How Much Traffic Do You Need To Make $100,000 With Google AdSense

Is it really possible to make $100,000 a year from Google AdSense (or by selling ads on your website/blog)? If so, how much traffic do you really need to make big bucks with Google AdSense?

How Much Traffic Do You Really Need To Make Money With AdSense?

Let’s say you want to make $100,000 a year from Google AdSense and/or Google AdSense alternatives.

Read: 20+ Google AdSense Alternatives You Probably Don’t Know

$100,000 divided by 365 = $274 a day.

So, you have to create either: 274 pages which earns $1 a day OR 548 pages which earns 50 cents a day OR 1096 pages which earns 25 cents a day (which sounds reasonable, right?). Let’s say you have 1,096 high quality blogposts and you earn $0.25 per click from AdSense.

I have analyzed the traffic and AdSense stats (using Google Image Search) of several websites including my own blogs and websites.

Read: How To Find The Traffic Of (Almost) Any Website

From my analysis, I found that the average Page CTR is around 1%. But it really depends upon your niche, web site design and other factors. In fact I have achieved a Page CTR of over 20% in 2007 for a niche website and was making $100+ a day from Google AdSense alone.

Google AdSense Glossary

Page Views

A page view is what Google counts in your reports every time a user views a page displaying Google ads. We will count one page view regardless of the number of ads displayed on that page.

For example, if you have a page displaying three ad units and it is viewed twice, you will generate two page views.

Clicks

For standard content ads, Google count a click when a user clicks on an ad.

For link units, Google count a click when a user clicks on an ad on the page of ads, after selecting a link in the link unit.

Page Click Through Rate (Page CTR)

The Page Click Through Rate (CTR) is the number of ad clicks divided by the number of impressions or page views that you have received.

Page CTR = Clicks / Page Views

For example, if you received 5 Clicks from 100 Page Views, then your Page CTR would be 5%. (5/100*100=5%)

Cost Per Click (CPC)

The Cost Per Click (CPC) is the amount you earn each time a user clicks on your ad. The CPC for any ad is determined by the advertiser; some advertisers may be willing to pay more per click than others, depending on what they’re advertising.

Page Revenue Per Thousand Impressions (Page RPM)

Page Revenue Per Thousand Impressions (RPM) is calculated by dividing your estimated earnings by the number of page views you received, then multiplying by 1000.

Page RPM = (Estimated Earnings / Number of Page Views) * 1,000

For example, if you earned an estimated $0.15 from 25 page views, then your page RPM would equal ($0.15 / 25) * 1000, or $6.00.

Estimated Earnings
Your account balance (or earnings) for the time period selected.

Source: Google AdSense Help

You can increase the Page CTR by using one of those high CTR WordPress Theme for Google AdSense. But I really wouldn’t recommend those WordPress themes as it will impact the user experience very negatively. Instead, you can focus on creating awesome content and driving more traffic so that it increases your Google AdSense earnings (or advertising revenues) naturally.

Now, let’s assume that you have a Page CTR of 1% and your average CPC is $0.25 (I believe it’s a quite achievable target unless your keywords have no advertiser competition – e.g. a recipe blog).

Some of the top paying AdSense niches are Finance, Internet Marketing, Technology, Web Hosting, Internet & Computers, Software, Health etc. and some of the lowest paying AdSense niches are Entertainment, Arts, Movies, Celebrity Gossips, News blog, Jokes, Wallpapers, Quotes, Recipes, Photo blogs etc.

So, You Want To Make $100,000 A Year With Google AdSense, Right?

As mentioned earlier $100,000 a year means you have to earn $274 a day. If your average CPC is $0.25 then you need 100,000/0.25 = 400,000 clicks a year (or approximately 1,000 clicks a day) to earn $100,000 a year from Google AdSense. Assuming that your Page CTR is 1% you need approximately 100,000 page views a day. Now, let’s say your “Bounce Rate” (it is the estimated percentage of visits to your website that consist of a single page view) is 100%. It means that you need 100,000 unique visitors a day itself to generate 100,000 page views a day.

In a nutshell, you need 100,000 visitors a day to make $100,000 a year from Google AdSense alone (with a CTR of 1% and CPC of $0.25).

But you are not using AdSense alone to monetize your website. Right? Let’s say you’re selling banner ads directly and is also selling CPM advertising which is an effective way to monetize your website.

Read: CPM Alternatives To Google AdSense

What are CPM ads?

CPM (Cost Per Mille) stands for Cost Per 1,000 Impressions. CPM networks pays for every 1,000 impressions you generate. If a CPM ad network is paying you $1 CPM then it means that they’re paying you $1 for every 1,000 page views you generate.

CPM Network earnings total depend upon your traffic quality but you can expect anywhere between $1 – $3 per 1,000 impressions. So, if you generate 100,000 page views a day then you can make $100 – $300 a day from CPM Networks. Again, you can earn $100 – $300 (or maybe even more) a day by selling banner ads directly to advertisers.

Now, you can split the traffic into three as you’re earning $300 each from 3 advertising networks. It means that you need 100,000/3=33,333 unique visitors a day (with a bounce rate of 100%) to make approximately $274/day.

Again, if you have an authority blog then your bounce rate will never be 100%. In that case you can expect an average page view of 1.5 per user. It means that 50% of your visitors exits from the landing page and others visit more than one page from your website.

All in all, you need approximately 20,000 visitors a day to generate 30,000+ page views and it can earn $274 a day which translates to $100,000 a year in advertising revenues. Need a little more help reaching that $100,000/year goal? Add commissions from Affiliate Programs as well into the equation and you can hit that $100,000 goal with much less traffic. In fact, in 2008 I was averaging $200+ a day from less than 200 daily unique visitors with affiliate marketing. It was possible because when it comes to affiliate marketing it’s all about traffic quality and not traffic quantity.