Top 30 Earning Websites List | Most Profitable Websites

Our first Top Earning Websites List was published in March 2009.

There have been significant changes since then. AirBnB founded in 2008 did not make the original list but are here today. Myspace no longer features!

Please Note: Despite their significant size, some companies are intentionally left out because they are primarily retail based that does web based revenue, but ultimately the service or product offered does not necessarily depend on the internet to generate the majority of its revenue and certain companies have been left out because they have since been acquired by other companies. We have also excluded from the list any business that is primarily App Based.

Use this table as motivation. It is easy to think that the numbers below are impossible but at a certain point the founders of the companies listed felt the same way. Also please see our various notes at the end of this list.

Last time we updated Google was the top earning website and Amazon was No 2 – this time they have swooped positions around. Amazon is that Juggernaut of a Money Earning Machine and they continue to innovate and grow.

In 2009 the top earning website was taking $691 per second, today it is taking $3392per second!

Enjoy!

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30 Top Earning Websites That Make A Lot Of Money Online






























































































































































































































RankWebsiteFoundersAnnual Revenue$ Per Second
1AmazonJeff Bezos$107 Billion$3392.94
2GoogleLarry Page, Sergey Brin$74.98B$2378.23
3JD.comLiu Qiangdong aka Richard Liu$28B$887.87
4FacebookMark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes$17.93B$568.56
5TencentMa Huateng$12.89B$408.74
6ReutersPaul Reuter$12.6B$399.54
7AlibabaPeng Lei, Jack Ma$12.29B$389.71
8PaypalPeter Thiel, Yu Pan, Luke Nosek, Elon Musk, Ken Howery, Max Levchin$9.248B$293.25
9PricelineJesse Fink, Jay S. Walker, Scott Case$9.22B$292.36
10eBayPierre Omidyar$8.59B$272.39
11ExpediaRichard Barton$6.67B$211.50
12RakutenHiroshi Mikitani$6.3B$199.77
13salesforceMarc Benioff, Parker Harris$5.37B$170.28
14BaiduRobin Li, Eric Xu$5.21B$165.21
15YahooJerry Yang, David Filo$4.97B$157.60
16GrouponEric Lefkofsky, Brad Keywell, Andrew Mason$3.1B$98.30
17LinkedInReid Hoffman, Konstantin Guericke, Jean-Luc Valliant, Allen Blue, Eric Ly$2.99B$94.81
18TwitterEvan Williams, Noah glass, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone$2.22B$70.40
19NetEaseDing Lei$2.0B$63.42
20SohuCharles Zhang$1.937B$61.42
21Overstock.comPatrick M. Byrne$1.66B$52.64
22NYTimesHenry Jarvis Raymond, George Jones$1.59B$50.42
23TripAdvisorLangley Steinert, Stephen Kaufer$1.5B$47.56
24ASOS.comNick Robertson, Quentin Griffiths$1.4B$44.39
25OrbitzJeff Katz$932 Million$29.55
26YandexArkady Volozh, Arkady Borkovsky, Ilya Segalovich, Elena Kolmanovskaya$900M$28.54
27airbnbJoe Gebbia, Brian Chesky, Nathan Blecharczyk$900M$28.54
28StubhubEric H. Baker, Jeff Fluhr$500M$15.85
29Blue NileMark Vadon$480M$15.22
30DropBoxDrew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi$400M$12.68

How Did We Calculate The Earnings


To obtain the turnover of the companies in this list we first analyzed SEC 10-K reports that are submitted by publicly traded companies within 60 days of the company’s fiscal year end. For private companies, reputable sites such as BusinessInsider, Forbes, and Bloomberg were utilized and cross referenced to identify revenue amounts for each companies most recent completed fiscal year. In cases of multiple sites showcased varying numbers, the lowest was used.

Top Earning Websites Notes:


=> Yandex is a Russian Internet company which operates the largest search engine in the Russian Federation with about 60% market share in the country.

=> NetEase, Inc. is a leading China-based Internet technology company founded in 1997 that pioneered the development of applications, services and other technologies for the Internet in China.

=> Dropbox was one of the most difficult websites to track down revenue for, with varying revenue figures quoted – but there are plenty of references to its largevaluation.

=> Myspace featured in our original list – whatever happened to them?

=> Props to Mike Marani for his assistance in updating this post (April 2016)

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