Last updated June 2023
Use our ad revenue forecaster to find out how much money you can potentially make from placing ads on your website.
Unfortunately, finding out a reasonable estimate for your website’s earning potential can be quite difficult. That is where our helpful calculator comes in. Use it to estimate how much money you can make from online advertising, as well as work out how many page views you would need to hit a specific level of revenue.
Ad Revenue Forecaster
Note: This is for estimation purposes only; real figures will vary.
If you want to experiment with different scenarios (page views, RPMs etc.), use our RPM calculator here.
Use $10 Page RPM as A Benchmark
After reviewing every article, blog post, and comment that we could find on the subject, The Online Advertising Guide has concluded that, on average, you can make $10 Page RPM through online advertising. This is through AdSense, which is the most popular starter ad network.
This means that for every 1,000 page views a site gets, it will likely earn $10.
This is why the default RPM value in our ad revenue estimator is $10. This figure is useful as it gives you a benchmark to see if you are doing well compared to the overall internet average.
If you have a Page RPM of above $10, then great! You likely have the basics of your site setup done correctly.
If you have a Page RPM of below $10, then you should probably review your setup (perhaps experiment with new page layouts, ad networks and ad sizes).
You should not obsess over this benchmark, however. You should always seek to improve on how your site is actually doing. Work out your own site’s benchmark by calculating the Page RPM of your first 3 – 6 months (use our RPM calculator for convenience). Once you have your benchmark, then try and improve on it!
By comparing your site to its past performance, you will be able to improve in a logical way.
Why This is Only An Estimate
Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to predict how much money you can make, as every site has a unique earning potential.
If your site is well-made and covers a popular topic with rich advertisers (such as finance), you could make loads of money. If your site is poorly made about a topic that few advertisers can succeed by advertising on (such as religion or politics), you will likely never make much money at all.
On top of this, ad networks like to keep revenue figures to themselves. While there is lots of data out there about how much it costs to buy ads, there is precious little about how much money you can make.
This $10 Page RPM figure, however, is mentioned time and again on forums and blogs. Other figures we found rarely fell outside of the $5-$15 range, which again reinforces that $10 is a good average.
It is only an estimated average, however. That is why our calculator provides a range of figures to show where your results are likely to fall. The most likely result is using the set Page RPM (which is $10 unless you change it). We then give two higher thresholds (+25% and +50%) and two lower thresholds (-25% and -50%).
The middle figure is the most likely result. As you can never predict the future for certain, we would recommend assuming your result will fall somewhere between the middle bounds.
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