On 8 M&A listings, page views alone did not explain monthly revenue
More page views do not always mean more revenue. On 8 listings from an M&A site where both page views and monthly revenue were disclosed, one listing had 1.6 million page views a month and ¥10,000 in monthly revenue, and another had 475 page views a month and ¥1.3 million in monthly revenue.
The 8 are not a random sample, and no correlation coefficient was calculated. This is not proof that “page views and revenue are unrelated.” What this article uses is a counterexample: page views alone cannot explain monthly revenue.
I am building Shoryaku AI ( https://shoryaku.net ), a marketing-support SaaS, as an indie developer. I looked this up before making article count or page views the acquisition KPI.
The set is 8 listings that disclosed both, not 160
The original pass was about 160 listings in the “web services and apps” category on ラッコM&A. It was 8 pages out of 33 pages and about 730 listings, with duplicates removed. It was not a random sample.
The table here uses only the 8 listings where both page views and monthly revenue were recorded. The figures are the seller’s own statements. I did not audit analytics or payment records.
| Item | Scope of this table |
|---|---|
| Original listing sample | About 160 |
| Listings with both page views and monthly revenue | 8 |
| How they were chosen | Not random. Cases where both figures were available |
| As of | August 24, 2026 |
| What it can say | There are cases where page views alone do not explain which monthly revenue is larger |
| What it cannot say | A correlation for the whole market, or a causal effect of increasing page views |
The correction of the wider study, including the earlier label “160 actual sales,” is in Asking prices are not enough to know what an indie SaaS sells for.
The 8 listings
| Listing | Page views / month | Monthly revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Rental bulletin board | 1,609,629 | ¥10,000 |
| Word Wolf game | 394,667 | ¥1,000 |
| Q&A community tied to X | 135,892 | ¥5,544 |
| UGC diagnosis site | 96,718 | ¥2,117 |
| Comedy-ticket search | 51,085 | ¥30 |
| Mid-career job platform | 475 | ¥1,300,000 |
| LINE booking SaaS | 573 | ¥162,057 |
| Piano-teacher matching | 0 | ¥37,000 |
Some high-page-view listings have low monthly revenue, and some low-page-view listings have high monthly revenue. At least they are not ordered so that more page views means more monthly revenue.
A listing with 0 page views and monthly revenue may have traffic outside the measurement, existing customers, sales, or referrals. The listing does not identify which. Page-view definitions and measurement periods are also not fully aligned across listings, so the numbers are a poor fit for a precise comparison.
“A better search intent sells” is also more than this table can say
When this was first published, high-page-view listings were labeled free-content products and low-page-view listings as business tools, and the conclusion was “what you need is the quality of the search intent.” That can stay as a hypothesis. Eight listings do not establish a cause.
The same study also had an education AI SaaS that reported 260 SEO articles, 21,300 page views a month, and ¥98,000 in monthly profit. The public listing does not show that the articles caused the profit, or which queries led to a paid contract.
So the takeaway is not to drop page views, but to split the path to revenue.
Measure what comes after page views, not a replacement for them
On our own blog, we look in this order.
| Stage | What to check |
|---|---|
| Impression | Which query or post the article was seen from |
| Visit | How many people reached the article |
| Interest | Whether they continued to pricing, features, or examples |
| Trial | Whether they started the 14-day trial |
| First value | Whether they finished business setup and the first analysis |
| Revenue | Whether they paid and stayed |
If article page views rise and people still do not reach pricing or a trial, the article still has an acquisition problem. If page views are low and readers still reach a paid contract, the contribution to the business is larger.
Our blog, as of this article, had 0 clicks and 2 impressions in Search Console. It is not yet at a stage where an article can be judged through to a paid contract. That is why page views are not the success condition. Each article gets a query and a next action.
Summary
- Of the original about 160 listings, 8 had both page views and monthly revenue
- Those 8 include 1.6 million page views with ¥10,000 in monthly revenue, and 475 page views with ¥1.3 million
- It is a non-random sample of self-reported figures. It does not prove that page views and revenue are uncorrelated
- What it can say is that there is a counterexample where page views alone do not explain monthly revenue
- For articles, measure past page views: pricing views, trial, first value, paid conversion, and retention