
Ask HN: How much ad revenue you make from your side project? - samblr
Have a side project which is an analytics web application based on 100k+ records. I was initially thinking to get a small payment from each user. But it appears to me that - information provided can be easily scrapped from site (if someone really wants) and it won&#x27;t make sense.<p>So I am thinking of revenue model based on ads. At its &#x27;full&#x27; potential web application can draw a million visits per month (in 2-3 years may be).<p>Adrevenue calculators show adrevenue of $2000 dollars for a million visits[0] with 2 pages&#x2F;visit and $1 RPM.<p>How realistic are these adrevenue calculators ?<p>Can anybody share their experience with real numbers and insights.<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.omnicalculator.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;website-ad-revenue\<p>edit: reformed sentence
======
phoboslab
I make about $600/mo pretty consistently with a typing game
([http://zty.pe](http://zty.pe)) - about 200k visits/mo.

I once managed another project that had about 14m visits/mo and made a meager
$3000. Bad target demographic.

~~~
lappet
Wow, [http://zty.pe](http://zty.pe) is really fun!

~~~
sundvor
Oh yes! :-) First try: 1866, wave 15, 96% accuracy, 244 streak.

Should have a donate button on the page (because uBlock..). Edit: Or: Register
to track progress over time with a login, for a low fixed(?) fee.

------
20years
It varies greatly based on type of content. The most I have made was $20k per
month on a TV show review site. We had Netflix and Hulu advertising on in
through Adsense for awhile and their ads were specific to the individual TV
shows we were writing about. The RPM's were amazing.

I also ran a Minecraft mods site for awhile with my son and at its top it made
$9k/mo with about 130k unique visitor per month.

More tech content sites or other more general sites I have ran haven't gotten
anywhere close to those #'s.

Games and entertainment content geared towards youth do well.

Ad placement also makes a difference. 1 well placed in-content ad can make you
a lot more than 3 ads. That one well placed in-content ad can generate a
higher CTR and CPC vs. if you place 3 ads. When you place multiple ads, the
CTR on all of them even the well placed in-content ad is much lower as well
the the CPC. I have tested this extensively.

~~~
notadoc
> The most I have made was $20k per month on a TV show review site.

> I also ran a Minecraft mods site for awhile with my son and at its top it
> made $9k/mo

Congratulations. That is pretty impressive, and you repeated he success twice.
Do you still run those? Is that your full time job?

> When you place multiple ads, the CTR on all of them even the well placed in-
> content ad is much lower as well the the CPC.

Wouldn't you still come out ahead because with more ads you get more
impressions? Isn't that how it works and why you see sites with 1000000 ads?

~~~
20years
Thanks. I don't run either anymore. The TV show site started off as a side
project to train a new employee and ended up turning into a nice little
business for awhile. When summer hit, the site plummeted in traffic & revenue
and when the TV show seasons started again both Hulu and Netflix where not
advertising the same anymore. That combined with the TV show line up was
horrible so the traction just wasn't there anymore. It was fun while it
lasted.

I shut down the Minecraft site about 6 months ago. Traffic also plummeted
being that mods are not as popular because lots of the kids are now playing
Minecraft with the app or consoles.

It's not my full-time job. It's always been more of a side thing. I don't
think I would be able to sleep at night if it were my full-time job. Way too
much risk with it.

"Wouldn't you still come out ahead because with more ads you get more
impressions?"

You would think but actually no at least not for all of the tests I did and I
did a lot of them. You don't really make your $$ from impressions. You make $$
when people click on your ads. If the ads that are displayed are very relevant
and your CTR is really good, you make more money.

~~~
notadoc
Isn't Minecraft still popular? Why shut it down rather than let it sit there
or sell it?

I'd think with the increasing popularity of Netflix that'd still be popular as
well.

~~~
20years
It was a site about Minecraft mods which don't garner as much traffic as they
once did. I did consider selling it at one point and even spoke with a web
broker. The biggest concerns were trademark stuff especially now that
Microsoft owns it. Letting a content site just "sit there" is the same thing
as letting it die, which is what I pretty much did. You gotta keep on
generating good content if you want to make $$ at it. In addition to that, the
content you do generate needs to be able to garner enough traffic to make that
$$.

