This article was initially a response to a question Tracy sent in to “Ask Stephen!” but I thought it would make a good topic for discussion, so here goes:

I’m eager to start my site but I still have a few things I need to figure out.This article was initially a response to a question Tracy sent in to “Ask Stephen!” but I thought it would make a good topic for discussion, so here goes:

I’m eager to start my site but I still have a few things I need to figure out. I would like to have a pay site. Would it be possible to have a site where I only charge $4.\’\’-$5.\’\’/mo? I know I would have high traffic to start out with. I will have pictures and videos. Will all my $ be sucked away in bandwidth charges? How can I figure out the approximate amount of bandwidth that I will need? Also, are there a lot of banners out there that pay per “impression”? How do I find these? – Tracy

Tracy ~ I’ll say it again: Pay Sites are the fastest way to lose a fortune in this business! If you don’t have at least a million dollars in upfront capitalization, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll succeed, given the current market.

Anyway, yes, you can charge whatever you want – it’s your site, but as most experienced operators of profitable paysites will tell you, you are unlikely to remain in business for long, charging only $5.\’\’ a month! And if you intend to offer videos from your own server, you’ll probably use that money (and more) to pay for your bandwidth.

There is no “rule of thumb” for calculating bandwidth usage, so given the information you have provided even a “guess” would be unproductive. You could, once you are up and running, multiply the total size of your site (disk usage) by the number of members visiting it, for a “worst case scenario.” I say “worst case” because hopefully not every member will look at every pic and video. This can help with future projections based on past performance, but without a “past performance” it’s a waste of time to ponder.

Most sponsors do not pay “per impression” anymore because it’s just too easy to cheat. If you want to run a sponsor on your paysite, you should redirect exit traffic to MaxCash.

A Question of My Own
Now I need to ask you a question, you said: “I know I would have high traffic to start out with.” HOW do you know that? If you believe that just because you build a new site the world will visit, guess again. I’m assuming that you don’t have a network of feeder sites to drive traffic, because if you did, you probably wouldn’t be asking about impression-based proggies or blind bandwidth calculations.

If you’re as new to this all as I think you are, you probably don’t understand the search engines well enough to have your site found by surfers, and you probably don’t have enough traffic to make decent trades either. So WHERE is all of this traffic coming from?

Pay Sites get (and maintain) the enormous volumes of traffic they require in order to be profitable by buying it. This is where a big part of that “million up front” I recommend ends up being spent. Is it impossible to do it for less? No, of course not – but it’s so hard to do it profitably for less these days, that you’d wish you listened to me and tried something easier that would make you more money (like an AVS site)! I’m not beating you up Tracy, your letter was just a good example of many similar ones I receive. If you decide that you still want to go with a pay site, all I can say is Good Luck!

For more information on paysite profits and pitfalls, check out our Articles Archive

This article was initially a response to a question Tracy sent in to “Ask Stephen!” but I thought it would make a good topic for discussion, so here goes: