How to Estimate Any Website's AdSense Revenue
Ten minutes, one traffic tool, four numbers. This is the method used to produce every estimate on this site, written up so you can apply it to any website — including your competitors.
The six steps
You can run this method against any site in ten minutes, including sites you do not own. You need three numbers: traffic, pages per visit, and ad units per page.
Step 1 — Get the traffic
Use a traffic estimator such as Similarweb, Ahrefs or Semrush. Read the monthly visits figure and divide by 30 for daily visitors. Watch the unit definition: Similarweb counts a new "visit" when the same person returns more than 30 minutes later, so one person can generate several visits in a day.
Step 2 — Find pages per visit
The same tools report "pages per visit". Common values: news and blog sites 1.2 – 1.8; reference and tool sites 2 – 4. For lookup tools, assume people query repeatedly, so the value runs high.
Step 3 — Count the ad units
Open the site yourself and count ad slots above the fold on the home page and on an inner page. Google recommends at most three units per page. Slots that sit below the fold often never register an impression, so count realistically rather than counting every <ins> tag in the source.
Step 4 — Pick an ECPM
Start from the traffic geography. Mostly US and Western Europe: use $3 – $6. Mostly developing markets: $0.5 – $2. Mixed global traffic: around $2 – $2.50. Finance, insurance, legal and B2B niches sit at the high end; wallpapers, lyrics and downloads sit at the low end.
Step 5 — Multiply
Put the four numbers into the calculator on the home page. The formula again: 30 × (UV/1,000) × ECPM × pages per UV × ads per page.
Step 6 — Sanity-check the result
If your estimate says a six-month-old site earns $50,000 a month, one of your inputs is wrong — usually pages per visit or ad impressions per page. Compare your result against the site's obvious size: number of employees, domain age, whether the owner works full-time on it.
Worked case: a large online calculator site
The worked case below is public and reproducible. It was published by Gefei in August 2023.
| Input | Value | Where it came from |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly visits | 1.8M | Similarweb estimate |
| Pages per visit | 2.36 | Similarweb estimate |
| Bounce rate | 58.15% | Similarweb estimate |
| Top countries | US 27.52%, Brazil 10.86%, Indonesia 7.80% | Similarweb estimate |
| Daily visitors | ~60,000 | 1.8M ÷ 30 (tool site: assume 1 visit per person per day) |
| Blended ECPM | ~$2.50 | Judged from the US/Brazil/Indonesia mix |
| Ad impressions per page | ~2 | Home page has 3 slots; inner pages fewer above the fold |
Result: 30 × 60 × 2.5 × 2.36 × 2 ≈ $21,240 per month.
Gefei noted the real figure will not be exactly that, but should sit in the same neighbourhood — possibly higher, maybe around $30,000. The point of the exercise is not precision. It is learning to look at any website and know, within a few minutes, whether it earns $50 a month or $20,000.
Using estimates to make decisions
Why bother estimating other people's revenue
- Pick a niche with real money in it. Two niches with equal search volume can differ 5× in ECPM.
- Know whether a keyword is worth chasing. A term worth $3/month in ad revenue is not worth three days of work.
- Set expectations for your own site. If you need $100/month and your traffic will be 200 UV/day of mostly Asian traffic, you know immediately that AdSense alone will not get you there.
Common mistakes
- Confusing page views with unique visitors. UV × pages-per-visit = PV. Multiplying UV by ECPM directly understates revenue badly.
- Assuming every ad slot fires. Below-the-fold units may load but never be counted as viewable impressions.
- Using one ECPM for every niche. Finance and insurance pay several times more than downloads and wallpapers.
- Ignoring seasonality. Q4 advertisers push ECPM up; January drops it hard.