I’m sure many of you found this little website of mine through a search engine of some kind, such as Google or Bing. Or maybe you found it by having somebody share the link with you, and you just so happened to be curious enough to click.
First off, thanks for the click! You are now reading my words, which you weren’t doing a mere ten seconds ago. Just look at you, navigating the internet, doing stuff. Congratulations! You’re a pro!
But have you ever wondered what all of this costs? No, not the cost of your internet connection, your home mortgage, or a pony. Nope, I’m referring to the cost of the website that you’re actively reading right now in real time.
Okay, maybe not this website, but instead let’s talk about a significantly more popular one. Something that gets hundreds of thousands of visitors each month. How much do you think something like that costs to operate? And most importantly, how much do you think a website that gets 200,000 visitors a month actually makes?
If you answered “a lot of cash, yo!” you’d be wrong. Dead wrong. So wrong, that you may as well quit making random guesses on the internet, just because some random blog you found told you to.
No, a large-ish website with a few hundred thousand visitors each month, makes between $10 and $30.
Not per day. Not per week. Per month.
Obviously there are a bunch of things that can change this, including the type of traffic you get, the specific demographic that traffic belongs to, and even where in the world your majority visitor base originates from. Then there’s the fact that not all advertising networks pay the same, with AdSense arguably being one of the worst options as far as ads go. We’re also not counting direct ads or guest submissions, either.
I run a technology website. We cover news, reviews, and other neat things. We’ve been doing it for over 25 years, and at one point in time, we were one of the largest websites on the entire internet. And yet, despite all of that, we only make around $20 or so every month through network ads.
Okay, so what gives?
Unfortunately, being a tech site, we tend to have some rather savvy people visiting us. These people know the ins and outs of the internet, and how to do certain things, such as block advertisements, javascript trackers, and other core technologies websites use on a daily basis. The big one there, however, being the blocking of ads.
I get it. I truly do. Ads suck, and adblockers get rid of them. However, did you know that, at least in my case, approximately 98% of my entire audience is using an adblocker of some kind? That means that, for every 100,000 visitors we get, only 2,000 are actually seeing advertisements, and being tracked by our analytics programs. Considering the amount of bandwidth we consume, and the power of the server we need to use to ensure a smooth and fast website, a mere 2k visitors is nowhere near enough to pay our operating expenses. Then when you throw in the whole “pay the staff” thing? Yeah, no. It just ain’t happening.
But to make matters worse, all analytics programs use some kind of script to track our visitors, and adblock disables these trackers basically by existing. So our raw server stats show 200,000 visitors. Our bandwidth consumption and CPU/RAM/IO also easily indicates a high amount of usage. But the ad revenue? Yeah, that’s basically zero.
More and more websites are going to be forced to shut down
There’s no avoiding that. Game Informer and AnandTech are just the beginning. Unless your average internet user disables their adblocker, and stops being a total freeloader, nothing is going to change. More and more websites will shut down. Oh, and yes. I said freeloader. I mean, think about it for a second. Websites provide a service, entirely for free. They share information. They create content. You, as a totally rational and sane individual, want to consume that content. Who pays for that?
It’s sort of like when you torrent something. Don’t be a dick by not seeding. Same applies to websites. If you’re using an adblocker, you’re basically just using our services for free, operating as a total ghost, and providing us with absolutely nothing in return.
Things need to change… but they won’t
We’re too ingrained as a society to just block stuff. The whole “I can’t live without UBlock Origin it saved my dog, life, and now I’m awesome!” mentality that most people seem to have today. It’s just… we can’t fix it. There needs to be a massive shift in general mentality and internet usage trends, and that simply is not going to happen.
I mean, just look at YouTube, and the ads over on there. People seem to think that Google is being greedy by loading ads inside of the video itself, but honestly? Nah. It’s not a matter of greed anymore. Whether you’re Google, AnandTech, Kotaku, PSX Extreme, Eurogamer, Games Informer, or another one of the dozen+ websites that you use to get your latest game and tech news and information. No, showing you ads and asking you to disable your adblocker isn’t about greed.
It’s about survival.