Hey

a bit of an open question, I know.

I was having a discussion with my brother about how much websites made a year from advertising. Does anyone know what one would consider to be a good revenue from advertising?

Just roughly! Is it £50,000 a year, or is it £250,000?

Thanks for your thoughts!
Hamish

first off there is no right answer. its a matter of opinion. if i had to support a family and send kids to college, i'm not sure 50k would be 'good' if that was my soul income. for me my websites are a hobby so any money i make in advertising is 'good' to me.

anyway its a silly question, and i doubt you will get any sort of real answer, but you now have my 2cents.

Impossible question.

Depends on many things: Unique visitors, quality of visitors, returning visitors, type of advertisements displayed... the list goes on.

You can sell popup ads for $4 CPM (4 dollars per thousand people).

Yah, that is a tough one. It's kind of like asking how much the average artist makes in a given year. Everyone does everything differently, and there are so many different sized operations using so many different methods to make money, that it is hard to compare each to the next.

Large online networks like Lycos, Yahoo, or Intermix (where I work) can bring in hundreds of millions of dollars per year on advertising alone, but there are also thousands of smaller webmasters bringing in $50 a month running AdWords and the like.

We see a lot of affiliates who use our tell-a-friend tools, and our registration path advertising tools, make anywhere from $500-$10,000 a month from their sites. Now we only provide a few tools to webmasters, and those that use their sites to make their living, are using a lot of affiliate programs to make ends meet.

I would say the upper level, independent webmasters who are working on monetizing their sites full time, can easily pull down $100,000 or more per year if they do things right.

Hamish, that was something you should ask yourself as to how you are making per month,and how much your competitors are making, I heard collegehumor,ebaums making more than 3 million a year.
All depends on the niche where you are working or involved, it is really very important to see how better you can carry yourself. As for content sites, traffic and online promotion matters a lot whereas in hosting market, you need a pool of clients to work with.
I myself have been promoting few affiliate programs and can see that affiliates/webmasters are earning more than what I earn giving them suggestions/tips about promoting their own site with us. But that's okay.

I agree with Andrew, webmasters/publishers who are working full time on their sites can make more than the figure you have quoted