If you’re wondering how much blogs earn, that’s exactly what this article covers.
Whether you’re a blogger or looking to get into blogging or content creation, we cover the basics of how much you can earn from a blog or content website per month and per year.
One way to figure out how much you can earn is to reverse engineer what you have to do to make those ambitions a reality.
Table of Contents
First starting out with a blog
When you first start out blogging you’ll make nothing.
On rare occasions, you might have someone start a blog, get some traffic on the post by sharing it on social media, and monetizing it successfully through affiliate links.
But that’s uncommon.
It’s safe to say that 10 blog posts isn’t enough to start earning you money.
The site is just too new and you don’t have enough lines in the water to catch anything.
The same goes if you apply this to YouTube.
Many new content creators, whether they’re bloggers, YouTubers, or both, start out with a few or a dozen posts or videos and get discouraged when they don’t see instant results.
But the reality is that your library of content is just too small at that point.
You should really have the mission to push out 50 or even 100 blog posts (or videos) before re-evaluating where you are.
It should also go without saying that you should have a passion for it.
If you’re passionate about it, then in a way it doesn’t feel like work and you’re much more likely to stick through it when the inevitable success path isn’t a straight line.
For example, popular money and finance YouTuber Graham Stephan started his channel in late 2016. His first year of doing YouTube he filmed videos late at night and made about $26,000 his first year (2017). Most of that was backloaded late in the year after he had developed a large content library.
It’s decent, averaging out to a bit more than $2,000 per month, but in terms of an hourly wage translation, it really doesn’t even come out to minimum wage.
His next year of doing it full-time, never missing an upload, he made about $282,000.
It wasn’t until 2019 that everything exploded and he started seeing a 7-figure income from YouTube.
We’ll walk through what kind of output you’re going to need to get to have typical success as a blogger
How much do bloggers make per post?
Income School did a video on this topic that covered average figures.
The survey involved how many pageviews a blog got and how much they were earning.
They also looked at blog sizes to determine expected pageviews and money earned at those traffic levels.
10 blog posts
This, of course, assumes that it’s good content.
All posts should be targeted around a specific topic – keyword – that answers a user’s query.
Pageviews expected
- Average: 300
- Low end: ~0
- High end: 1,500
It takes time to rank on Google and a site doesn’t have authority until it’s published a certain amount of content and ideally has some links pointing to it.
These numbers also assume that the content has been given at least 8 months to settle its way into Google.
For new blogs, it’s especially hard to rank on Google considering the “sandbox” where Google typically won’t put a lot of trust into domains that are less than 6 months old.
Earnings expected
- Average: $0
- Low end: $0
- High end: $5
So, in sum, 10 blog posts is just not enough to really rank.
You should really put out a goal of writing 100 articles. Even without outsourcing, you should be able to accomplish this within a year, or even about 3 months if you have a goal of writing one blog post each day.
It will still require a lot of effort.
Let’s take a look.
100 blog posts
Pageviews expected
- Average: 50,000
- Low end: 20,000
- High end: 100,000
So at the low end with 100 blog posts, you should average about 200 views per post (search traffic, social, direct, email, etc.), for a total of about 20,000 as a low-end expectation.
The high end with 100 blog posts would net you around 100,000 visitors. That’s 1,000 pageviews per article. That’s a lot, but doable if you’re in a high-traffic niche and targeting searches that have large audiences and aren’t overly competitive.
Naturally, some posts will flop and bring in little whereas others will hit and will earn over 1,000 pageviews per month.
A good, average target is 50,000 views off 100 blog posts. That would get you 500 visitors per post, which is a very reasonable goal.
Now, how much money might that net you?
Earnings expected
This is where the ranges start getting very wide because there are different monetization strategies:
- ads
- affiliate marketing
- selling your own products and services (including one-off sales, recurring)
- sponsorships
So, the range is very wide in terms of per-month earnings.
- Average: $1,000-$5,000
- Low end: $800-$4,000
- High end: $2,000-$5,000
But on average, making anywhere from $0.01 to $0.05 per pageview is reasonable.
On a solid ad network (e.g., Mediavine, Adthrive, Ezoic), adding in affiliate commissions, maybe some sponsorships, you should be able to get around $0.05 (or better) per pageview.
Official surveyed average
Here were the official median numbers per month:
- Average: $2,815
- Low end: $1,338
- High end: $2,908
The average and high-end figures came to close to $3,000 per month off 100 blog posts, or about $30 per month per post.
