How much do bloggers REALLY earn in 2025? (Statistics from the Blogging Income Survey 2025)

 Ever wondered how much bloggers REALLY earn in 2025? Which are the best ways to earn money with a blog? And how long it takes to make a full-time income blogging? Here are the results from the Blogging Income Survey 2025.

Ever wondered how much bloggers REALLY earn? Which are the most lucrative blogging niches? How long it takes, on average, to start earning a full-time income from blogging? How much other bloggers charge for sponsored posts? Which is the best paying ad company for bloggers? If bloggers with more revenue streams earn more? Or if there is a correlation between the number of posts on a blog and income?

I have the answers to all these questions and more!

But these are not airy-fairy numbers plucked out of the sky by me, this is real data from real bloggers who completed the 2025 Blogging Income Survey.

I’ve taken the raw data and compiled the numbers into helpful graphs, provided analysis AND – most importantly – pulled out key takeaways, including concrete action steps you can implement now so YOU can earn more money with YOUR blog in 2025 and beyond!

Better still, as this is the fourth year I have run this survey, I have also been able to pull out insights about how blogging has changed, by comparing the data from the latest survey with the data from previous years’ surveys.

Note: RPM stands for Rate Per Mille, that is, earnings per thousand pageviews. All income data is given in USD, except where specified.

Do bloggers who have been blogging longer earn more?

The first thing I wanted to understand was whether there is a correlation between earnings and the age of a blog. The results are very interesting…

Average monthly income based on age of blog

Average monthly pageviews based on age of blog

Average RPM based on age of blog

Analysis

From the data, it appears there is a very strong correlation between length of time blogging and income. This shows that perseverance definitely pays off in blogging!

One very important detail to note is that bloggers who have been blogging for less than 3 years are hardly earning anything and have very few pageviews… This very much supports the notion that the early years of blogging are a little like a ghost town! But, if that’s you right now, just take a look at the 3y+ numbers for encouragement. Many bloggers give up too soon. But these figures show that, if you stick at it long enough, you are likely to reap the rewards!

One interesting detail, though, is that bloggers who have been blogging for more than 10 years have a considerably lower RPM, on average, than bloggers who have been blogging for 5-10 years.

Digging into the data, it is pretty clear why this is. Most of the bloggers in this category get the majority of their income from ads. Many get almost 100% of their income from ads and, according to the data, ads deliver the lowest RPMs of all the different blog monetization methods. (See the Average RPM based on main revenue stream section below for more on this.)

Another additional explanation could be that bloggers who have been blogging for over 10 years are likely to have a lot of poor quality, out of date and/or unoptimized content on their sites, which could be dragging down their overall RPMs.

Comparison with last year

While the general picture is similar to previous years, there are some notable differences in this year’s data, compared to the results from last year’s Blogging Income Survey.

Firstly, bloggers in the 1-3y bracket are earning quite a bit more on average this year, compared to last year. Last year bloggers in this bracket were earning just $74.89 on average compared to an average of $205.44 this year.

This may be, at least in part, because it is now easier to get ads on your site with a smaller blog (especially with the launch of Journey by Mediavine) See the Average RPM based on ad company section below for more on this.

But it may also be down to the fact that bloggers in this 1-3y bracket have more / better paying income streams than last year.

Secondly, bloggers in the 5-10y bracket are earning a lot less than they were in 2024. ($2,621.24 this year vs $5,450.90 last year.)

Looking at the average pageviews for this group the reason becomes clear: average pageviews are considerably less than average pageviews in 2024. It seems this group has been significantly affected by recent Google updates and, as a result, average incomes are also significantly affected.

However, what is particularly interesting to note is that bloggers in the 10+ years bracket are, on average, earning considerably more than last year. ($5,624.91 this year vs $2,777.79 last year.)

This is very encouraging and shows that blogging really does reward hard work and patience. Blogging is certainly not dead!

Key takeaways

If you have not been blogging for very long and are feeling a little depressed by your numbers, don’t be! It’s totally normal for bloggers to have very low pageviews and very low earnings in the early days. The good news is, if you persevere, it is very likely your earnings and pageviews will increase more and more each year. So, whatever you do, don’t give up too soon!

That said, it’s clearly getting harder to ‘break in’ to blogging, and it’s taking longer to get to a decent full time income. The good news is, there is plenty you can do to speed up the process. Keep reading to find out how!

