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Ask HN: How much ad revenue you make from your side project?

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Re: Ask HN: How much ad revenue you make from your side project?

#11

Post by 20years »

notadoc wrote: post #8
20years wrote: post #6

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 c…

> 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…

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.

Re: Ask HN: How much ad revenue you make from your side project?

#13

Post by 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.

Re: Ask HN: How much ad revenue you make from your side project?

#14

Post by Cherian »

notadoc wrote: post #9
Cherian wrote: post #3

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…

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.

There are a lot of companies that help you do this. Examples: http://www.adthrive.com/, https://www.mediavine.com/

Edit: The money takes more than 6 years of hard work and a lot of content, social media management, brand building, sponsored writing, quality photography, now byte-size videos etc.

Re: Ask HN: How much ad revenue you make from your side project?

#15

Post by 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.

Re: Ask HN: How much ad revenue you make from your side project?

#16

Post by DamonHD »

archildress wrote: post #5

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 inc…

At its peak I had one (photos) site making ~$2000/month. Not a lot of text per item, though I did try to provide extensive tree-structured content. (Now that site is lucky to make 1% of peak, BTW!)

Re: Ask HN: How much ad revenue you make from your side project?

#17

Post by notadoc »

dejv wrote: post #4

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…

> 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.

Re: Ask HN: How much ad revenue you make from your side project?

#18

Post by 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).

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.

Re: Ask HN: How much ad revenue you make from your side project?

#20

Post by paulpauper »

notadoc wrote: post #17
dejv wrote: post #4

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…

> 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.

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