Your lack of visitor growth and income growth can be explained with two simple triangles.
The first triangle represents the potential income of your site. This triangle is positioned upside-down because income is almost non-existent when you first start your business. Heck, I still remember my first month of earnings. It totaled $5.10….and I was elated! It was small but it proved that an income-earning blog was possible!
As the blog grows, the income potential increases and you work your way up the triangle, earning more and more with each month.
It seems like the income growth is limitless….but now it's time to introduce the second triangle, which represents your visitors.
This triangle is right-side up. At the stage when you start introducing paid ads on your site, you have a relatively strong base of readers. As you continue to write content and sell ads on your page (like sponsored posts, direct links, and obvious ads in the sidebar), your reader numbers may still grow (and move up this triangle), but at a decreasing rate. In other words, your readers are still enjoying your content, but are starting to get put off by the detracting ads.
When we overlap these triangles, the picture becomes clear. As the income rises, the rate of new visitors declines, until the visitor numbers peak at the top of the triangle. With no more visitors means no more money. Your income has hit its ceiling.
And now you hit the cycle that I was trapped in for nearly five years…
Accept sponsored posts Write just well enough to keep a handful of readers Post just often enough to fill the gaps between advertising posts Accept more sponsored posts and paid ads
….and the cycle continues.
You'll continue to earn some money like this, but hardly ever more than $1,500 a month.
