Everyone talks about stats, but what are the real numbers for visits (not "hits" or "pages") for smaller, private websites?
And any guesses as to what might be critical mass for different types of photo businesses?
For example: Would QT need 10 million visits per year to sell $100,000 worth of prints? How many visits equal X number of sales, guessing of course?
I know all this is guess work and the quality of the visits are much more important, but I can't find any data to work from here.
FWIW, my lowly photo website gets about 70K visits per month, on the rise but with an average of 690,000 visits over the past 12 months. (If I put more nudes on there I am sure I could get a rise, but that doesn't mean I'd get better quality visits LOL)
I don't try to sell prints so those sales are zero. I have gotten about $5K worth of paid assignments directly attributable to the website contacts in the past year (from people I would never have known of otherwise.) Plus I tied the website to some limited direct mail (postcards x 500 x six times per year) which generated more work but it is hard to determine how much the website influenced their buying decisions (I think it helped a lot though.) If I figure that the website played a 33% role, then it contributed about another $15K worth of business ($45K total from the campaign, all new business).
Obviously this shows that the website doesn't generate business in a vacuum and you multiply its effectiveness when you do an integrated marketing cycle (direct mail, ads, word of mouth, cold calls, forum participation, sheer fame and white teeth, etc.)
(The website has paid for itself many times over (about $1500 out of pocket) if you don't count the 100 plus hours spent generating content this year, which if I billed that at $100 per hour would be $10K.)(Of course I don't charge $100 per hour for internal work and I have a background in writing and designing, plus 18 prior versions of the website over ten years, so I would probably be more efficient at this than average and also get higher search engine rankings simply out of seniority.)
Understand what I am asking in a round about sort of way? Lots of complex factors and plenty of vagueness, but some "visits" numbers and informal comments about actually converting them into customers would be useful for all of us. Anyone else care to share?
thanks, FP
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