500 blog posts
With 500 blog posts, you can really start scaling your traffic.
By the time you’ve written 500 blog posts about your niche, you should start covering a lot of material.
This is where these traffic figures come into play:
Pageviews expected
- Average: 250,000
- Low end: 100,000
- High end: 500,000
This assumes average traffic from each blog post, from all sources, at about 200 to 1,000 per article.
And naturally, you’ll see huge variability at this size in terms of pageviews and also income generated.
Earnings expected
Now, as a general expectation, you could see anywhere from $2,000-$25,000 in terms of earnings per month.
- Average: $5,500-$13,000
- Low end: $2,000-$5,000
- High end: $10,000-$25,000
Some sites will see much more than $25,000 because of their monetization techniques – e.g., selling their own products, recurring affiliate.
And some sites will be much less because their audience is often not based in the US (or Europe or the developed countries) and they can’t afford to buy much.
For example, you can have 1 million visitors per month, but if they’re from India it can sometimes be hard to generate even $1,000 per month from a site like that.
Official surveyed average
Here were the official median numbers:
- Average: $7,270
- Low end: $2,908
- High end: $14,540
So, if middle-of-the-road on everything – traffic, article quality, monetization (ads, affiliate, etc.) – 500 blog posts could expect to net you $7,270 per month.
This comes to close to $15 per blog post per month, or about $175 per post per year.
We should also re-emphasize how hugely variable this figure is. There are so many variables involved.
Income School did another update of the video located below:
Content -> Traffic -> Income
Content is hard work but it’s also the easiest variable to control.
You can choose how much content you want to produce within reasonable limits, but getting the traffic for it then monetizing it successfully is the hard part.
At a point, if you have the content and it’s getting the traffic you want or need to get, it’s better to focus less on creating new content and more on getting it to rank.
Improving site traffic
This could include redefining what keyword it ranks for changing its title and changing some of the copy. It could mean integrating new keywords.
If you’re getting the traffic but not getting the income to your expectations, then it’s time to start focusing more on monetization.
Using a good keyword tool is helpful, such as:
- Ahrefs
- SEMrush
- Keyword Surfer
- Ubersuggest
Improving site monetization
There are a few main ways to monetize websites:
- Ads
- Affiliate programs
- Selling your own products and services
- Sponsorships
Ads
You should strive to get into a good ad network if you meet the requirements, such as:
- Ezoic
- Mediavine
- Adthrive
Ezoic pays out better than Adsense and dropped its previous traffic requirement of 10,000 views per month. There’s no longer that barrier to entry.
Mediavine requires 50,000 sessions per month and prefers most of the traffic to be US-based (or in high-value countries).
Adthrive requires 100,000 pageviews per month and this traffic should similarly be in wealthier countries.
Some have said Mediavine and Adthrive pay out the most – i.e., have the highest-paying RPMs – and are comparable. Some have had good success with Ezoic.
Adsense is okay-ish; it’s better than nothing, but pays out the lowest.
Affiliate programs
Getting into affiliate programs is also a good idea. What programs to join will largely depend on your niche.
Recurring affiliate programs tend to be best because people keep paying as long as they stay subscribed.
You can always join Amazon Affiliate, as just about everyone has an Amazon account. But its commissions are also quite low.
If you have a huge audience, you may want to figure out what the highest-paying affiliate programs are and negotiate your rates as high as possible.
Your own products and services
Lots of blogs end up focusing less on building huge traffic bases and more on developing their own products and services to monetize that audience.
This could be a digital info product.
It could be a physical product that you sell (common with health and fitness sites).
It could be consulting and getting clients who pay month-to-month.
Read more: How to Create a Subscription Model for Your Business
Sponsorships
This is where companies will pay you to advertise them to your audience.
What you get paid will be proportional to your audience.
How long does it take to make $500 per month blogging? $1,000? $5,000? $10,000?
If you’re using Google search traffic – which is many, because it’s free – you’ll need to give yourself enough time to not only write enough posts but also give them time to rank on Google.
And if you’re starting off on a new domain, Google doesn’t just open the floodgates to your site right away. It can take 6-12 months for SEO to really start kicking in.
In general, you should strive to have at least 50-100 posts on your site before you really start thinking seriously about making a ton of money.
There are examples of people who are able to do it with less.
But once you’re at 100 posts, you should be able to crack $1,000 per month even if your monetization isn’t great, such as just relying on ads and not doing much affiliate marketing, don’t have your own products, and don’t have many sponsorships.