If you have been blogging for a long time and are feeling a little depressed by your numbers, one possible explanation is you have poor quality and/or unhelpful content dragging down your overall search engine rankings and earnings. If you take time to clean up, improve and optimize your older blog posts, it’s likely to pay dividends in terms of higher traffic, higher RPMs and, ultimately more income!

Another possible explanation could be the revenue streams you have chosen. If you are still monetizing mainly with ads, you will almost certainly see your income increase if you diversify into one or more of the better paying monetization methods. (See below for more on this.)

Do blogs with more blog posts earn more?

The next thing I wanted to test was whether there was a correlation between the number of blog posts on a blog and income…

Average monthly income based on number of blog posts

Average monthly income per blog post

Average monthly pageviews based on number of blog posts

Analysis

This data shows that there is a very strong correlation between earnings and the number of posts on a blog. Broadly speaking, the more blog posts you write, the more you will earn!

This is great news as writing more blog posts is something you can actually ‘do’. (Whereas you can’t speed time up!)

There is also a fairly strong correlation between pageviews and the number of posts on a blog.

Up until 499 blog posts, there is also a strong correlation between average income per blog post and overall number of blog posts. However, it is interesting to note that over the 500 blog posts mark, there is a clear drop off.

Again, it is impossible to know with 100% certainty why, but the most likely reason is that bloggers who have over 500 blog posts are not able to keep all of them up to date. As a result, the presence of so much poor-quality/poorly-optimized blog content is dragging down the average income per blog post.

One additional point that I noticed when analysing the data was that there were outliers earning much more per blog post than these averages. I noticed 2 trends among these outliers. Either they were mainly monetizing with digital products OR they described their niche as Food/Recipes. (And in some cases both were true!)

Comparison with last year

These figures are broadly similar to last year’s figures. But there are a couple of key differences.

Firstly, bloggers in the 100-299 post category are earning significantly less that last year ($547.70 vs $2,088.71 per month). This means that in 2025 it is even more important than before to write more blog posts if you want to succeed in blogging.  

In fact, this seems to be part of a long term trend. Looking back at 2023’s figures, bloggers were able to earn around $1,000 per month from just 50-99 posts. Then 2024’s data showed that to earn $1,000 a month you really needed to have 100+ posts. And now, 2025’s data shows that to earn over $1,000 a month, you need to have 300+ posts.

Secondly, bloggers at the higher end are doing also earning much less than last year. Bloggers with 1000+ blog posts are earning an average of $7,981.67 per month, compared to $11,578.73 last year. Average income earned per blog post is also down.

Key takeaways

This data is great news! It shows that one of the best ways to increase pageviews and earnings is to write more blog posts. While the age of your blog is not something you can do very much about (other than being patient), the number of blog posts on your website is something you have direct control over.

However, there is a big caveat… Just creating more blog posts will not guarantee more revenue. In order to increase your income, you must do good keyword research, write truly helpful, high-quality content, and you must ensure that all the content on your website is high quality.

If you want to press the turbo boost button and dramatically increase the number of blog posts on your blog in a very short space of time, I recommend doing the 30 Day Blog Traffic Booster Challenge

If you have a lot of old, poor quality, unoptimized content on your blog, you are likely to reap dividends from updating and optimizing that content.

The final important takeaway is that it is possible to earn much better RPMs than these averages by focusing on higher RPM monetization methods – such as digital products (see below).

Do blogs with more pageviews earn more?

The next thing I wanted to look at was whether there was a correlation between earnings and pageviews…

Average monthly income based on number of pageviews

Analysis

The data here shows a very strong correlation between number of pageviews and blog income. This would suggest that, as a general rule, the more pageviews you have, the more money you will earn. Although, interestingly, there were outliers at all levels.

Comparison with last year

The data here is remarkably similar to the data from last year’s Blogging Income Survey.

The main difference is that bloggers in the 50,000-99,000 and 100,000-499,999 groups are earning slightly more than last year, on average, while the top group – with 500,000+ pageviews per month is earning slightly less than last year.

Looking at the raw data is seems that bloggers in the 50,000-99,000 and 100,000-499,999 groups have more diversified revenue streams and focus on higher RPM revenue streams. Whereas bloggers in the 500,000+ group rely on ads for the majority of their income.

Key takeaways

There is a strong correlation between pageviews and blog income, so working on your SEO to increase pageviews is a smart move if you want to maximize your blogging revenue.

