This really has more to do with Google Analytics than Google AdSense. But I didn't see a better section to put this in and it seems to me to be something that would be relevant for many of the users on the forums that have their own websites. With the advent of Google Analytics reports, it seems likely that there could become a new defacto standard for the valuation of a website. Nobody ever has trusted the variety of numbers people give when saying how many pageviews their site has, number of uniques, etc. Hell, we don't trust our own numbers. But now with Google Analytics, isn't it likely that in a short period of time, people who try to put a valuation on a website will look to Google analytics numbers? If somebody wants to sell a website and they can point to Google Analytics and show that their site is getting x number of uniques daily, there should be an agreed upon value of what that number should represent (approximate of course. i realize that there are many factors that would go towards a valuation of a site.) There was a big CNN article a couple of weeks ago that mentioned how that with deals in 2005, the valuation of a site was basically around $38 per unique monthly visitor, which sure seemed real high to me. Anyway, site valuation is something that is of interest to all of us, but it seems so hard to get a handle on.
Well, I hadn't seen that $38 per monthly figure, but honestly it isn't necessarily too high. My website is around 7-10k uniques per day, but I wouldn't sell it for less than several million dollars, seriously. That's because it is the source of the good part of my income, both from advertising revenues and consulting opportunities - I figure it's worth at least $60 to 70K a year to me. So if I sold it, I'd need enough cash to make that up, which at current interest rates is at least a couple of million.. However, I don't think anyone is likely to be lining up to bid in that range But let's take a site earning that much from advertising alone. I think it *could* be worth something close to a million, assuming that it wasn't topical and was likely to have the legs to last a few years. But the more work it requires in new material, the less it would be worth in cash - might only be worth a years income or less in many cases.. So .. let's go to extremes: an adult site (which rules out Adsense but can still make money from other sources) has more "staying power" than a political blog: people will likely still be looking at naked pictures long after they've lost interest in George Bush. So the adult site might be worth more even if all other stats were equal at the moment. But it's all so variable - a site is worth what it's worth, and it's really impossible to make general statements of X per unique.
My political blog grows every day, but I also target one of the smallest niche political opinions out there. It doesn't hurt that the people who read my site tend to agree with one another no matter their age (the same can't be said for most other political blogs). My income spreadsheet that I wrote covers how much I make per hour invested (and per word and per post) and also covers how much I make per impression and per overall visit. From what I can tell, each topic is very consistent -- more traffic is more money in a very consistent ratio.