How Do Websites Make Money?

[Jake]

Revenue is contingent on traffic, otherwise someone would use an automated script to generate thousands of zero traffic a day.

Ad networks pay you a publisher for showing an ad, retailers affiliate programs pay you for securing sales, often affiliates will be buying ad space on other sites through ad networks like adsense.

There are various ad systems, some in fact pay for impressions, simply the number of times it has been viewed, aside from affiliate links that pay a percentage when someone makes a purchase, the specialized, harder to get into CPA system pays for a specific user action, like signing up for samples, product trials, or getting an insurance quote.

For perspective, some sites earn 1 penny per visitor on average for displaying ads. You should expect that tens of thousands of visitors will be needed to earn the $100 min payout from the popular Adsense system.