Yes, Netflix is still popular but they were not pushing as many display ads as
they once were when the site was doing its best. Plus the TV show line up
sucked after that summer and nothing really was sticking. After taking into
account the cost to hire and manage contract TV show writers, cost to
advertise it, hosting, etc. the revenue it was making wasn't enough for it to
be worthwhile. Especially considering our SaaS products and Advertising Agency
were growing.

~~~
intenscia
I run a modding site and are always interested in small sites even if dead.
Reach out if interested it might fit what we are looking for

------
Cherian
I can speak for the food blogging industry. This is my wife’s blog[1]

A good food blogger focusing on the US/High GDP audience can get CPMs from
$1-4[2]. Where it gets interesting are the RPM numbers. If you can manage
multiple ad networks, execute 100% fill rates, bid between networks and become
a preferred partner, you can rake up to $12-15in RPM [3]. Here’s more of
multiple revenue sources for a successful blog [4]

Caveat: Things take off once you cross around 700—800K US traffic. Until then
it can be frustrating.

[1]: [https://alittlebitofspice.com/](https://alittlebitofspice.com/)

[2]: [http://d.pr/i/bIBobD](http://d.pr/i/bIBobD)

[3]: [http://d.pr/i/Qvk1M](http://d.pr/i/Qvk1M)

[4]: [http://d.pr/i/dEqpvA](http://d.pr/i/dEqpvA)

~~~
notadoc
Wow I had no idea food blogging was a profitable thing. Congrats to your wife.

> If you can manage multiple ad networks, execute 100% fill rates, bid between
> networks

Isn't that impossible to get 100% filled? I recall reading a while back that
getting even 40% was challenging which is why the ad quality online has gone
down and they're more intrusive?

Lots of interesting stuff on this thread, thanks for sharing.

~~~
joshvm
Food blogging is an enormous market. The best foodies don't get money from
Adsense though, it's through sponsorship/affiliate deals, books if they hit it
big.

It's quite a stereotyped field though, and I would imagine it's a saturated
market. Everyone wants to be like Deliciously Ella [1]. Don't even try unless
you have a studio setup for the photography. Lots of food authors are pivoting
towards more (usually female oriented) "lifestyle" blogs which happen to have
recipes.

A lot of food blogs target healthy eating, or niche diets like keto/paleo.
There are also tons of specialist food blogs covering bread, cakes, etc.

[1] [https://deliciouslyella.com/](https://deliciouslyella.com/)

~~~
Cherian
You are right. We have around $3000 worth of lighting equipment, lens, etc.
But we acquired them along the way.

Sponsored content is a good chunk of money (close to 30% every mom) but its
nonscalable.

~~~
zombieprocess
Can you elaborate some more on this? What kind of equipment and resources for
learning more about this?

~~~
joshvm
Typically: DSLR, large aperture normal zoom lens, 2 or more external strobes,
softboxes, reflectors, tripods, and flash triggers.

Have a look at Strobist which is specifically aimed at flash photography.

Otherwise just look in photo or recipe books, food blogs and shamelessly steal
until you get the hang of layout.

------
dejv
I have couple of small side projects that which are monetised through ads.
Portfolio of those web apps are 7 years old and traffic is growing linearly.
The problem is revenue, which is basically cutting in half every 12 - 18
months: both CTR and revenue is going down.

There are a lot of people with adblock these days, but also mobile traffic is
not that profitable and people learned to ignore the ads as a noise. I am also
using just one small rectangle per page and not going for more aggressive
tactics.

During those 7 years I am down from "these apps are paying my rent" to "I can
have a one meal in a nice restaurant each month".

The point is: it is getting much harder to make money by having ads in your
app. Also make sure that all the information are recent and comes from your
market sector as is changing real quick.

~~~
notadoc
> There are a lot of people with adblock these days

And it is soon to be built into web browsers, you have to wonder the impact
that will have.

