How much traffic does a website need to make money?

Fair warning: my answer doesn't contain sexy "get rich quick" strategies or advice. In fact, I think that following these types of shiny objects wastes time, gets no results and can put you into significant debt.

What follows is pretty UNsexy advice that could have the side-effect of helping you create a REAL business that can support you for years to come.

So, the short answer to the question is: "it depends".

It depends on three things: what you sell, how you sell it, and how effectively your site converts visitors into "action-takers."

Try to sell the wrong thing, and/or sell it badly, then no matter how much traffic you have, you won't make money. (Obviously.)

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So let's start with Step 1 -- what you sell.

If you're just getting started online and have no idea what to sell, then you have 2 paths open to you.

The unlucky people get sucked into the get-rich-quick" opportunities out there. The standard stuff you'll hear includes things like:

- Create a funnel and buy Facebook traffic
- Start a Facebook group and sell Tshirts
- Become an Instagram influencer
- Start a podcast
- etc..

Avoid this stuff!

None of it is suitable for someone who's just getting started -- and they're appealing precisely because they're pitched as "shortcuts" to doing the actual work of building a business.

The fact is that they will ALL waste your time and put you into debt.

I know from bitter experience that it can all make perfect sense as you're listening to the sales pitch. If they can do it, then why not you, right?

Wrong.

What they're not telling you is:

  • they have teams running things behind the scenes
  • they have a significant tech infrastructure to support them
  • they have a lot of things already dialed in that you do not.


Before you invest, be sure to ask them:

  • Are these tactics that are working for you right now?
  • Or are these tactics what you used to build your business right from the start?


I give you a million to one odds that this is stuff that's working for them NOW. Not the stuff they used to actually GROW their business.
Go down this road and you'll find yourself working 16 hour days just to get everything done, and you still won't make it work.

Why?

Well, as I like to say -- before you can make money while you sleep, you have to be able to make money while you're awake.

So - circling back around to your question - if you're just getting started, and have no idea what you want to offer or sell, you need to first figure that out before putting up a website.

That should be fairly obvious, right?

Questions you should ask:

  • What do you love?
  • What are you good at?
  • What can you help people with?
  • What will people actually PAY you for?


The answers to those questions can lay the foundation of a REAL business (and website) that you you'll be able to make money with.

If you take the time to get clear on those fundamental things first, it will pay you back handsomely.

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OK, assuming that you've gotten clear about what you want to sell, let's move on to step 2.

The next question is -- how do you sell it?

If you're in the early stages, without a lot of experience talking to people who could be your customers, the temptation can be to try to skip this, and jump right to the *automation* phase of a business.

You know, the part where you're sitting on a beach, sipping cocktails and refreshing your shopping cart stats and watching the sales roll in.
100% of the newbies I see who try to jump right to this stage fail. Why? It's because they don't yet have the right language to sell what it is they do.
And if you have no experience selling to people one at a time, what makes you think you'll be successfully selling to them hundreds or thousands at a time?

So, my advice, is to join groups, communities, tribes, clubs and meetups where you can get practice talking (preferably face-to-face) about your business, your products, solutions and how you can help people

Again, I know it's not sexy, but it serves an important purpose in your business -- it gives you critical data about how what you're saying is landing for the other person. This enables you to dial in how you SELL what it is that you do.

With enough experience doing that, you'll get pretty ninja at selling what it is that you do, and when you put those words on your website, it will do a pretty good job at converting visitors into buyers.

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So, to finally answer your question, when you have:

- a website that's selling a product or service that people actually want (Step 1), and
- you have right words on your site that are proven to sell this product or service (Step 2)

-- you won;t actually require much traffic at all to make great money because your site will easily converting 10% or more of its traffic into people that want to buy, talk to you, invest, or otherwise talk to you about how you can help solve their problem.

And in the process, you'll have something far more valuable ? a real business that?s an asset and that will survive in the long term.