People have always been asking us “how do blogs earn money” and we always say that you really need to diversify in order to make money from a blog, which is true. But these days, traffic = money so as soon as a new blogger starts getting a bit of traffic to their site, they can monetize it. It’s never been easier for blogs to earn money thanks to one simple truth:
Mediavine in-content ads pay very well.
Traditionally, the only real kind of ads that bloggers placed on their sites were Google Ads and while these were a great way to earn a bit of money, they simply didn’t pay well enough to really support a person’s life on their own. This all changed when Mediavine came out.
Updated 2022: This post has been updated to reflect Mediavine’s new minimum traffic requirements as well as with our own current earnings to be as transparent and consistent as possible on this blog.
Mediavine is an ad company that was founded by four publishers who ran their own sites, and sought a better way to monetize with ads. They formally had a relationship with Condé Nast Traveler which means they are great for travel blogs, but they work on all types of websites.
They collect a variety of different advertisers who pay to have their ads placed on your blog. The best part is that Mediavine does all of the hard work, and all you have to do as a blogger is flick a switch to turn on the ads and watch the money roll in.
It kind of sounds too good to be true doesn’t it? Well… there is a catch.
You have to have at least 50,000 sessions per month in order to turn on ads. If you have never started a blog before, or you have a blog already but it’s nowhere near that amount of traffic yet, then that might sound very difficult to achieve. But it’s not.
If you utilize proper SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in order to grow your traffic like we did in 2018, then you can get to 50,000 sessions per month in 6 months to 1 year.
After you reach that minimum threshold for Mediavine ads, you can turn them on (it only takes a few minutes) and that 50,000 sessions can be worth anywhere between $600 – $1,800 per month depending on your audience and seasonal changes in ad revenue.
And that’s just with the minimum amount of traffic!
It took us years before we decided to flick that switch and turn on ads, and when we did we were instantly earning $3,000 / month in ad revenue, just from Mediavine, and today we’re at around $8,000 / month from this blog.
We are conscious of the user experience, however, and I like to think that when you’re reading Goats On The Road, we don’t have too many ads clogging the screen. There are many travel blogs and websites out there which have more than double the amount of ads that we do.
We have our ads set to a low amount (you get to choose where you want them placed, and how frequently), and I know that if we turned on ads all the way, we could be earning more than $10,000 / month from Mediavine alone. But we choose not to because we want our website to be easy to read, and an enjoyable experience for the reader (you!).
So what does this mean for you?
This means that you can start your own blog about any topic (golfing, fishing, fashion, cycling, food, etc.) with the goal of reaching 50,000 sessions per month, and that traffic can translate to $800 – $1,800 / month in extra income for you.
It really is an achievable goal and if you love what you’re writing about, building your blog will never feel like work. It will be fun. If you’ve been researching different ways to earn money from home, blogging is the best way.
Already have a blog? If you already have a blog, then one of your goals should be to reach 50,000 sessions so that you can turn on ads. If you already have 50,000, then your goal should be to grow that to 50,000 and double your ad revenue. Of course, advertising will only be a small portion of your business’s revenue in the long-run. Once you get up to 50,000, 50,000 or even 500,000 sessions on your blog, the income streams will likely be vast and varied.
The quickest way to grow a blog is through white-hat SEO, so if you want to earn more money from your traffic, then check out our Free SEO Training Session with me, Nick from Goats On The Road 😀.
The first key is to start a blog about something you’re passionate about. I always say that it’s a good idea to do the 50 post title challenge. Sit down with a piece of paper and try to write 50 different titles that you can write about on the topic. If you can manage that, then you probably have enough expertise in your field to start a blog on the topic.
If you want to create a cooking blog, you can just write down 50 recipes. If you want to create a tech blog, it might be 50 different gadgets to review. You may be surprised at how easy it is to come up with 50 titles when you’re passionate about something.
Why Turn On Ads?
When we first started growing this blog, we were against ads. We were tired of searching travel websites and seeing random advertisements for things that we weren’t interested in — or sites were cluttered with distracting adverts.
These days however, the ad technology has become much more intelligent and effective. Companies like Mediavine gather information on what individuals are searching online and try to only serve them ads that are relevent to them.
This means that if you’re reading this post right now and you see a lot of Booking.com ads, it’s likely because you were recently searching hotels on that website. If you’re seeing ads for creating blogs, it’s likely because you’ve been searching about that topic recently.
This means that the ads are less annoying and they’re also more lucrative for the bloggers who place them.