~~~
paulpauper
isn't ad block easy to thwart? Sites like forbes and fortune do

~~~
dejv
Yes, I can do it, but I respect choice of my users.

------
chirau
I don't know if YouTube counts here.

On the weekends I upload videos for artists from my home country. I have one
channel that is fairly popular. The artists themselves are not big enough to
attract many people to their own channels so the use mine. We split the ad
revenue. I pay them locally. My take home after deductions is anywhere from 5k
to 8k per quarter.

EDIT: added payout period. I give payouts per quarter because as i said, they
are not big artists, so it would be tedious sending small amounts to tons of
people each month.

~~~
marcc
That's pretty impressive. I'm curious to hear how your YouTube account gained
enough followers to make this possible. It would be difficult to convince an
artist to upload it into your account before you had traction.

~~~
chirau
I started the channel by posting some videos that were not allowed to be
played in the country, then some protest videos that became very popular and
were taken up by news outlets. So at that point, it got a lot of subscribers.
Sat on it for a while doing nothing, then i realized there was an opportunity.
I tried to explain to some artists initially what YouTube could do for them.
Most of them didn't understand. They'd just put up their stuff on Facebook or
Soundcloud. So i initially did it without their permission. I took 2 really
popular artists' material and put it up on the channel then sent a letter at
the end of the month with a report and asking them how they wanted to be paid.
Out of the blue, they had someone offering them money. So then we had a
conversation.

Some other artists already had channels, so they were hesitant, so i
approached some of them and tried to explain momentum. They didn't understand
either, so I took the same material they had on their channels and put it up
then gave them the reports and checks at the end of the month as well. Then
they understood it would be tough to go it alone. From there onward, it was
much easier getting artists to post on the channel.

I am now looking for ways to move the thing forward. I am getting to a point
where I have too many uploads which sometimes dilutes the attention, so I
might open another channel. Unfortunately I am not large enough to manage
other personal channels as a small MCN.

~~~
marcc
That's a great story. Thanks for sharing.

I think it's common on sites like HN for us to see your original post and
think "he uploads videos and gets how much?" But it's the backstory that's
interesting. What events led you to have this unique opportunity that you are
now capitalizing on.

------
quadrangle
I have some YouTube videos that total half a million views, which is not much,
but enough that I could be monetizing. I don't turn on monetizing because I
don't feel okay pushing _more_ ads on people. So my total is zero.

I would like to make a living producing positive value to the world. I don't
want the additional job of promoting advertisements that I would not
necessarily endorse just because my work is popular enough that advertisers
will pay to take some of the attention I've gotten. Ads are inherently
manipulative, and I'd rather encourage everyone to use an adblocker rather
than have a conflict-of-interest with what's actually good for my audience.

~~~
FlyingAvatar
I got YouTube Red for the purpose of contributing to content providers without
watching ads. I would just use an ad blocker otherwise.

Unless your content is for kids, where they probably don't have the choice to
watch them or not, why not monetize?

If it's your viewer's choice whether they see ads or not, and if the money
might help you provide more or better content, it could be a win-win.

~~~
quadrangle
(A) I don't like specifically supporting Google's efforts to tie direct-
funding to their ad-platform (they specifically have made many efforts to make
it so that direct funding is connected to removing ads _because_ it cuts out
people like me who refuse to use the ads… using their direct-funding
approaches is actually an _increase_ in advertising, not a reduction)

and (B) I don't like the "viewer's choice" argument that I see as basically
suckers-deserve-to-be-suckered. People who aren't thoughtful or knowledgeable
enough to install an adblocker are just the people most susceptible to
advertising manipulation. I want no part of _increasing_ that. My
understanding is that YouTube doesn't just give me a cut of revenue or not,
they actually _increase_ the ads tied to my videos if I "monetize". I won't be
able to control the ads either to make sure they aren't manipulative or
promoting products I would not be comfortable endorsing.

The money would totally help me provide more and better content, for sure. I
hate this dilemma, but I've ended up sacrificing a lot in my life to work on
building a more ethical economy around all of this via
[https://snowdrift.coop](https://snowdrift.coop) (approaching launch, not
fully operating yet) rather than give in to this whole ad-based economy that I
would have trouble with even if it were _only_ advertising typical corporate
crap let alone engaging in the far more unethical tracking and other shit they
actually do. [https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/existing-
mechanisms#third-...](https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/existing-
mechanisms#third-party-ads) expresses my views on this.

