The realistic ways a site with a few hundred readers can earn money, what each one requires, and why advertising is usually judged by the wrong number.
Most advice about monetising a website assumes scale, because most of it is written by sites that have it. If you have a few hundred readers a month, the honest position is that some of the standard answers do not apply to you at all, and one or two apply much better than they do to a large general-interest site. This guide is about which is which.
There are five, and they differ mostly in what they demand from you rather than in what they pay. Ranked by how much work they need before the first pound arrives:
| Method | Needs scale? | Work to set up | Work to keep running |
|---|---|---|---|
| Display ad network | Yes — thresholds or a review | Low, if accepted | None |
| Selling ad space directly | No | Low | Approving ads |
| Affiliate links | Somewhat — needs buying intent | Medium | Keeping links alive |
| Paid membership or newsletter | No, but needs devotion | High | High — ongoing delivery |
| Donations or tips | No | Low | Low, and unpredictable |
Two of these — networks and direct space — are advertising, and they are frequently discussed as though they were the same thing. They are not, and conflating them is the single most common reason a small site concludes that "ads don't work for us".
Because a network pays for volume, and volume is the one thing you do not have. Income on an impression-priced network is roughly pageviews multiplied by a rate you discover afterwards, so at a few hundred views a month the arithmetic produces pennies regardless of how good the site is.
The part that turns pennies into nothing at all is the payout threshold. AdSense holds the balance until it reaches $100. A site earning fifty cents a month does not earn six dollars a year — it earns nothing, indefinitely, while a number on a dashboard creeps upward. This is the mechanism, and it is why "we tried ads and made nothing" is such a common story among small sites.
Probably not for the right buyer, and the way to test that is to stop counting readers and start naming them. A network cannot use the fact that your two hundred monthly readers are all keen cyclists within ten miles of one town. An advertiser can, and it is the only thing they care about.
Ask yourself which business would be pleased to be seen by your specific readers this week. If you can name one in under a minute, your audience is not too small — it is unusually well defined, which is the opposite problem from the one you think you have. If you genuinely cannot name one, that is useful information too, and it points toward affiliate income or membership instead.
Price a period, not an impression. Work out what a week of visibility to your readers is worth to a business that wants exactly them, and divide by seven. Most small sites land between $2 and $10 a day for a decent slot, and the number matters less at the start than having one at all.
A price you set has a second benefit that is easy to miss: it makes your income predictable in a way network income never is. Two slots at $5 a day, sold twenty days a month, is a number you can plan around. The same page on an exchange produces a figure you find out at the end of the month. Pricing ad space goes into how to choose the number, and the calculator does the arithmetic.
Yes, and most small sites should. Direct ad space and affiliate links do not compete — one sells a position, the other pays on an action, and a reader can encounter both without either being diminished. Donations sit alongside anything.
The combination that needs thought is a network and direct space on the same page. It is usually allowed and often sensible: sell the prominent position yourself, where a specific advertiser will pay for it, and let network fill occupy the positions nobody would buy directly. Check the network's own terms about what may run beside their units before doing it.
Put one slot on your best page and price it. It takes a few minutes, it costs nothing while it is unsold, and unlike every other option on this list it starts working on the buyer's side rather than yours — the slot carries its own invitation, so readers who might advertise are told that they can. Everything else here requires you to go and do something first.
Related: what to do when AdSense says no, selling ad space without a media kit, and the full network comparison.
Keep reading