Make Money Blogging

How much do bloggers really earn? We read 38 published income reports to find out (2027 edition)

BLOGGING TITAN RESEARCH

By the Blogging Titan Research Team | Published 6 November 2026 | Data collected 6 November 2026 | Sample: 38 published income reports | Download the data: All 38 income reports (CSV)

The short answer. In 11 self-published blog income reports from 2018 to 2026, most of them food blogs, that state revenue and pageviews for the same period, the median blog earned $37.61 per 1,000 pageviews from all sources (range $2.13 to $67.07). Ads alone brought a median $22.59 per 1,000 pageviews across 13 reports. Display ads were the largest single stream: a median 55% of revenue across the 18 reports that break income down. These are figures from bloggers who chose to publish their income, not averages for all bloggers.

Key findings

• 38 income reports read (from 37 pages), 35 written by the blogger. Three more are case studies a travel-blogging course seller published about her students. Some reports combine several sites. Every report is linked in the dataset, most with a short quote holding the headline figure.
• Revenue per 1,000 pageviews: median $37.61 across the 11 reports with matching revenue and pageview figures. The seven food blogs in that group had the same median, $37.61 (range $24.68 to $63.58).
• Ad revenue per 1,000 pageviews: median $22.59 across 13 reports, from $0.44 to $61.79. The lowest figure is distorted: that blogger’s new ad network had not yet paid for the month.
• Display ads are the biggest single stream, but not for everyone. Across 18 reports with a stream breakdown, ads were a median 55% of revenue; affiliate links a median 14% (21 reports); digital products 8% (12 reports).
• Bloggers who sell to other bloggers earn differently, but the gap is fragile. 15 of the 38 sell a course, coaching, consulting or a paid community about blogging. They took a median 43% of revenue from ads (5 reports) against 72% for everyone else (12 reports), and 34% from their own digital products against 6%. The numbers are small and the ad gap moves a lot when one or two reports are labelled differently (Section 2).
• Expenses: the median report shows expenses of 18.6% of gross revenue (17 reports that state both). The range was 4.6% to 74.5%. Some bloggers count their own pay as an expense, which pushes the ratio up.
• The record is getting old. Only 15 of the 38 reports are dated 2024 or later (16 if a June 2023 to June 2024 report is counted), and 10 cover 2025 or 2026. Several long-running income reporters, Pinch of Yum and Making Sense of Cents among them, no longer publish them.
• Mediavine is the network most often named first: 16 of 38 reports (18 mention it at all), plus 3 on Journey by Mediavine. Raptive, or AdThrive, its former name, is named first in 6.

Why we did it this way

One widely cited source on blogger income is a survey run by a blogging-course publisher. Productive Blogging’s Blogging Income Survey 2026 had 129 responses and its 2025 edition 187 (both read 6 Nov 2026). A self-selected survey is useful, but a reader cannot check any single answer in it.

An income report can be checked. It names the blog, the month and the figures. So we went the other way: we found income reports bloggers had published, opened each one, and recorded only what it states. We did not survey anyone.

The cost of this method is bias, and it runs in a known direction. Bloggers who publish income reports are usually doing well, and 15 of the 38 here sell courses, coaching or consulting to other bloggers. We flag every report for that, and Section 2 compares the two groups.

Results

1. What a blog earns per 1,000 pageviews

Revenue per 1,000 pageviews is gross revenue for a period divided by pageviews for the same period, multiplied by 1,000. It is the closest thing to a comparable unit across blogs of different sizes. We calculated it only where a report gives both numbers for the same period, and only where the traffic figure is pageviews. Sessions are a different count (one session can include several pageviews), so session-based rows are kept apart.

Blogging Titan Research. Source: published income reports, each linked in the dataset; read 6 Nov 2026. Derived figures. n = 11 (total) and 13 (ads).

Three things stand out.

Ads and total revenue can be far apart on the same blog. Green Thickies earned $67.07 per 1,000 pageviews in total and only $7.43 from ads, because most of its money came from its own products. Midwest Foodie earned almost all of its $63.58 from ads. A single “blog RPM” figure hides which kind of blog you are looking at.