I hope this doesn't come across as me shaming everyone else who uses ads. I
think the problems are systemic and recognize fully the way any individual
going against the flow isn't necessarily the answer. That's why we need
systemic change. I just wanted to share my perspective so this thread at least
had the critical issues brought up, even though it's tangential. (Although my
story of $0 ad income is an answer to the question)

------
t0mislav
I'm small fish here, but since question was asked I will share.
[https://random.country/](https://random.country/) brings me around 40$
passive income monthly. Around 5K visitors monthly. Probably it could bring me
more money with one more ad.

~~~
mysterypie
I like the quiz, but I wish it told me the correct answer when I guess
wrongly. You could give the correct answer either immediately or at the end of
the quiz; either way would be fine.

~~~
t0mislav
Agree, good idea.

------
natvod
@csallen could probably jump in with some interesting insights. His site Indie
Hackers was generating $5K a month from ad rev before it was acquired by
Stripe
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14090063](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14090063)).

He actively reached out to relevant companies to ask them to place ads on his
website.

If you brokered these type of ad partnerships, you could easily make a few
thousand with your audience.

Ad types include: send a targeted email promo to users based on their
analytics data, ads on the pages, etc.

~~~
joshvm
I mentioned this in another post, but I believe this is how most seriously
profitable bloggers make their money. They don't go for Google ads, they go
for affiliate deals and sponsorship.

It's a smarter way to do it because the adverts are usually far far more
relevant to the audience. Nothing annoys me more than generic clickbait
advertising ("Release your equity!", "What did these 10 people do to get
rich?", etc) which I'm never going to click on. On the other hand if I see a
food blog sponsored by e.g. KitchenAid, I might have another look at their
mixers.

If you have the readership and a trusting community (or reputation), it's a no
brainer. This is how Daring Fireball does it too.

Affiliate links are another good way of subtly making cash - look at people
like Ken Rockwell, who was once the de facto "Nikon Guy". His site was (is?)
the go to place for Nikon camera/lens reviews. There are no ads on his site,
but every damn link is affiliated (and why not?). This is also a very sneaky
way for airline reward bloggers to make tons of points: they find the deals,
everyone goes through the affiliate links and earns their meager 100 avios,
while the blogger makes a tidy referral profit. The guy who runs Head for
Points [1] made thousands when the Curve Card was released.

[1] [http://www.headforpoints.com/2017/01/12/curve-rewards-
launch...](http://www.headforpoints.com/2017/01/12/curve-rewards-launched/)

------
dgacmu
$100/month for the Pi Searcher + the Splat Calculator. More on Pi day. $1-2
RPM. 100k page views per month. One built in 1996, the other in maybe 99.
[http://www.angio.net/pi](http://www.angio.net/pi) and
[http://www.angio.net/personal/climb/speed](http://www.angio.net/personal/climb/speed)

Neither is designed with monetization in mind. I just threw some ads on them
to cover the hosting costs (the pi Searcher needs a few gigs of RAM) -- but it
turned out that learning about the ad ecosystem was pretty interesting.

------
galfarragem
2 niche blogs: archimodels.info / archidrawings.info

Adsense revenue accounted to half of my monthly revenue ($100) 4 years ago.
Nowadays, thanks to adblockers, it's only 10% of it and my monthly revenue is
down to $50. Most of my revenue comes from a direct ad that adblockers can't
detect.

Adsense is dead to small publishers.

------
Envec83
I run a couple of ad-based websites. The largest one being
[https://www.dailywritingtips.com](https://www.dailywritingtips.com)

The key aspect to estimate how much you can earn is the page RPM you can get.

The average I have seen across my sits is around $2. Some niches have lower
RPMs (e.g., programming, in my case at least). Some niches have much higher. I
had a site about investing in gold that had $12 page RPM on average, if I
remember well.

In your case, I believe the number would be higher than $2000 per month if you
reach 1 million visitors. I am guessing twice as much at least.

~~~
queicherius
Is that RPM for AdSense or a different ad provider? I tried multiple providers
for my site (gaming / MMO niche) and I end up around 0.13$ RPM everywhere. Or
is that value for multiple combined ads?

