How Much Does a Blog Make? (Real Ad RPM by Network)

"How much does a blog make?" doesn't have one answer, and almost every article that gives you one number is quietly picking a network, a niche, and a traffic level for you without saying so. The honest answer starts with RPM — revenue per 1,000 pageviews — and RPM alone can swing 10x or more depending on which ad network is running your inventory, before your niche, your audience's country, or a single affiliate link even enters the picture. Below: real RPM ranges for the four networks bloggers actually compare, why the range is so wide, how affiliate and sponsored income stack on top, and the honest timeline for a blog that's starting from zero today.

What RPM actually means

RPM is revenue per 1,000 pageviews: total ad earnings divided by pageviews, multiplied by 1,000. Google's own AdSense Help Center defines Page RPM exactly this way — estimated earnings divided by page views, times 1,000 — and every other network reports the same metric under the same name, which is what makes it the one number you can actually compare across networks.

RPM is not the same as CPM. CPM is what an advertiser pays for 1,000 ad impressions; RPM is what you, the publisher, actually collect per 1,000 pageviews, after the network's cut, after unfilled impressions, and after however many ad units your layout actually shows. A page can serve three ad impressions or zero depending on ad density and viewability, which is exactly why RPM — not CPM — is the number worth tracking in your own analytics, and the number every range below is built from.

Real RPM ranges, network by network

These are broad, publicly reported ballparks for Tier 1 traffic (US, UK, Canada, Australia) — not a quote from any network, since none of the four publish an official average:

• Google AdSense — roughly $2 to $8 per 1,000 pageviews. Open to any approved site, no traffic minimum, but it sells your inventory through a single exchange with the least competition for your ad slots.
• Ezoic — roughly $8 to $15. Runs header-bidding auctions across dozens of demand sources instead of one exchange, which is the main reason RPM jumps once a site leaves AdSense.
• Mediavine — roughly $15 to $30. A premium network with real entry requirements (more on that below), typically the first big RPM jump most lifestyle and food bloggers experience.
• Raptive (formerly AdThrive) — roughly $20 to $40, generally the highest end of the mainstream range, also gated by an entry requirement.

The full table, with sourcing notes, lives at the Display Ad RPM by Network data page if you want to cite it directly. A detailed cross-network breakdown is also available from Niche Pursuits, an independent site that's tracked these numbers across its own properties for years.

Try it with your own numbers

Plug in your monthly pageviews, pick your network, and add your Tier 1 traffic share, affiliate income, and sponsored-post income — the estimate recalculates as you type, and the page URL becomes a shareable permalink.

Why the range is so wide: niche and traffic geography

Two blogs on the same network, with the same pageviews, can still land in very different spots inside that network's range — for two reasons.

Niche determines what advertisers are willing to bid. Advertisers pay for the likelihood a viewer becomes a customer, not just for attention. A reader on a personal-finance or home-improvement post is close to a high-value purchase decision — a mortgage, an insurance quote, a kitchen renovation — and advertisers bid accordingly through header bidding. A reader on a general entertainment or humor post isn't shopping for anything specific, and CPCs in that auction reflect it. This is the same mechanism that makes finance content the highest-RPM niche on YouTube too, covered in the YouTube Money Calculator guide.

Traffic geography determines how much advertiser demand exists at all. Every RPM range above assumes Tier 1 traffic — US, UK, Canada, Australia — because advertiser budgets in those four countries dwarf the rest of the world combined. A pageview from India, the Philippines, or Brazil still earns something, just a fraction of a Tier 1 pageview, which is why the calculator above asks for your Tier 1 traffic share specifically rather than assuming all your traffic is worth the same.

Seasonality moves the needle too: Q4 RPM spikes are well documented across every major network, as retail advertisers compete hardest for attention right before the holidays, then fall back to baseline in Q1.

A worked example: same traffic, four networks

Take a blog with 200,000 monthly pageviews where 75% of traffic is Tier 1 — a realistic mid-size blog. Here's ad revenue alone (before affiliate or sponsored income) on each network, using the low and high RPM for each:

• AdSense: (200,000 ÷ 1,000) × $2–$8 × 0.75 = $300 to $1,200 a month
• Ezoic: (200,000 ÷ 1,000) × $8–$15 × 0.75 = $1,200 to $2,250 a month
• Mediavine: (200,000 ÷ 1,000) × $15–$30 × 0.75 = $2,250 to $4,500 a month
• Raptive: (200,000 ÷ 1,000) × $20–$40 × 0.75 = $3,000 to $6,000 a month

Same traffic, same content, same 25% of non-Tier-1 pageviews dragging down the average — and the gap between AdSense's low end and Raptive's high end is twenty times. That gap is the single biggest lever most established bloggers pull, which is why leaving AdSense the moment a site clears a premium network's entry bar is close to universal advice in blogging communities.

