> The site now has more than a million visitors a month and earns a nice side income from a small ad.
So when it says that, what does that mean? It pays for hosting costs I assume. Are we talking enough to pay for a couple of meals out a month? Or enough to retire on?
CPMs can range, but if it's high quality and or niche they could be fairly high for something like a 'sponsored' ad on a super target forum/email list.
Still not a lot of impressions though. it would be 1,000,000 / 1000 = 1000 * __ x.
Where X I might guess anywhere from $.5 cpm to maybe even $10 if it's super unique and high quality niche. banners are cheap for a reason.
Though someone like Axios where they do a more 'sponsored' big higher quality ad probably gets more. I think some jobs or industry email lists able to get sponsors to pay big. Video gets more.
It's all about niche & quality. I'd rather spend more on a higher quality ad than touch any open market banner crap.
It means I didn't want to get too specific about the amount involved. But I can see there's lots of interest in this question.
I wonder actually if something like https://www.levels.fyi could be built or exists but for ad-supported websites (side project idea?). It'd be really useful for people to understand more broadly "if you create site of type x and it gets y amount of traffic you can expect this level of ad revenue".
One reason the amount involved in my case would only be so useful is that sites can wildly vary (by as much as 100x I'm told) in how much $ per visit is generated (the industry term is "RPM").
I wish I remember the site from a decade ago but I feel like this existed sorta with a site that used to hold auctions/sales for people selling their website. I wish I could remember the site now, would be fun to look at it in wayback machine. I remember things like traffic numbers, sources, revenue etc.
> It means I didn't want to get too specific about the amount involved.
Is this because you don't want to reveal anything about your personal financial situation or is it because knowing the amount would somehow help someone compete and encroach on your "territory"?
Interesting question. I tried to introspect a bit about the reason and I'm still not really sure. Maybe an American cultural influence of things like salaries being taboo.
Indie Hackers basically does this (and some are verified by stripe integration), although most of the companies are probably product-based. If they don't have it already, an "ad-supported" tag would be useful.
So when it says that, what does that mean? It pays for hosting costs I assume. Are we talking enough to pay for a couple of meals out a month? Or enough to retire on?