 Million 'hits' since January and the owners only make $300 / month. Are they missing something?

Here's the article:

Monday, September 30, 2002

Hornets fan scores with Internet site
Kevin Walters
American Staff Writer


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A University of Southern Mississippi student got the fast break on the National Basketball Association's Charlotte Hornets when the North Carolina-based team decided to pack up and move to New Orleans late last year.
Poplarville resident Brad Coburn, 26, registered the site name "NewOrleans Hornets.com" for $35 before the team's move, ensuring he would have the rights to that site's domain name.

Little did Coburn know that the Web site he helped create - devoted to all things related to the New Orleans Hornets - would score a slam dunk with fans, racking up about 50 million "hits" since its launch in January.

Coburn's interest in starting the site isn't financial. The site, which features news of Hornets goings-on, message boards for Hornets fans to trade information and a calendar, only makes enough money in donations and sponsorship to cover its server costs of about $300 per month.

"It's more of a fun thing," Coburn said. "We have sponsors but that's just to pay server costs. You really can't sell anything nowadays."

He said he and his partner, Andrus Whitewing, who founded a site devoted to the New Orleans Saints, have fielded offers from buyers wanting to acquire the domain name and all its visitors.

Though Coburn thought about taking the money, he eventually turned it down.

"I'm having so much fun doing it," he said. "I don't anticipate selling the name."

What the site does provide is news pertaining to all things relating to the Hornets. In the vein of popular Web sites like the political site The Drudge Report or entertainment-based site Aint-It-Cool News, Coburn's site posts news about the Hornets that comes from outside the NBA pipeline.

For instance, Coburn found the Hornets' new logo and posted before it was officially unveiled by Hornets' upper management earlier this year.

"I heard through some channels that they (Hornets) weren't pleased with that," Coburn laughed.

But Coburn maintains he only wants to post news that's verified and not rumors.

"We're more inclined to provide news that they can't provide," Coburn said. "We just want to find the news that's really going on behind the scenes."

The New Orleans Hornets, who have yet to play a game in the Crescent City, welcome the buzz about their team, who wore out their welcome in Charlotte, with ownership feuding with fans over constructing a new arena.

ref: http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/news/stories/20020930/localnews/191735.html



quack

 

[GeorgeK]

50 million "hits" might only be a few thousand unique visitors per day. If you have 20 graphics on one page, that's 20 hits.

 

[O.C.]

Except for the hits / page views / unique visitors deal... nope. Not missing anything. Some types of traffic are just hard or impossible to make money from.


1620 visitors a month interested in buying a product you make $90 from? $7290/mo. assuming a high, simplified conversion rate of 5%.

Maybe 10 people buying something you make $170 from? $1700/mo.

1,000,000 visitors you can only make $.15 CPM from? $150/mo. before server costs.


Of course, I over simplified things a lot.

 

[domainduck]

I understand the difficulty, but I don't think the owners realize what they could be doing with the traffic. If you are steering steady traffic, you should be able to make $$,


quack

 

[GeorgeK]

1 visitor can be worth a lot. Tonight, somebody signed up at one of my casino affiliate programs (probably at www.games.org, as that's where I get more traffic), and promptly lost $3,000 (and is still playing, the high roller!), earning me $600 (20%)

For a sports site, they should have plastered it with casino ads.

 

[RacerX]

What casino affiliate do you most recommend?

RacerX

 

[GeorgeK]

Racer: I've been using Intercasino's, but have also experimented with Lasseter's of Australia. So far only Intercasino ever paid me money, though.

Carsands.com might be good too (they use the same backend software as Intercasino, William Hill, and others, namely "Cryptologic" software).

 

[RacerX]

George, I will look further into their program.

 

[draqon]

dang it, $600 is more than I paid for Games.org I should have kept that name.

 

[GeorgeK]

I wish I was the owner of Intercasino, who made $2,400 off that player! He might have signed up via www.caa.org (I put the same casino programs there too, and it gets decent traffic too). That's one of the downsides of Intercasino, namely that their affiliate tracking system needs a lot of improvement. They could learn a lot from the adult websites, where one can dig a lot deeper into the stats, or set up identifiers within each link, to be able to determine which links are driving results, and which aren't.

 

[Drewbert]

>For a sports site, they should have plastered it with casino ads.

Then sit back and wait for the UDRP to arrive? :^)

 

[GeorgeK]

hehe Well, the story said that they registered the name *before* the Charlotte Hornets moved, so in theory the NBA has no case, as they had not used "New Orleans Hornets" in commerce (thus no trademark rights -- they had the *intent* to use it, but that's not good enough).

If one predicts the Montreal Expos baseball team will move to Florida, and pick the right city and monicker before they move, then that domain should similarly be in the clear (although, those big leagues could make one's life miserable, as their lawyers can probably beat up your lawyers).

 

[RacerX]

Florida has two financial-loser baseball franchises. No chance for a third.