How To Know When You’ll Earn Your First Dollar

Is there really a way to know when you’ll earn your first dollar? If you had that information, how would you use it? Would it make any difference in the design of your website? Would you promote differently or change your priorities?

If you knew your first customer would land on your website in approximately 23 days from now, netting you your first profit, would you have everything ready so this transaction goes off without a hitch?

I don’t have a crystal ball to say when exactly your first customer will arrive. But like so many things in business, we can use historical data and project from it an approximation of when your first customer will land on your website.

You might be thinking, “But I don’t even have that much data. My site isn’t getting a lot of traffic right now.” Not to worry. We’re going to borrow someone else’s data.

By looking at some common conversion rates, we can see how many visitors are needed before one converts to a paying customer. To keep it real, these conversion numbers are going to be very low. In the range of .001 to .1, which is 0.01% to 0.1%. You might image that’s too low for earning any kind of money. But don’t be so quick to come to a conclusion.

Converting Visitors

Below is a simple conversion formula. It works like this:
[Visitors Per Month] X [Conversion Rate] X [Price of Product]
= [Revenue]

Just fill in some numbers below. Once you click the calculate button, your revenue will appear.

Here's an example:
1000 x .001 x $27 = $27

Meaning, if 1000 fairly targeted visitors land on your site, you should expect to make at least one sell, using a .001 conversion rate. At a 0.1 conversion rate, revenue goes up to $270.

Email Subscribers

You might have heard of the importance of having an email list. Not only does it allow you to continually communicate with your subscribers should something happen to your site, they convert much better too. Below is an updated version of the convert formula. Notice the enhanced conversion rates (.01 to .20)

Once people start signing up to your mailing list and with time, your email subscriber list conversion rate will start becoming more predictable. But all of this will take time as data accumulates and patterns become more clear.

This Is Fun And All...But What Now?

You're probably thinking, "it's fun and all playing with these formulas and seeing how much money I hope I'll make, but what's the next step?" That's a perfectly legitimate question.

Realizing that 1000 visitors at a .001 conversion rate are needed can help you focus your priorities. If you are currently building a product and not building traffic, then you should also know it will be a while until you reach those fairly targeted 1000 visitors. That may be fine if your product is going to take some time to finish.

If your are working on a product that can be done quicker, you might decide to instead put your energy into building traffic. Or at least now, you might simply have a better idea of when your site will hit your magic visitor number. With that information, you can be sure to have everything in place and ready to go.

Are you already calculating website visitor and email subscriber conversion rates? What kind of numbers are you getting? Please leave a comment below. Thanks!

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