For many people, $100 a day is a special mark. That’s when for many website owners a site, or bunch of sites, is earning enough to qualify as a full-time income. This is a mark where even if that’s not full-time income for where a person is living, it’s a very solid amount of money. For many, life-changing.
Just how much traffic does it take to earn $100 a day with AdSense? The answer is different for every site however there are ways to look at the math and learn how to look at this question.
Knowing the exact amount of traffic makes it possible to clearly figure out daily traffic needs and get a rock-solid goal to shoot for.
Let’s get into it!
How to Figure Out The Math: Revenue Per Unique Visitor Analysis
The key metric to figure out here is the RPM (sometimes also abbreviated EPM). If you know that 1,000 visitors to a site make $10 on average then it’s easy to figure out that 10,000 visitors a day is the average needed to hit that $100 a day mark.
If the earnings are less, like a $5 RPM then it takes 20,000 visitors. If it’s more, like a $20 RPM then it takes less traffic, around 5,000 visitors a day.
All those numbers are hypothetical. The key is finding the actual RPM for your site or group of sites to figure out how long it will take you specifically to hit that $100/day mark.
(Total earnings / total number of page views) * 1,000 = RPM/EPM
Once the RPM number is calculated, divide that number into 100. That’s how many thousands of visitors are needed in one day to get up to the $100 mark.
The more real-life earnings data available, the more accurate the estimated RPM numbers are going to be.
Once the RPM is figured out for a site or portfolio of sites, it’s easy to figure out the average daily traffic needed to meet that $100 a day goal using AdSense.
All About The Traffic
Webmasters who say it’s all about the traffic aren’t wrong. A certain number of visitors will always be required to hit any earnings goal. The problem is, this is an incomplete picture.
Information that can drastically affect earnings and RPM include:
- What is the niche of the website?
- How competitive are the bids from advertisers?
- What is the country of origin?
- Is the traffic organic (from search engines) or from other sources like social media?
These are factors that make a huge difference in how much the traffic is worth to advertisers and thus how much traffic is needed to reach the earnings goal.
Which Traffic Is More Valuable?
There are several reasons that the type of traffic can make such a difference in earnings.
Most Valuable Markets
There is a group of countries where companies invest more in advertising than others. Customers are worth more so companies pay more for ads. This doesn’t mean there isn’t potential in other markets, but generally, these markets are considered the highest paying:
- United States
- Canada
- United Kingdom
- Australia
This is according to SEMRush, and these results aren’t surprising considering the first-hand experiences of two decades of webmasters. Beyond that, statistics gathered by Statista show all four of these countries in the top 10 list for countries where companies spent the most on advertising per person, with three of them being 1, 2, and 3, respectively.
If organic traffic mostly comes from one, or several, of these top markets the potential earnings and RPM is going to be higher than if most of the income comes from markets like Brazil or India where advertisers spend far less. Meaning there’s less revenue to make even if there is a lot of traffic.
Organic vs Social Media
Traffic that comes from search engines, aka organic traffic, is the most valuable. Traffic that comes from search engines are far more likely to make a purchase via an affiliate link or click on an ad.
This means if a lot of traffic comes from social media as opposed to search engines, the RPM is going to be far worse for that traffic than what Google is sending to your website.
While some ads still come from impressions, most still rely on clicks. All the highest paying ones do.
Focus on getting more organic traffic. That’s going to get to that $100 a day goal far faster and more efficiently than ramping up social media traffic.
Niches Have Radically Different Values
A very loose general rule of thumb is that an average RPM for the high paying markets is $2-10 RPM (source). This is a very broad range. Normally $2-3 is actually considered the low end. $9-10 is the high end of normal.
Anything above $10 RPM just on AdSense would be considered above average. There are niches that pay out higher. Some quite a bit higher. A niche with a high-paying RPM will require far less traffic to get to $100 a day than a low-paying RPM niche.
Generally speaking, the more expensive a service or product, the more valuable a new customer is. That makes a company or business willing to spend more on advertising to bring in a new customer.
This is why topics like insurance, legal services, or b2b marketing tend to have very high ad rates. On the other hand companies that sell products that cost only a couple dollars have no reason to pay large amounts for ads.
This is why one site might need only a few thousand people a day to hit that AdSense mark while another site might need many tens of thousands of visitors to earn the same amount.
Top RPM Topics
The top RPM topics will vary depending on which country the traffic comes from. A major reason for this is the array of different rules when it comes to insurance, legal services, medical treatments, etc. In some countries they can openly advertise, in others it’s more regulated.
According to an article on the best AdSense niches on SEM Rush, the top PPC niches in the United States are insurance, online education, marketing & advertising, and legal, in that order.
For the UK it’s insurance, marketing & advertising, crypto-currency, and internet & telecom. Mixes of those topics are also the top paying niches for Australia and Canada.
Many of these ads can give $5, $10, or more a click. Most ads are much lower, but that’s why these are the top RPM ads.
While it can be tempting to build a site around the highest per click topics, that’s not a great strategy. Many of these topics are in YMYL topics and in addition to requiring serious expertise for Google to rank the site, in addition to being incredibly competitive topics.
This doesn’t mean this information is useful. If deciding between two equally interesting topics one has a high RPM and one has a very low RPM, getting to $100 a day in AdSense will be faster with the high RPM topic.
How to Estimate Your Traffic Needs for $100/Day in AdSense
The best way to get a good estimate of the traffic needed is with actual data. With the RPM from actual traffic numbers it becomes very easy to figure out how many visitors a day are needed to hit $100 a day in AdSense.
Three examples:
- If the RPM is $2.75 then 100/2.75 = 36.36 so you need around 36,360 visitors a day
- If the RPM is $4.50 then 100/4.50 = 22.22 so you need around 22,220 visitors a day
- If the RPM is $6.10 then 100/6.10 = 16.39 so you need around 16,390 visitors a day
Once the RPM has been figured out the traffic goals become obvious. At that point, you have a target to shoot for.
Beware Seasonal Changes
When doing estimates make sure not to let well-known seasonal changes affect the numbers. At the end of quarter most companies pull back on advertising meaning the RPM from numbers in those days are likely low.
Then there’s the November/December holiday season. Numbers are much higher than average going into the holiday season and the earnings during those times are likely to be higher than throughout the rest of the year.
Just be aware of these natural ebbs and flows in ad value when coming up with as accurate an RPM as possible.
Questions About Google Adsense
How much traffic is required for AdSense approval?
There is no minimum traffic requirement to get accepted to Google AdSense. AdSense looks at the quality of the website more than the pageviews the site generates.
Traffic translates to revenues. Therefore, it’s in your best interest to first generate some traffic and then implement Google AdSense ads.
In Conclusion
$100/day in AdSense is an attainable goal.
The key is to get a solid estimate on RPM based on your traffic and early AdSense earnings and then to do the math. Once that daily traffic target is there, then it’s all about focusing on rankings and content to scale up to those numbers.
