Monetizing a project with ads instead of subscriptions

When I wrapped up my studies back in 2018, I quickly realized that the corporate life just wasn’t for me.

This led to me trying all kinds of different online businesses, ranging from dropshipping female make up all the way to presenting myself awkwardly on camera in hopes of becoming a YouTube star.

What ultimately ended up being the biggest overlap with my personality and skill set was blogging – and more precisely SEO-focused content.

Within 9 months of starting the blog, I managed to surpass the salary of my day job. And after 2 years of working on the site, it was generating over $10k a month in display ad revenue.

Little did I know that this would be the peak of the website. Throughout 2022, RPMs continued to plummet alongside the global economy.

And then, in November 2022, a little web app called ChatGPT was launched. While my first and second site, which I launched a few months prior, did continue to financially support me, the writing was clearly in the wall when it came to information-based queries people ask on Google.

After some soul searching, which involved going back into consulting as a freelance product manager, I ultimately found my passion for online building again.

In April 2024, together with a friend, I launched my first SaaS – all without knowing how to code.

While the SaaS never took off, it ultimately taught me how to get a software project from zero to launch.

I since launched two more traditional SaaS projects. While I still actively work on one (plaudli.de), it continues to be the toughest undergoing I ever worked on.

What all of these SaaS products I launched had in common, apart from not making much money, was that they were able to generate constant traffic vis-à-vis free tools.

One afternoon it dawned on me: I a) know how to generate traffic via free tools and b) know how lucrative display ads can potentially be, so why not combine the two?

This ultimately led to the launch of terrific.tools in late November 2024. As you might’ve guessed, the goal is to drive traffic via SEO and then monetize the site with display ads (while keeping it free for users).

And there’s certainly a precedent for this being a successful endeavor. Sites like Omni Calculator attract over 16 million visitors every month. That’s $160k/month, assuming a very conservative RPM of $10.

Meanwhile, terrific.tools has been off to a very promising start. The site’s at 3.7k sessions / 9.7k page views for the past 30 days.

Interestingly, the domain was owned by someone before, which probably helped with the indexing process.

Over the coming months, the plan is to launch more tools (currently at 250), try and record YouTube videos for many of the existing/new tools, allowing people to embed the tools onto their own sites, and eventually translate the site into a few other languages.

Monetization-wise, I will likely start putting on display ads in about 2 to 3 months, which should be the time when I reached the Mediavine Journey requirements.

Let me know if you guys have any questions!