Every website you visit is running one of nine revenue models — usually two or three stacked together. Once you can name the model, you can estimate the money: what the site plausibly earns, what it costs to run, and what it would be worth to a buyer. This is the reference page for our Business Model Breakdowns series, where we apply these models to real sites and estimate their numbers.
1. Display advertising
The oldest model on the web: the site sells attention. Revenue is measured in RPM — revenue per thousand pageviews. Typical ranges run from under $3 RPM for general-interest content in low-value geographies to $30–$60+ for finance, legal and insurance content in the US. The math is brutal at the low end: a site earning $5 RPM needs 200,000 monthly pageviews to make $1,000. Display only works at scale or in high-value niches — which is why so many small sites that look ad-supported actually earn their money elsewhere.
2. Affiliate commissions
The site gets paid when a reader clicks through and buys. Earnings depend on conversion rate and commission size, not raw traffic — a page with 2,000 visitors and high purchase intent (“best accounting software for LLCs”) can out-earn a page with 100,000 casual readers. Amazon Associates pays 1–4% on most categories; SaaS programs pay 20–30% recurring; finance offers (credit cards, brokerages) pay $50–$200+ per approved signup, which is why finance affiliate sites sell for the highest multiples.
3. Subscriptions and memberships
Readers pay directly — the model of the NYT, Substack writers, and every SaaS tool. The metrics that matter are MRR (monthly recurring revenue), churn, and ARPU. Subscription revenue is the most valuable kind because it’s predictable: a site with $5K MRR and 3% monthly churn is worth far more than a site earning the same $5K from one-off sales. When we break down a SaaS company, this is the model we’re reverse-engineering from its pricing page and reported user counts.
4. Sponsored content and paid placements
Businesses pay to have articles published on the site — usually for the SEO value of the links inside them. Pricing runs from $10–$20 per post on new, low-authority blogs to $500–$2,000+ on established publications with real organic traffic. This model is more common than most readers realize: a large share of small “magazine” and “blog” sites you encounter are placement businesses first and publications second. The unit economics are simple — price per post × volume — which makes these sites the easiest to estimate and the subject of several breakdowns in this series.
5. E-commerce and dropshipping
The site sells physical products. The number to find is gross margin: owned-inventory brands run 50–70% gross margins, dropshippers often survive on 15–25% after ad spend. Revenue estimates start from traffic × conversion rate (1–3% is typical) × average order value. Our profit margin calculator does this math.
6. Marketplaces and commissions
The site connects two sides and takes a cut — Airbnb, Fiverr, every job board. Take rates run 5–30%. Marketplaces are the hardest model to bootstrap (both sides must show up) but the most defensible once running.
7. Lead generation
The site collects inquiries and sells them to businesses — dominant in insurance, legal, home services and B2B software. A single qualified lead can be worth $20–$300 depending on the vertical, so lead-gen sites monetize small traffic exceptionally well.
8. Selling data, tools or APIs
The content is marketing; the product is data access. Ahrefs, Similarweb and PitchBook all run versions of this. Free calculators and tools (like ours) sit at the top of this funnel across the industry.
9. Selling the site itself
Build, rank, flip. Content sites typically sell for 30–40× monthly profit; the entire model is about maximizing the trailing-twelve-month number. Worth knowing because it explains behavior: a site optimized for sale looks different from a site optimized for readers.
Estimate any site’s revenue
Website revenue estimator
The step everyone skips: verify the traffic first
Every estimate above multiplies something by traffic — which means the estimate is only as real as the traffic is. Third-party tools report whatever the search data shows, including volume generated by bots and automated queries. Before you trust a headline traffic number, run it through the checks in our companion guide: How to Verify if a Website’s Traffic Is Real.
About this series
Business Model Breakdowns is SandBridge’s series estimating how specific companies and websites make money. All figures are estimates from public signals unless a company has published audited numbers — each breakdown carries its own methodology note. Analysis is editorial, not investment advice.