Now add affiliate and sponsored income on top. Using the calculator's own defaults above — 100,000 monthly pageviews on Ezoic, 80% Tier 1 traffic, $300 in monthly affiliate income, and one sponsored post a month at $200 — the math comes out to:

• Ad revenue: (100,000 ÷ 1,000) × $8–$15 × 0.80 = $640 to $1,200
• Plus affiliate: $300, plus sponsored: 1 × $200 = $200
• Monthly total: $1,140 to $1,700
• Yearly (at the high end): $1,700 × 12 = $20,400

Ads are usually the biggest single line, but rarely the only one — which is the whole reason the calculator adds all three instead of estimating ads in isolation.

Affiliate and sponsored income aren't optional line items

Display ads get the most attention because RPM is easy to quote, but most bloggers who are actually paying rent from their blog have at least two other income lines running alongside it.

Affiliate income comes from commission on products or services a reader buys after clicking your link — Amazon Associates, ShareASale, Impact, or a brand's own program. It depends on traffic, click-through rate, conversion rate, average order value, commission rate, and how much of that gets clawed back by refunds. Using the Affiliate Income Calculator's own defaults — 10,000 monthly visits to your affiliate links, a 5% click-through rate, 3% conversion rate, $50 average order value, 8% commission, and a 5% refund rate — that comes out to:

• Clicks: 10,000 × 5% = 500
• Buyers: 500 × 3% = 15
• Gross sales: 15 × $50 = $750
• Gross commission: $750 × 8% = $60
• Net of refunds: $60 × (1 − 5%) = $57 a month, or $684 a year

That's a small blog with modest affiliate placement — scale traffic or conversion rate up and the number moves fast, since it's a product of five separate percentages, not one flat rate.

Sponsored posts are flat fees a brand pays for a dedicated post, a mention, or a product placement, independent of pageviews entirely — the Sponsorship Rate Calculator walks through pricing one based on your audience size and engagement. Unlike ad revenue and affiliate income, sponsored income doesn't scale automatically with traffic; it scales with how actively you pitch brands and how strong your media kit is.

The honest timeline: what a new blog actually earns

Here's the part most "how much does a blog make" articles skip: a brand-new blog earns close to nothing for months, and that's normal, not a sign something's wrong.

First, AdSense itself requires an approved account before any ad shows at all — real, original content and a clean site, but no traffic minimum, so it's the only network on this list a day-one blog can even run. The premium networks that pay several times more are gated specifically to keep quality and demand high: Mediavine requires at least $5,000 in trailing annual ad revenue to apply for its full program, though its Journey by Mediavine track accepts smaller sites starting around 1,000 sessions a month. Raptive dropped its own bar sharply — from 100,000 monthly pageviews down to 25,000 — in an eligibility change reported by Search Engine Journal in late 2025, with sites under 100,000 pageviews still needing at least half their traffic from Tier 1 countries to qualify.

Second, and bigger: none of that matters until you have traffic, and organic search traffic on a new site typically takes months to build, not weeks — new content has to be found, indexed, and gradually trusted before it ranks for anything competitive. It's common for a new blog to run for three to six months on ad revenue in the tens of dollars, not hundreds, simply because there aren't enough pageviews yet for any RPM range to multiply into real money. The ranges in this guide describe what a network pays per pageview once you have pageviews — they say nothing about how fast those pageviews show up, and no ad network or calculator can promise a timeline for that part.

If you're pre-revenue right now, that's the expected shape of the curve, not a signal to switch networks or niches early. The lever that matters most in month one isn't RPM — it's traffic.

How blog income compares to other creator income

Display-ad RPM on a well-run blog can match or beat YouTube's ad revenue on the exact same audience size. YouTube's highest-paying niche, finance and business content, runs roughly $8 to $20 per 1,000 views — see the YouTube Money Calculator for the full breakdown — which lines up closely with Ezoic's range and overlaps the bottom of Mediavine's, but still falls short of Raptive's ceiling. The mechanics differ (YouTube pays creators 55% of ad revenue after its own cut; a blog keeps whatever the network pays out directly), but the order of magnitude is close enough that "which platform pays better" usually comes down to which one an audience is easier to build on, not which one's per-view rate is inherently superior.

Methodology & sources

RPM ranges by network — AdSense $2–$8, Ezoic $8–$15, Mediavine $15–$30, Raptive $20–$40 — are the same figures behind the Blog Ad Revenue Calculator and the full data table, compiled from broad, publicly reported publisher figures rather than any network's own marketing claims. Google documents exactly how Page RPM is calculated in its AdSense Help Center; a detailed cross-network comparison is available from Niche Pursuits. Mediavine's current entry requirement is published on its own requirements page; Raptive's reduced 25,000-pageview minimum is documented by Search Engine Journal. None of these figures are guarantees — actual RPM on any site depends on niche, traffic geography, seasonality, ad density, and site speed, none of which any public range can capture for your specific blog.