------
jaden
One of my sites
([https://riddlesbrainteasers.com](https://riddlesbrainteasers.com)) has been
a wild ride, reaching a peak of $18k/month and down to an average of around
$500/month now. Monthly traffic is generally around 300k unique visitors.

Another site ([http://coincollector.org](http://coincollector.org)) was making
$300/month as long as I kept posting but after several years I grew tired and
now it earns next to nothing.

~~~
latenightcoding
How did you go from $18k/month to $500 month? ad blockers?

~~~
jaden
The site got hit by one of Google's black box algorithm adjustments. I spoke
with folks on the Adsense team and followed their advice but it's never
rebounded. It was mostly organic traffic, which means it depends on the whims
of search engines. (It's not a reassuring position to be in).

------
archildress
I hate to hijack, but I'm facing the exact same issue you are. The rates that
I've heard quoted for AdSense just aren't happening for me. My rates are very
similar to yours, samblr.

I think that part of my problem (and it could be yours) is that I don't have a
ton of written content around my free giveaways, which is the core of my site.
Basically: plenty of cake, very little frosting.

Can anyone offer advice for increasing AdSense revenue for a site without much
written content?

I run a site called Preset Love
([http://presetlove.com](http://presetlove.com)) which gives away free
Lightroom presets (Lightroom is an image editor for Adobe). My ad rates are
abysmal and I've thought of walking away as a result.

I welcome feedback.

~~~
20years
Every single one of your pages I visited shows me a remarketing ad. This tells
me that Google can't find good matching advertisers for your content so they
show remarketing ads instead. Remarketing ads always pay out much, much less.

~~~
archildress
Good feedback, thank you: it certainly means that I'm not doing a good job
giving clues to AdSense what the site is about.

------
anonaffiliate
I have an adwords site that sends affiliate traffic to a few merchants.

I currently pull in about $300k/year in revenue and $80-$100k/year in profit.

I use a number of credits cards for the ads to get points, so I consider it a
source of revenue and vacations.

It's not easy to make a site like this and it as been a long road, but a
worthwhile one.

(Posting anon as I prefer not to disclose revenues publicly)

~~~
samblr
At what point you approached an affiliate and what analytics you use to bill
an affiliate ? in short how is deal made and managed.

~~~
anonaffiliate
Use affiliate networks like impact radius or affiliate window / Zanox. Apply
to and join programs there and they handle analytics and payment.

------
blaze33
-11$ this month for my blog. One article hit HN front page 2 weeks ago and I'm left with a small AWS bill, I had no ads :)

Since then, I tried to activate ads via disqus comments but their revenue
program seems like you have to be selected first in order to earn money. What
would you recommend to monetize a tech blog ? (at least to cover the hosting
fees)

~~~
merkaloid
if your blog is static data on S3, you can put cloudflare in front of it with
the free plan and pay next to nothing due to the caching which they dont
charge for

~~~
JoshuaRLi
hey, that's pretty good

------
stevebmark
Somewhere between -$30,000 and -$60,000 I think. Even though they weren't
successful (two) projects, it's always disappointing to see how few people are
willing to spend their own money on something.

~~~
jackgolding
their own money on a similar project or your customers?

~~~
stevebmark
I'm sick of seeing people running to get capital to start a project instead of
actually putting their own money down.

------
shazow
Once upon a time, [https://tweepsect.com/](https://tweepsect.com/) would get
upwards of 650,000 visits/mo so I slapped some Fusion Ads (now Carbon Ads) on
it and it brought in about $200-300/mo.

It has slowly declined down to tens of thousands of visits per month, which
comes out to around $15-30/mo.

I really didn't want to try and monetize it for too long and ultimately
regretted not slapping a simple clean ad on it earlier. Could have made more
with more non-exclusive ads but it was about right for the amount of effort it
took (very little). Not bad for a completely unattended service with zero
overhead.

------
Mz
For some years, I got a check from AdSense about once a year or so. Then with
the adblocker wars, I didn't see a check for about two years. Their payment
threshold is $100, so I was making something like $100 or so a year-ish. With
getting more traffic, my numbers in recent months are looking more promising
than that, but it is still looking like "not enough to be obligated to report
it on my taxes." (In the US, that means under $600 annually, which I am not on
track to be anywhere near. But I might get a second check before the year is
up?)

