Hacker News Reader

Comment by 20years | Hacker News Reader

It varies greatly based on type of content. The most I have made was $20k per month on a TV show review site. We had Netflix and Hulu advertising on in through Adsense for awhile and their ads were specific to the individual TV shows we were writing about. The RPM's were amazing.

I also ran a Minecraft mods site for awhile with my son and at its top it made $9k/mo with about 130k unique visitor per month.

More tech content sites or other more general sites I have ran haven't gotten anywhere close to those #'s.

Games and entertainment content geared towards youth do well.

Ad placement also makes a difference. 1 well placed in-content ad can make you a lot more than 3 ads. That one well placed in-content ad can generate a higher CTR and CPC vs. if you place 3 ads. When you place multiple ads, the CTR on all of them even the well placed in-content ad is much lower as well the the CPC. I have tested this extensively.

View on HN

> The most I have made was $20k per month on a TV show review site.

> I also ran a Minecraft mods site for awhile with my son and at its top it made $9k/mo

Congratulations. That is pretty impressive, and you repeated he success twice. Do you still run those? Is that your full time job?

> When you place multiple ads, the CTR on all of them even the well placed in-content ad is much lower as well the the CPC.

Wouldn't you still come out ahead because with more ads you get more impressions? Isn't that how it works and why you see sites with 1000000 ads?

Thanks. I don't run either anymore. The TV show site started off as a side project to train a new employee and ended up turning into a nice little business for awhile. When summer hit, the site plummeted in traffic & revenue and when the TV show seasons started again both Hulu and Netflix where not advertising the same anymore. That combined with the TV show line up was horrible so the traction just wasn't there anymore. It was fun while it lasted.

I shut down the Minecraft site about 6 months ago. Traffic also plummeted being that mods are not as popular because lots of the kids are now playing Minecraft with the app or consoles.

It's not my full-time job. It's always been more of a side thing. I don't think I would be able to sleep at night if it were my full-time job. Way too much risk with it.

"Wouldn't you still come out ahead because with more ads you get more impressions?"

You would think but actually no at least not for all of the tests I did and I did a lot of them. You don't really make your $$ from impressions. You make $$ when people click on your ads. If the ads that are displayed are very relevant and your CTR is really good, you make more money.

Isn't Minecraft still popular? Why shut it down rather than let it sit there or sell it?

I'd think with the increasing popularity of Netflix that'd still be popular as well.

It was a site about Minecraft mods which don't garner as much traffic as they once did. I did consider selling it at one point and even spoke with a web broker. The biggest concerns were trademark stuff especially now that Microsoft owns it. Letting a content site just "sit there" is the same thing as letting it die, which is what I pretty much did. You gotta keep on generating good content if you want to make $$ at it. In addition to that, the content you do generate needs to be able to garner enough traffic to make that $$.

Yes, Netflix is still popular but they were not pushing as many display ads as they once were when the site was doing its best. Plus the TV show line up sucked after that summer and nothing really was sticking. After taking into account the cost to hire and manage contract TV show writers, cost to advertise it, hosting, etc. the revenue it was making wasn't enough for it to be worthwhile. Especially considering our SaaS products and Advertising Agency were growing.

I run a modding site and are always interested in small sites even if dead. Reach out if interested it might fit what we are looking for

I think it's save to assume they considered the numbers and concluded it wasn't worth it

> Games and entertainment content geared towards youth do well.

Which is, I guess, because the youth is more susceptible to ads.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com