Why Mediavine?
In my opinion, Mediavine is the best digital ad company around. I have to be up front, this is also the first ad company we’ve worked with on Goats On The Road, but I can’t imagine a better one. At this point I should mention as well that I am no way affiliated with Mediavine. I don’t get paid if you sign-up for Mediavine and they’re not paying me to say this.
I just love this company.
They really care about us creators, they’re constantly communicating with everyone on the platform to try to make the ad experience better, and it feels like a real community. They offer some of the best RPMs (money per 1000 visits to your blog) of any ad company out there. Plus, they always pay on time. Every month we get a deposit in our PayPal account.
How To Make Money From Blog Ads
As I mentioned earlier, advertising will likely only be a small part of your revenue when you grow a blog, but they’re one that’s very easy to measure.
Basically, 50,000 sessions per month should average around $500 / month in revenue. Your other revenue from sponsorships, product sales, social campaigns, affiliate marketing and press campaigns would vary greatly depending on your niche and how you market your blog.
Goats On The Road for example earns around $8,000+ / month from Mediavine ads (at the time of writing). That only accounts for around 16% of our total blog revenue. The majority of the revenue from this blog is from affiliate marketing and product sales.
But, ads are definitely the easiest monetization method because in order for us to earn money from ads, all we had to do was turn them on for our site.
Once you have 50,000+ sessions per month on your blog, you’ll be guaranteed ad revenue. So how do you get started? There are 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Start a Blog
Of course, if you want to start earning money from ads, you’ll have to start your own blog. As I said earlier, you can write about anything and earn money as long as you’re passionate and knowledgable about it.
Once you think of a topic to blog about, Click Here and I’ll show you exactly how to start a blog in 10 minutes. You’ll also get our free 4-part WordPress Beginner’s Blogger Course which includes 2 hours of video tutorials, a 200-page ebook and 12 super-useful PDF downloads to get you started.
The course and ebook will show you how to quickly set-up and design a brand new blog, and how to start growing it into a business.
Step 2: Grow Your Traffic (to 50,000+ sessions per month)
This is the more difficult part. Starting a blog is easy! But you’ll need to consistently work on your blog in order to grow it to 50,000+ sessions per month so that you can turn on ads. Don’t worry, you don’t have to work 40 hours per week on your blog in order to be successful. As long as you consistently give the blog around 3 hours of focused time per day, you’ll be able to grow it.
After you start your blog, design it and get it running, definitely check out our Free SEO Training which will teach you how to write great posts, how to get consistent traffic from Google, how to get your message seen by more people, and how to grow your blog into a full-time money-making business.
Growing a blog does take time and to get to 50,000 sessions may take you 6-months to a year or more. But if you’re writing about something you enjoy, building a blog and an online business will be an exciting process.
Plus, you may even find that you’ll already be earning money from other avenues long before you can reach 50,000 sessions per month and turn on ads. There are many different ways to monetize a blog and I know of people who were earning decent money from their blogs within 6 months.
Step 3: Turn On Mediavine Ads
This is the easy part. Once you have 50,000+ sessions per month on your blog, you can apply to be a Mediavine member. Usually, applications take a few weeks to process, at which point you can simply download a plugin for your website and have ads turned on in less than 30 minutes.
From the minute the ads are displayed on your blog, you can log-in to the Mediavine dashboard and see the dollars start ticking. It’s really that simple.
To Summarize
If you read this blog, you’ll see that we’re all about finding different ways to earn money online, on the road and on the go so that you can travel and live anywhere in the world.
In our endless search for the best travel jobs, we stumbled upon blogging and found our niche. From that point forward, we knew that we’d never have to return to our 9-5 jobs and we were free to live and work from anywhere — achieving location independence was the best thing we ever did, and we want to share our knowledge with you.
This is why we’re so passionate about blogging, but making money from ads and other sources is just one small part of what makes this line of work so exciting.
By creating content and publishing it for the world to see, you can literally help millions of people to achieve their goals. Whether you inspire them to travel to new places, help them make smarter purchases, teach them how to save money or show them cool life hacks, you can have an impact through blogging.
I honestly think that everyone should start their own blog and write about things that they’re passionate about. If you love to write and have a hobby that you think you could help people with, then you should start a blog and share your expertise with the world.
No matter what you choose to blog about, the more traffic you have to your site, the more people you can help and inspire. This alone is worth the effort put into the blog, with the ad revenue and other income just being a massive bonus.
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