Blog

How much traffic does it take to replace a salary?

17 October 2026

Our first ten posts worked up from the small milestones: the first $100 a month, $1,000 a month and paying for its own hosting. This one asks the big question many site owners have in the back of their mind: how much traffic would it take for my site to pay me a salary?

One division gives you the number

Each visit earns a small, fairly steady amount. So the traffic you need is (salary + running costs) / what one visit earns. How long it takes depends on where you start and how fast you grow.

• What one visit earns is the "session RPM" ad networks report, divided by 1,000: page RPM times pages per visit, plus any affiliate income.
• The calculator starts at $10 per 1,000 visits - 2 pages a visit at a $5 page RPM, the midpoint of the travel, food and home tier (Aditude, 23 July 2025). Mediavine's own worked example is $12 per 1,000 sessions.
• Both are US-heavy figures. Mostly South African traffic usually earns less, so the traffic you need is likely higher than shown here.
• Running costs come off first. The calculator adds them to the salary, because the site has to pay its own way before it pays you.

Work out the traffic for your salary

Type the salary you want before tax, your running costs, what 1,000 visits earn you, and your visits and growth from your counter. The calculator shows the visits a month and a day you need, the month you get there and the growth it would take to do it in three years - with a chart.

Prefer a full page? Open the traffic to replace a salary calculator on CalcSA. To see what that salary leaves you after tax, the take-home pay calculator does it on the SARS 2026/27 tables; the contractor rate calculator adds the leave and benefits a job pays on top.

Worked example: the calculator's defaults

A site with 1,000 visits a month growing 5% a month, earning $10 per 1,000 visits, with R250 a month of hosting and tools - and an owner who wants R25,000 a month before tax. Dollar earnings are converted at the European Central Bank reference rate the calculator stores (14 October 2026: $1 = R16.47).

• Today it earns about R165 a month - 0.7% of the R25,250 it needs.
• It needs about 153,300 visits a month, roughly 5,040 a day.
• Growing 5% a month, it gets there in month 104 - about 8.7 years from now.
• To get there in three years instead, traffic would need to grow about 15% a month, every month, for 36 months.

Five more cases, same defaults except the one shown:

• Growth of 10% a month: salary covered in month 53, about 4.4 years.
• Growth of 3% a month: month 171, over 14 years.
• $20 per 1,000 visits: you need about 76,700 visits a month, reached in month 89.
• A R15,000 salary: about 92,600 visits a month, reached in month 93.
• Starting at 10,000 visits a month: month 56 - starting bigger saves four years at the same growth.

Estimates. The R25,000 salary, R250 costs, 1,000 visits, 5% growth and $10 per 1,000 visits are assumptions, as in the calculator. Very few sites grow at a steady 5% a month for eight years, and earnings per visit can rise or fall a lot over that time. The exchange rate moves the rand result too: the live calculator uses the latest ECB rate, so its numbers may differ slightly from these.

Earnings against the salary

Same site, defaults, earnings each month against the R25,250 it needs:

• For six years the line barely moves - by month 72 the site still earns under a quarter of the salary.
• Most of the climb happens in the last two years, because 5% of a big number is a lot of visits.
• That is why most people quit too early or too late: the early years feel like failure even when the growth rate is on track.

Reading your counter for this

Your WebCounter counter gives you the two numbers that decide the date, so you can replace the calculator's guesses with your own. No counter yet? Get your free WebCounter counter - it takes a minute.

• Visits a month on your free WebCounter report is the calculator's "visits a month now" - type it in as it is.
• Growth is this month's visits against last month's: 1,100 after 1,000 is 10%. Average three or four months, because one good month is not a trend.
• Watch the growth rate, not the total. If it holds, the date holds - even in the years when the earnings still look tiny.
• Pages per visit is page views divided by visits on your report - every extra page a visit adds to what 1,000 visits earn, and pulls the date in.

Sources

• Aditude, "RPM for Publishers" (23 July 2025) - $5 page RPM midpoint for travel, food and home. Not re-checked at the original on 17 October 2026; as cited in the CalcSA calculator.
• Mediavine, "Mediavine RPM" (mediavine.com) - worked example of $12 per 1,000 sessions. Not re-checked at the original on 17 October 2026; as cited in the CalcSA calculator.
• European Central Bank euro reference rates, 14 October 2026 (stored copy in the calculator) - $1 = R16.47.
• Calculator: CalcSA, Traffic to replace a salary.

Estimates only, not financial or tax advice. What your site earns depends on your niche, your audience's country and how you earn from it; your own counter and ad dashboard beat any average.