If, in spite of all of these obstacles, you are successful in building an audience, here’s your reward: low monetization rates. Ad rates online are priced by CPMs (cost per thousand impressions). Your typical news or media site (i.e. not search or ecommerce) probably commands, on average, CPMs of a buck or two — site-wide. If the site is a social network, a forum page or other community offering, that number goes down to $0.15-$0.30. To make any real money, you need to serve A LOT of page views.

In other words, online is not for the faint of heart. It’s very far from an easy place to build an audience, much less make any real money. Ecommerce and search are the only really proven businesses online – and those have a whole host of other issues that go along with them.

So the next time you see some company build a site that grabs a big piece of the market and starts making real money, don’t dismiss its success as easy or lucky. Rather admire it for rising to the top in a very difficult environment.

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