Timing distorts monthly reports. Lifestyle with Leah’s $0.44 ad figure is low because her new network had not paid for that month yet, as her report explains. With her report removed, the median for total revenue moves from $37.61 to $38.88 and the ad median from $22.59 to $23.36. We kept the row because removing awkward data is how benchmarks drift upward.

Food dominates the sample. Seven of the 11 total-revenue rows are food blogs. That reflects who publishes income reports with traffic attached, not the share of food blogs in the wider world.

2. Where the money comes from

Eighteen reports split their revenue by stream in a way we can use (one report covering a blog, a paid community and a software product was left out, because its streams cannot be separated by business).

Derived. Share = stream revenue / gross revenue for the same report. The n differs by row because not every report states every stream.

Bloggers who sell to other bloggers. 15 of the 38 reports come from bloggers who sell a course, coaching, consulting or a paid community about blogging or making money online. Their income mix looks different:

Derived. Group labels are our judgement from each site; the rule and every label are in the dataset.

Why we are not treating this as a rule. The groups are small, and the ad figure is sensitive to labelling. In our first pass, one food blog that sells consulting to other bloggers was labelled “does not”, and the ad medians came out at 20% against 85%. Applying one rule to every report moved them to 43% and 72%. Two portfolio businesses that sell blogging courses but earn mostly from ads give no exact ad figure, so they are not in the table; if they were, the first group’s ad share would rise further. The more stable difference is in digital products: bloggers who sell to other bloggers earn far more from their own products.

The practical point holds either way. If you read an income report to plan your own blog, check whether the author sells blogging courses or coaching. Their ad income tells you more about your own prospects than their total.

3. What it costs to earn it

Seventeen reports state both gross revenue and expenses. The median report shows expenses of 18.6% of gross revenue. Seven of the 17 are under 15%. The highest ratios come from blogs that count pay as an expense: most of Broken Oven Baking’s 74.5% is the owner’s own payroll, and Get On My Plate (36.0%) also includes owner pay.

Expense lines in income reports are not standardised. Some bloggers include payments to writers or their own salary, some count software only, and few include tax. Treat the ratio as a rough guide.

4. Which ad networks bloggers name

n = 38. A report naming two networks is counted once, under the first network named. Mediavine is mentioned in 18 reports in total.

This is not market share. It shows which networks appear in published income reports. Our planned ads.txt census of 1,000 blogs (scheduled for January 2027) will measure which networks blogs actually run.

5. The thresholds behind the numbers

Display income depends on getting into a network. These are the entry rules as each network or programme states them, read on 6 November 2026:

Mediavine’s requirements page now states a revenue-based entry rule, and its help centre dates revenue-based programme tiers to January 2026. Older guides that quote a sessions threshold for Mediavine are out of date. See our Mediavine requirements and Raptive requirements pages for the full rules.

What this means if you are planning a blog

These are planning figures built from the reported medians above, not forecasts. They are illustrative: we chose the traffic levels.

Illustrative. Multiplies the chosen traffic levels by medians from Section 1. The blogs behind those medians were mostly on premium ad networks, which have entry thresholds (Section 5). A blog below those thresholds should expect less from ads.

Three practical points follow:

1. Check the network rules before you plan on ad income. The ad figures above come mostly from blogs already accepted by Mediavine or Raptive.
2. Check whether an income report’s author sells blogging courses or coaching before using it to set expectations.
3. Use pageviews and revenue from the same period when you work out your own figure. Several reports we read state traffic for a different period from the income, and we left those out of the per-1,000 figures.

Method

Sample. Income reports that bloggers published about their own blogs, found by web search on 6 November 2026 with queries such as “blog income report 2025”, “income report October 2025”, “blog income report 2026” and “monthly blog income report mediavine”, plus long-running income reporters known in the blogging community. We aimed for 30 to 45 distinct blogs, one report each, preferring each blog’s most recent report. We included small blogs as well as well-known ones.

