In a previous article, I shared that ads were one of the most popular ways to earn income from websites.
The idea is simple:
- Companies want to advertise their product or service online.
- If your website receives enough traffic, these companies will be interested in placing ads on your site.
- By placing ads on your site, you can earn money each time a reader sees and/or clicks on an ad.
But exactly how much can you earn from ads?
I’ll answer that question in this post.
What Are RPMs?
The acronym RPM stands for revenue per thousand visits. It’s the amount of money you earn from ads per every thousand visitors.
Different ad networks tend to pay different RPMs. In general, I’ve found the RPMs for the most popular ad networks to be as follows:
Ezoic: Minimum traffic: 10k sessions/month | RPMs: $5-15
Monumetric: Minimum traffic: 10k sessions/month | RPMs: $5-15
Mediavine: Minimum traffic: 50k sessions/month | RPMs: $20-35
AdThrive: Minimum traffic: 100k sessions/month | RPMs: $20-35
You can use this simple formula to estimate how much a site can earn from ads based on its monthly traffic and RPMs:
Ad revenue = (monthly visits/1,000) * RPM
For example:
A site with 10,000 monthly visitors and an RPM of $15 will earn (10,000/1,000) * $15 = $150
A site with 50,000 monthly visitors and an RPM of $20 will earn (50,000/1,000) * $20 = $1,000
A site with 100,000 monthly visitors and an RPM of $25 will earn (100,000/1,000) * $25 = $2,500
The Nature of RPMs
The actual RPMs for a particular site are dependent on three factors:
1. The ad network you use. Some networks simply pay higher RPMs than others. The networks that require a higher number of monthly visitors pay higher RPMs than those that require fewer visitors.
2. The number of ads you place on your site. Once you join an ad network, you can control the ad frequency (e.g. what percentage of your site is covered in ads). The higher your ad frequency, the higher the RPMs. Just keep in mind that too many ads is a turn-off for readers and it can actually drive traffic away from your site.
3. The time of year. It’s well-known in the world of advertising that RPMs are highest during November and December when companies are throwing more money into advertising to boost holiday revenue, while RPMs tend to be lowest during January – March when companies typically spend less on ads. You have no power over this cyclical nature of RPMs, but it’s something to be aware of.
My Actual RPMs
I personally use the Mediavine ad network for each of my websites.
The following screenshot shows my actual RPMs for the four sites that I had on Mediavine during December 2019:
Note: Your RPMs will be lowest when you initially join an ad network, but will increase over time as the ad network collects more data about your site and figures out the optimal types of ads to show on your site to maximize revenue. This is why Statology’s RPM was only $6.67 – it had only been on Mediavine for 11 days.
You can see that my RPMs range from $14 to $30. Four Pillar Freedom had a whopping $30.40 in RPM during December for two reasons:
- December RPMs are always highest.
- My articles on Four Pillar Freedom are very long, which means more ads can fit in the articles.
This next screenshot shows my RPMs for the same group of sites in the following month of January 2020:
Notice that the RPMs for each site (except Statology) are down about 30% compared to December. This is the cyclical nature of RPMs.
But notice that my total income from ads in January ($3,912) was up compared to December ($2,596) simply because my traffic was much higher in January.
Hopefully these numbers are illuminating if you’ve been wondering how much you can earn with ads.
Full Disclosure: Nothing on this site should ever be considered to be advice, research or an invitation to buy or sell any securities, please see my Terms & Conditions page for a full disclaimer.
