Obviously, everybody’s idea of a full-time income will be different.
My own number was $3,000/month when I first started out, which equaled to ~ $100/day. For our calculations in this post, let’s also use $100/day, as that seems to be one of the biggest milestones people want to reach with their own websites.
When I see people talk about Adsense, I see a lot of discussion about profitable niches, cost per click on a Google ad, making a full-time income, etc., but I never see much discussion about traffic.
I see forum threads every day of people wanting to learn how to reach $100/day with Adsense.
At the end of the day, it’s all about traffic. There are many factors that affect a site’s overall income, but lots of traffic is the common denominator. This article covers estimated Adsense earnings per 1000 visitors so you can determine how much traffic you need to reach your income goal.
So how much traffic do you really need to get to $100/day with Adsense?
For me, I was able to reach a full-time income when I was consistently getting over 150,000 visitors per month. I wasn’t just getting that with one website though. Traffic was spread throughout about 20 sites, with 3 of them generating 90% of that.
Am I saying 150,000 visitors/month will always equal $100/day?
Of course not. It could be lower, or even much higher than that. There are so many factors in play that it’s going to be different for everybody. But, it’s a close estimation for any website owner or content creator.
Recommended reading:
Looking to buy an AdSense webiste? Check AdSense Websites For Sale.
How Do You Calculate AdSense RPM?
The biggest metric you need to calculate Adsense income for a website is page RPM.
What Is AdSense RPM?
AdSense RPM is a calculation of how much money you will make per 1,000 page views. It’s calculated using 3 numbers: website traffic, CTR (click-through-rate), and CPC (cost per click).
Page RPM = (Estimated earnings / Number of page views) * 1,000
The average RPM I’ve experienced with Adsense is about $5 to $10 for broad niches and up to $100 for more competitive niches with high CPC.
If you’re able to know your RPM from display ads, you can accurately estimate earnings potentials for higher traffic numbers, as well as the amount of traffic you’ll need to make a full-time income.
For instance, if you’re making an average $10 RPM from one of your websites, that’s $10 for every 1000 visitors on your site.
So you can easily calculate that if you increase your traffic to 100,000 visitors, you would make $1,000. If you grew it to 1,000,000 you would make $10,000. Again, not perfectly accurate, but a good estimation.
What Is the Average Page RPM?
The average RPM for AdSense ranges greatly depending on your niche, the quality of your website, the traffic source (organic traffic from Google search is usually worth more than traffic from most other sources), and the number of advertisers on the AdWords platform.
On the low end, you can expect to see AdSense’s RPM to be $2 to $5. On the medium end, it can range from $5 to $10. On the higher end, that can go all the way up to $50+, and even more.
It’s important to remember that these figures are only averages, and individual sites may see significantly higher or lower RPMs. For example, a website that focuses on a niche topic and has a highly engaged audience might see pretty high RPMs, while a site with low-quality content or poor ad placement might struggle to earn much revenue at all.
Remember that user experience matters too. You don’t want to hurt the user experience for the sake of Google Adsense earnings. User experience matters for search engine optimization (SEO), and also for repeat visitors. If excessive or intrusive ads to the visitor off, they’re likely to click away and never come back.
Traffic Required to Make $100/Day
Let’s break down the numbers even further with some example metrics.
We’ll try to use numbers as close to average as possible. For this example, we’ll use a $1 CPC and a 5% CTR. So how much traffic do we need to make $100 per day with those figures?
First, we need to figure out how many clicks equates to $100 in AdSense revenue.
100/1 = 100 clicks.
If we need 100 clicks at 5% CTR, the total traffic must be…
100/0.05 = 2,000.
We need 2,000 visitors a day. Per month, that is…
2,000 x 30 = 60,000.
60,000 visitors every month to make $100/day Adsense ad revenue. Of course, this is just an estimation using very ideal metric figures. It’s not easy to maintain an average CPC of $1+, and CPC is a giant factor in how much traffic you’ll need to reach this figure.
Some of my blogs consistently get over 10% CTR, while others get under 2%. Some of my sites get CPC of $2-$5, while others never get higher than $0.30.
Can You Guess What the Page RPM Is on the Example Site Above?
If you answered $50, you’re correct.
Remember, RPM is how much you would make for 1000 visitors to your website. If you got 1000 visitors at $1 CPC and a 5% CTR, that’s 50 clicks (5% of 1000) at $1 earned per click.
A $50 page RPM is really great. If I were getting $50 RPM on a site, I would really start building it out with more posts and meaty content to boost those traffic figures.
You can then calculate estimated income based on your future traffic goals.
If you were to increase traffic on the site to 500,000 visitors a month, that would be $25,000 a month from Google ads at the same RPM. Of course, if you also use affiliate marketing or other monetization methods, your income could be even higher with the same traffic.
The table below shows the amount of traffic needed to make $100 per day at various RPMs.
| RPM | Daily Visitors to Reach $100/Day |
| $5 | 20,0000 |
| $10 | 10,000 |
| $25 | 4,000 |
| $50 | 2,000 |
Keep in mind, Google Adsense is typically not the highest paying ad network. High-traffic websites usually earn more with premium networks. You can see our article on the best display ad networks to learn about other options.
Chief Marketing Officer
Entrepreneur. Investor. Husband & Father. I balance that out with a healthy dose of CrossFit and Chess. Currently working as a CMO/Co-founder at MMA Warehouse & CMO at Odys Global.
Connect with Andrej:
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