Motivation. It can be a little strange publishing income reports for all the world to see (including family, friends and even rival online creators). These income reports are not published to brag. Instead they are meant to be helpful and to show readers, followers and fellow bloggers that it truly IS possible to make a good income online with a small blog, hard work and persistence.

Transparency. When you’re looking for an online creator for inspiration and guidance, it’s important to understand that this creator has actually been able to accomplish goals similar to your own.

In this case, I’m trying to show bloggers what is possible, in terms of earnings, for a website that is newly accepted to Mediavine in 2022 and had just over the minimum amount of sessions required.

Yes, there are certainly bloggers who have been with Mediavine for years and earn more money than I did with my single site. But at least you know that my earnings data is (1) real and (2) current.

Remember, RPMs have changed significantly over time, and a report from a blogger in 2017 (who was accepted with the half the current required sessions, given the changes Mediavine announced last year), is probably not indicative of your earning potential today.

Scalability. I am hoping to build several more sites that are at least partially monetized by Mediavine, so it is useful for me to lay out the data, along with my thoughts/feelings at the time (so that I can accurately reflect on the mistakes and successes I experience with my additional sites).

$528 is great for two weeks! Assuming that I maintain this rate, this would imply my monthly payment, for just adding Medivine, is roughly $1,000 per month without optimizing my site or adding any additional content.

This income was truly passive. All income is not created equal. In the case of display ads, most of the income is going to be passive since you will constantly be paid for your site’s traffic. Yes, for some websites you will need to keep posting to maintain this momentum, but as my site traffic is almost exclusively powered by SEO and evergreen content, this is not a major consideration.

There is a fine line between a blogger earning $0 and $1000 per month. I started Blogging Guide as a passion project and wrote for about 18 months with no income earned from display ads.

By simply “tidying up” my site and making a few site adjustments/optimizations, I was able to apply to Mediavine. There was no difference between the blogger making $0 per month through ads (me, two weeks ago) compared to the blogger easily making $1,000 per month (me, today).

The only difference was the successful application to Mediavine. And I spent hundreds of hours reading stories of those accepted/rejected by Mediavine, to give myself an edge, as the application process is extremely competitive.

Increase monthly income. Next month I’d like to hit ~$1,500 in monthly earnings through my Mediavine display ads. Long term, my goal is to get this income stream to $3,000+ per month.

Increase RPM. My RPM for these two weeks averaged $16.47. Which is generally good compared to most ad networks, but probably on the lower end for Mediavine. I plan to improve this by making some general site adjustments per Mediavine’s suggestions and continuing to produce new content.

I will make these optimizations regardless, but it’s worth noting that in general, my RPM was already increasing on a daily basis (the highest day being ~$30 RPM), so I think there is a lot of room for growth here.