I have always done better with getting cash from my audience than with ads. I
used to have donate buttons on my sites, but at some point I switched to a tip
jar and my take improved. Instructions how to make a pay pal tip jar can be
found here (on my website):

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/11/how-to-
make-...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/11/how-to-make-paypal-
tip-jar.html)

------
squeakynick
I write the blog
[http://datagenetics.com/blog.html](http://datagenetics.com/blog.html)

In 2016, it delivered 4.3 Million PVs

I have a single Google AdSense advert on most pages and revenue generated in
2016 was $1,124.95

It pays for hosting, and the occasional steak dinner, but no, it's not a
fulltime job :)

~~~
goostavos
Just wanted to say that I absolutely love your blog. I purposefully bought my
younger brothers Battleship for Christmas a few years ago just so that I could
crush them with the strategy I read on your blog. ^_^

------
jlarocco
> So I am thinking of revenue model based on ads. At its 'full' potential web
> application can draw a million visits per month (in 2-3 years may be).

Please don't. Find a way to charge money for it, or accept that it's really
not that valuable.

Sad how everybody thinks merely hosting a website entitles them to revenue
now.

~~~
notadoc
People are accustomed to paying nothing on the web, unless it's a physical
product nobody is paying for anything.

~~~
jlarocco
Yet Github, Dropbox, Fog Creek, Atlassian, and thousands of others aren't
shutting down.

Maybe it's time to raise the bar a little bit and stop funding these services
that nobody really values but will use because they're "free".

Ad supported companies have a strong tendency to invade people's privacy,
track people around the internet, provide almost no customer support, and
refuse service (or shutdown) on a whim. Google, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, etc.
do it all the time, and it's the same way all the way down to the smaller
players. Generally they're just not very good companies.

~~~
marcus_holmes
I agree. But I've noticed a similar "downvote" in physical conversations with
people.

I think there's a strong desire for the whole "build a huge audience for your
free product, then monetise somehow" model to be valid still (if it ever
actually was). Because it's easy, I think.

The fact that it doesn't actually work any more is upsetting to people. So
they downvote. That's my guess anyway.

Not that you'll be able to read this, because this post is about to be
downvoted to oblivion too ;)

------
kanakiyajay
I have got two sites averaging about 50K a month and used to earn close to $50
a month. But I got bored and earnings and visits crashed. I have now got a
renewed interest to look at it and try to establish a basic business model not
based on ads which is just not sustainable. Affiliate networks is something
that I am excited about or a job board site. Tl;dr ad revenue is nothing as
compared to what you can make due to affiliate networks or a paid service. For
people who were asking: [https://jquer.in](https://jquer.in) and
[http://angular-js.in](http://angular-js.in)

------
chad_strategic
I wanted to practice a little more more with nodejs. To me it's pointless to
learning a programming language without a project. Eventually, I will convert
it from PHP (codeigniter) to angular 4 so that I can learn angular 4.

I also was banned from adsense, for machine generated content. Regardless, I
really like amazon and my product you can't really use adblock, so I put
together a website that monitors amazon daily prices.

I get most of my hits on facebook feed.

Regardless I don't make as much money as I would like, but it gives me
something to do when my job is annoying me.

Http://www.bestoftheinternets.com/Deals

I might be looking for a growth hacker...

------
GroupsOne
I am completely a Rookie here. [http://groupsone.com/](http://groupsone.com/)
targeting whatsapp/telegram group aggregation. Biggest problem I see for my Ad
targets is the country based traffic. Currently integrated with Chitika and
they need US traffic. So I have been earning <10$ with about 10K visits per
month. Just posting here to help newbies out here. I Will be waiting for other
4 months for Adsense approval which can help much more revenue to me . Let me
know if any one have suggestions that can help me out as a newbie.

------
xtrimsky1234
Android video game: [https://traveler208.com/](https://traveler208.com/) Not
making much, spend more in ads trying to make it works (300$) then what it
brought me (about 100$).