Collection. Every report page was opened on 6 November 2026. We recorded only figures the page states. For each report we stored the URL, period, currency, gross revenue, net profit and expenses where stated, revenue by stream where stated, traffic and its metric, the ad network named, and a quote of under 20 words holding the headline revenue figure. An independent reviewer re-opened 18 of the report pages and recomputed every figure. All per-row figures in Section 1 matched. Midwest Foodie’s annual pageviews were set to the sum of its 12 stated monthly figures (8,405,708), and one affiliate total that the page states (Just a Girl and Her Blog, $20,582) was added.

What counts. A report is “first-party” if the blogger wrote it about their own site (35). Three are third-party case studies published by a course seller about her students; they are kept in the dataset and flagged, and none of them enters the per-1,000 calculations.

Course-seller flag. “Yes” if the site sells a course, coaching, consulting or a paid community about blogging or making money online. The result: 15 yes, 20 no, 3 not determined. Labels were applied once, checked by an independent reviewer, and corrected where the rule had been applied unevenly (one food blog selling consulting to bloggers was changed from no to yes). Only one of the five “yes” reports in the stream comparison sells a blogging course as such; the others sell coaching or consulting.

Calculations. Revenue per 1,000 pageviews = gross revenue / pageviews x 1,000 for the same period. Where a report gives annual revenue and an average monthly pageview figure, revenue is divided by 12 first. Stream share = stream revenue / gross revenue. Expense ratio = expenses / gross revenue. Medians are used throughout because the figures are skewed. All formulas are visible in the Derived sheet of the workbook.

Exclusions. Pages without usable figures were dropped (listed in the workbook’s Outstanding sheet). Sessions-based rows are excluded from the per-1,000 pageview medians.

Checks. The independent fact-check log is in the study folder. Two reports in Section 1 carry caveats: Cassie Scroggins’ pageviews are a monthly average for an unstated period, and The Clean Eating Couple’s traffic figure does not name its metric (most likely pageviews).

Income figures are what the publishers themselves reported. We could not audit them. Publishers who report income are not a random sample of bloggers. Some links on this page are affiliate links; no network or programme saw this study before publication.

Limitations

1. Survivorship. Bloggers publish income reports when they have something to show. Blogs earning nothing rarely publish one. Nothing here is an average for all bloggers.
2. Age. 23 of the 38 reports cover 2023 or earlier. Ad rates and search traffic have changed since. The six oldest reports are from 2016 and 2018.
3. Small numbers. The headline per-1,000 figures rest on 11 and 13 reports. The comparison of bloggers who sell to other bloggers rests on 5 and 12. Treat them as a measured snapshot, not a rule.
4. Food-heavy. Seven of the 11 total-revenue rows are food blogs.
5. Unaudited. We recorded what each blogger says. We could not check any figure against a bank statement or network dashboard.
6. Search found them. Reports were found by web search, which favours blogs that rank well.

What we will measure next

• May 2027: re-read every report URL, add new reports for 2026 and 2027, and re-read every threshold page.
• January 2027: the ads.txt census of 1,000 blogs, which will show network use directly rather than through what bloggers choose to report.

Data and how to cite it

Blogging Titan Research Team. “How much do bloggers really earn? We read 38 income reports to find out.” Blogging Titan, 6 November 2026. Data collected 6 November 2026. https://bloggingtitan.com/make-money-blogging/blogging-income-benchmark/. Licence: CC BY 4.0.

Related Blogging Titan research

• Raptive vs Mediavine vs AdSense: thresholds and terms
• Mediavine requirements and Raptive requirements
• How to monetize a gaming blog: what the sites that rank actually run
• Amazon Affiliate Program 2026: UK and US commission rates
• Blog Income Potential Calculator
• The Stake Test: who profits from page-one blogging advice

Change log

• 6 November 2026: First published. 38 reports, read 6 November 2026.

Written by

Blogging Titan Team

Blogging Titan is an independent team of bloggers documenting what actually grows a blog in the AI search era. We have been building, ranking, and monetizing WordPress sites since 2017, and every guide on this site is based on strategies and tools we have tested ourselves. Want a second pair of eyes on your blog? Request a free blog audit or start with the 2026 playbook.

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