
Show HN: Ad Revenue Prediction Tool for Side Projects - sixtypoundhound
http://www.marginhound.com/calculators/website-revenue-calculator
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Guest9812398
I'll compare the tool with two of my sites that run advertising.

#1. The tool estimates 1.5 million a month in revenue. Actual earnings are
6,000.

#2. The tool estimates 6,600 per month in revenue. Actual earnings are 400.

I get those numbers while using conservative prediction options. With the
first site, the estimate is 250x higher than actual revenues. It's hard to
even call it an estimate at that point.

I'm confident my sites are well optimized. I run header bidding with most of
the major ad networks (Google, AppNexus, AOL, etc). I've done countless A/B
tests. I've sold direct campaigns to Fortune 500 companies. I frequently Skype
with other well known people in my industry (they're pulling in millions
annually on advertising) and we talk numbers for our different projects.

In short, I just want to caution people these estimates are likely incredibly
inaccurate.

~~~
sixtypoundhound
Hmm - mind sharing the settings behind your calculations? Surprised the error
is several orders of magnitude. (PM is fine, if Hacker News has an option like
that)

The model behind tool was based on a decently large / diverse data set of
small websites; it lines up well with public information from sources such as
site brokers.

(and of course, I run sites as well and plugged my own data through the tool
during the validation process)

What kind of traffic are you getting on those sites?

Probably also worth asking if there are site design or traffic factors that
reduce advertising interest? (for example, forums and downloads may have lower
intent)

~~~
Guest9812398
One major issue with the tool is you're valuing all page views equally. 10
page views from 1 session will pay far less than 10 page views from 10
sessions. Advertisers cap their impressions per user, so revenues drop off
fast as the number of page views per session increases.

Also, don't forget about ad blocking. Over 50% of my users block
advertisements, since they're young and tech savvy. That's a big drop in
revenues right from the start.

The first site has about 30 million page views a month from 3 million
sessions. The second site has about 1.5 million page views from 250,000
sessions.

Typical CPM rates...

* $0.20 - Ad exchanges for low value regions.

* $1.00 - Ad exchanges for high value regions (US, UK, Australia, Canada, etc).

* $3.00 - Direct sales for MPU spots in high value regions.

* $5-10.00 - Direct sales for background advertisements in high value regions.

This is in the entertainment niche.

~~~
sixtypoundhound
Ah... that's starting to make sense now.

Yup, blowing through a bunch of impressions on the same audience will
definitely tank CPM's and fill rates. I'm also going to guess you get a lot of
repeat visits? (so those sessions are hitting a smaller base of uniques?)

Hmm... thinking I may work up a corrective adjustment.

Core development sample was blogs and small content sites, where the opposite
problem exists (finding a way to unbounce the visitors so you go from 1.3 PV/S
to 3+).

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soared
Looks good. I don't do anything on the publisher side but one thing I see
people always misunderstand is this: You don't just put some ads on your site
and then you're done. You need to analyze performance and optimize
accordingly. Try different ad sizes, vendors, locations, frequencies etc.

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davidw
Ads are not a great way to monetize many things - it's better to have some
kind of product/service that people actually pay you money for. It creates a
much shorter feedback loop between you and your customers.

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styfle
Where does CarbonAds fall in this spectrum? I want something similar for my
website but I don’t get enough traffic to sign up with Carbon.

------
geoffreyhale
This makes me want to start yet another website.

~~~
659087
It makes me want to ramp up my efforts to get my friends and family members to
install ad blockers, and also makes me even happier about the piholes I gave
to several people as gifts the other day.

~~~
akoncius
why so negative? if somebody provides value, why not contribute back by
watching ads? or do you regularly pay money to authors? if not, then maybe
don’t visit websites if you refuse to compensate other people’s work?

~~~
659087
If you provide value, people (myself included) will happily pay for it. People
who go out of their way to optimize their websites for ad revenue are not
among those "providing value" to anyone.

Ads are psychological malware, even when they aren't serving actual malware.

> why so negative?

Probably has something to do with the advertising industry doing everything it
possibly can to infiltrate every facet of our lives and ruin everything that
was ever good about the internet and the web.

~~~
AFNobody
> If you provide value, people (myself included) will happily pay for it.

If it has no value, stop accessing it instead of blocking the ads.

~~~
659087
If I visit a site for the first time without any ad blocking enabled, and
realize it provides no value, how do I reverse my exposure to those ads? How
do I claw back whatever data their tracking scripts collected about me?

~~~
AFNobody
> If I visit a site for the first time without any ad blocking enabled, and
> realize it provides no value, how do I reverse my exposure to those ads? How
> do I claw back whatever data their tracking scripts collected about me?

The exposure you are talking about is a non-issue, particularly given every
site you contact has that same information (even without Ads).

If you are concerned about that level of privacy, you should be using
[https://tails.boum.org](https://tails.boum.org) or a no logs VPN.

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CryoLogic
IMO we need a good micropayments solution where I can pay/tip a few pennies
per good article or site instead of having to subscribe for dollar amounts or
view tons of ads.

I am hoping IOTA can bring this.

------
Jack000
here's some data from my niche site (colormind.io)

sessions per month: 43000

pageviews per session: 2.3

predicted ad rates: 7.5cpm

actual ad rates: 0.72cpm

actual ctr: 0.27% (280 clicks)

predicted revenue: 742

actual revenue (november): 73.87 (carbon ads)

wonder if it's really possible to 10x ad revenue with a tracking ad network. I
suspect this might require much more intrusive ads though.