Moreover, once you’re at 100 blog posts, you’ve probably picked out the best topics to write on in your niche or industry.
If you go based on our $15 per month per blog post median earlier, that means getting up to $5,000 per month may require around 350 blog posts.
Getting up to $10,000 per month might require around double that, or around 700 blog posts.
Of course, these are all approximations and the variation is enormous.
But with “average everything” (average content, average traffic, average monetization), each 100 blog posts might net you $1,500 per month.
How much should I be making per word?
This is an interesting question because many freelance writers are paid on a per-word basis. That can vary from $0.02 per word to $0.50 or more per word, depending on the assignment.
Example #1
One blog that monetized heavily through Mediavine ads found that it earned $0.033 per word per year, or between 3 and 4 cents.
Each article earned them $2.31 per month or $27.75 per year. Mediavine yielded $0.014 per pageview.
Example #2
A different site on Adthrive had about 1,270 articles, was monetized at $0.023 per pageview and $0.035 per session.
It earned approximately $6,900 per month, or about $65 per post per year.
With around 1,000 words per post on average, it earned about $0.065 per word, or between 6 and 7 cents per year.
How much content do I need to produce to make $100,000 per year from my blog?
If you can generate $50-$200 per blog post, you’re going to need to produce anywhere from 500 to 2,000 pieces of content.
If you were to monetize at $0.033 per word like in the above example (“Example #1”), then you’d need to write over 3 million words. That’s a little more than 8,000 words of writing per day. That’s not easy, but it’s not impossible either, even if you’re a 1-person blog.
There are also tools like AI writers and ChatGPT. But these need to be used with caution to ensure the content is accurate.
What if I want to make $1 million from my blog per year?
Take the above numbers and 10x them (Grant Cardone tribute there).
However, at that point, it’s very hard to produce over 5,000 pieces of content per year. Even 2 per day (around 750 pieces of content per year) can be a lot. And it’s hard to write over 10 million quality words as well.
At a certain point, to scale, you’re going to need help in the form of employees and/or technology to automate as many tasks as possible.
Some bloggers can make big numbers as a 1-person shop because they’re very good at getting traffic out of the content they can realistically write or they’re very good at monetization.
FAQ on making a living blogging
Let’s take a look at some FAQs:
Can you make a living blogging?
Absolutely! It just takes a lot of work to get off the ground.
It’s realistic to strive to make $5,000 per month blogging after one year.
You have to be okay not making anything at first.
If it’s only for the money and you don’t enjoy it, it can certainly be a struggle.
How do beginner bloggers make money?
They write a lot of content centered around specific keywords to get those posts to rank, they get traffic from social channels, build an email list, and monetize through ads, affiliate marketing, their own products, and/or sponsorships on their site.
How much money do bloggers make per month?
The amount of money that bloggers make varies widely.
According to a ProBlogger Report, earnings per month are broken out as follows:
- 38%: less than $10
- 10%: $10-$99
- 17%: $100-$499
- 7%: $500-$999
- 9%: $1,000-$9,999
- 4%: $10,000 or more
Do bloggers pay taxes?
Yes, no matter if an LLC, S Corp, C Corp, or sole proprietorship, bloggers must pay taxes on any net income they earn.
Do I need an LLC for my blog?
You don’t technically need an LLC or business structure.
But if you’re serious about it and want to treat blogging like a business, it’s definitely something to look into.
Who is the richest blogger?
Arianna Huffington is believed to make more than $2 million per month from the Huffington Post.
Several founders or co-founders of popular blogs are also in the $1 million per month range (e.g., TechCrunch).
Conclusion: How much do blogs earn in 2024
This article contained a lot of numbers and it can be confusing.
That’s just because how much blogs earn is so much of an “it depends” reality.
But generally speaking, there’s a positive correlation between more content and more traffic, and more traffic gives more opportunity to monetize.
The median blog that “makes it” – generates 100+ posts, monetizes, and is treated like a business – monetizes at about $175 per blog post per year.
That means each $100,000 in annual income is about 570 blog posts.
That’s a lot to do in a year since there’s so much other stuff that comes with running a blog or business, but is doable.
For blogs that monetize at a more modest $100 per blog post per year, that’ll take 1,000 blog posts to reach the $100K mark.
If you go by words, and you’re monetizing at $0.05 per word, for example, then that’ll take 2 million words of content, which is about 5,500 words per day.
It’s a lot of work, but so worth it if it’s something you’re passionate about and take steps to achieve.
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