Ask HN: Is it worthwhile it to put ads on a site (Alexa ranked #2,209,472)?

Without a dedicated sales staff willing&#x2F;able to compete with big ad suppliers like Spotify and Facebook, then you are likely selling so-called remnant impressions delivered automatically via ad networks like AdSense. Remnant impressions are highly commoditized.<p>Unless you are in a shady or otherwise lucrative niche that has limited supply of impressions and attracts lots of competition (e.g. Asbestos removal or DUI lawyer advice) you can expect to earn $2 CPM or so on a good day and as little as 8 cents per thousand ads for some traffic. There are quality&#x2F;revenue tradeoffs: typically, the higher quality advertiser, the less they&#x27;ll pay you for remnant.<p>Even with multiple ads on the page, these are very hard economics unless you operate at a very large scale. I&#x27;d advise a fellow journalist not to pursue an ad strategy until they have more than 2,000 people on their site every day, and ideally more like 10k+.

Alexa is basically meaningless, the whole premise of it is fundamentally flawed.<p>But with regards to your site, it costs nothing to put ads on there, so you have nothing to lose. You could also approach a company and ask to be sponsored, you carry their banner and they pay you $x a month.

Trying to make an extra ~$2&#x2F;month is not even worth thinking about.