Other old android apps are still bringing me 8$/month such as:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pervychine...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pervychine.spanishincar)

------
boyter
For searchcode.com I am getting about 300,000 uniques a month and ad revenue
around $700 a month using carbon ads. It's enough to pay the bills which is
all I really need for it.

------
marmshallow
I'm curious if anyone can answer this from the perspective of iOS,
particularly games. Which ad exchange do you use (fb, google, other?) and how
do you present the ads?

------
latte
I have a site with Hebrew verb conjugations
([http://www.pealim.com](http://www.pealim.com)), which generates c.
$150/month with 60k visits and 6 pages per visit.

Re: scraping - I don't think it makes a big difference whether you have
subscription or ad revenue here. My site can be scraped of course but I don't
plan to make serious money on it anyway.

Your project can do better or worse depending on the visitors' demographics.

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nitramm
\- for domain and hosting

\+ I have learned about delays in click detection on mobile

I have created [http://morebeer.today](http://morebeer.today) some time ago
and I was waiting for more visitors before I include some ads.

Based on the discussion it looks that no content -> garbage ads -> it doesn't
make sense to introduce ads. Also 1$/1k views is not realistic. Should I
rather try to figure out what would be good affiliate links?

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damandloi
A couple of years back, I used to make about $1000/month from about 150K page
views. Nowadays, it is about $400 from 50K pageviews despite better CPC but ad
impressions have come down.

Such calculators are worthless. There are tens in not hundreds of factors to
determine ad revenue.

Site is [http://www.gtricks.com](http://www.gtricks.com)

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nfriedly
I no longer have the original domain name, so traffic (and income) have been
down since then, but [http://user-agent.io](http://user-agent.io) earned about
$30 a month in AdSense revenue after ~6 years of slow growth.

I'm hoping the "see someone else's UA" feature helps the new site grow a
little faster.

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dave333
[http://www.samurai-sudoku.com](http://www.samurai-sudoku.com) makes about
$500/month on 170k page views/month but it only has one ad block for a better
user experience. Also one page view can take hours solving the puzzle.

~~~
srednalfden
I like the sodoku designs. What technology do you use for the site?

~~~
dave333
Thanks. The site runs on plain old javascript.

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anonnyj
My trash mobile apps got me a cool $0

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techaddict009
Seems pretty plain logic. Yes most of if you use adsense you will be making
around 1-2$ per 1000 pageviews if your niche less competition else around
5-10$ per 1000 page views if it has competition and traffic is from tier 1
countries.

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z3t4
on avarage you should be getting 1$/month per unique _returning_ visitor. but
you need some volyme so you can sell directly to advertisers or be very lucky
that your ad network can match you with buyers. if there are no good matches
you'll only make 1 cent or less per user. you need 10k+ monthly users or they
will not talk to you. there are other ways to make money though. instead of
selling your users you can sell _to_ your users. ask around what they need and
want, then sell it to them. you do not have to produce what you are selling
yorself.

~~~
notadoc
That sounds astronomically high. There are sites with billions of visitors and
they certainly aren't making billions of dollars. Some of the popular news
sites would fit that bill and they surely have access to the highest quality
and best paying ads.

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stabiilize
There are many countermeasures to scraping (some of which I employ)

Google is your friend

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throwaway41098
Slightly off topic: there's a lot of discussion in this thread about CPM and
RPM for different types of content. Does anyone know typical CPM and RPM for
adult / NSFW traffic?

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geekme
Many people have commented that their revenue has dropped due to Ad blockers.
Can you suggest any alternate business model for side projects other than ads

~~~
GordonS
Charge money for your product/service/content?

~~~
shanecleveland
I understand the concern with some ads/ad networks. But advertising can be the
best way to provide no-cost content and resources. As this thread shows, ad-
blockers, though understandable, cause harm to those providing valuable and
genuine content and services.

I pay for many services, but there are also many services I would never pay
for, but happily would put up with ads. To me, your suggestion implies that
enough people with ad blockers would otherwise pay for all ad-supported
services. I doubt that.

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iRobbery
Whatever you do make sure you can host the ad banners or so yourself. A slow
ad-network is killing for your traffic.

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rak00n
Is it possible to have a side income while having a full time Software
Engineering job in California?

