"The economics are straightforward, and worth explaining. The amount of money you can get from advertising on a general editorial site has been declining as the level at which advertisers find the value worthwhile hasn't found bottom. Some sites can command high CPM (cost per mille, or thousand, ad impressions) rates because their visitors intensively click and do stuff, like buy things, sign up for offers, view other ads, and so forth. But for most publications, even those in the formerly lucrative technology/gadget space, the value of an impression has shrunk." • #будущее_мидий - × × ×

“I don't want to reveal specific subscriber numbers as a small business, but let's take the rough number of 25,000 that Marco put out to Planet Money several months ago as a basis. Let's even assume 100% of those subscribers are monthly and through the App Store, thus grossing about $35,000 before taxes. ¶ To achieve that number consistently, The Magazine would have to sell ads at $2.66 CPM on 13 million page views a month, which means we would probably need 20 million page views to make those numbers. ¶ Is our modest fortnightly periodical going to attract 20 million page views against 150 or so articles every month? Unlikely. Can we attract enough subscribers on an ongoing basis to bring in revenue that lets us pay writers well and sustain our operations? Yes.” - × × ×