Additionally, if you want to maximize the amount of money you make per pageview, it makes sense to diversified revenue streams and/or focus on higher RPM revenue streams. (See below for more on this!)

Do bloggers with more revenue streams earn more?

Next, I wanted to find out if there was a relationship between number of revenue streams and average earnings. I also wanted to understand which were the most lucrative revenue streams.

(It’s important to point out here that for these graphs I removed anyone who was not earning any money from their blog.)

Average RPM based on number of revenue streams

Analysis

There appears to be a fairly strong correlation between the number of revenue streams and average RPMs. Bloggers who have 5+ revenue streams are earning, on average, more than double what bloggers who only have 1 revenue stream are earning.

Comparison with last year

This year’s data is much more clear cut. Last year’s showed only a loose correlation between number of revenue streams and average RPM.

Key takeaways

On the face of it, it would seem that the takeaway here is pretty obvious… if you want to earn more from your blog, add more revenue streams!

However, there is another option that it would be remiss of me not to give on a productivity blog, and that is, you could just focus on higher RPM revenue streams – especially digital products. Given the high RPMs on digital products, coupled with the fact that, once they have been created, they are an almost passive revenue stream, (especially when used in conjunction with an evergreen sales funnel) this should in theory give you the most income per hour spent working!

Average RPM based on main revenue stream

Analysis

The data here is very stark: RPMs for digital products is nearly TEN TIMES the RPMs for ads. Given that so many bloggers monetize almost exclusively with ads, this is HUGE! It means that, if you currently earn the majority of your blogging revenue from ads, you could be earning TEN TIMES AS MUCH if you diversified into digital products. (And actually a good deal more if you do a good job of it… see below).

This is also great news for new and/or smaller bloggers. It’s very hard for new/smaller bloggers to earn a decent income from ads and affiliates.

For example, a blogger with only 10,000 monthly pageviews is very unlikely to be able to get an RPM of $33.80 from ads… But even if they could, this would only result in a monthly income of $388.80.

However, it’s completely possible for a blogger with 10,000 monthly pageviews to get an RPM of $283.64 from digital products… and this would result in a monthly income of $2,836.40. For many people in the world this is a full-time income.

Comparison with last year

There has been quite a bit of movement here and it is well worth taking a moment to look at last year’s graph. But the summary is:

• Ads: an increase from $27.86 to $33.80
• Affiliates: an increase from $33.91 to $40.24
• Sponsored Posts: an increase from $50.20 to $51.74
• Digital products: a decrease from $365.94 to $283.64
• Services: a decrease from $117.75 to $34.36

(I did not include physical products in last year’s survey results, as the data set was too small.)

The data shows that Digital product RPMs are quite a bit lower this year than last year. As someone who monetizes via digital products and knows how good digital product RPMs can be, this did initially surprise me. But digging into the data, I can see that there is a huge amount of variation, with some people absolutely killing it with digital products, while others were getting quite low RPMs.

All this underlines that there is HUGE potential with digital products to earn an enormous amount of money, but most bloggers really underestimate what it takes to run a successful digital product based business.

It’s not sufficient to simply create a product and advertise it on your website. You need to do market research, create a product your audience is actually willing to pay for, build a high converting sales page, launch your product properly, build an evergreen sales funnel, do digital product specific SEO, grow your personal authority, harness the power of customer advocacy and convert your traffic into red hot leads with high converting lead magnets and new subscriber nurture sequences.

Those who understand this are killing it when it comes to digital product RPMs… but those who don’t, and think all you need to do is put together a basic ebook, are very much underachieving in this area.

The other thing to note is that services RPMs have fallen for the second year in a row. (Services RPMs were $160.71 in 2023.) And to be honest, I am not quite sure why this is. Services, like products, cut out the middle man so I would expect RPMs to be considerably higher than revenue streams like ads, affiliates and sponsored posts, where you are advertising someone else’s product or service.

Key takeaways

The big takeaway here is, if you want to maximize your blogging revenue, create and sell digital products!

If you are mainly dependent on a mix of ads, affiliates and sponsored posts (as so many bloggers are), the data shows you will almost certainly find you can get much better RPMs from digital products and/or physical products.

However, it’s important to point out that physical products are much less passive than digital products – meaning they can be hard to scale. They also often require a lot more upfront cost (such as inventory, warehousing, postage cost and staff costs), making it difficult to break into. Digital products are a much more passive form of income and so are your best option if you want to increase your passive income and have a revenue stream that can easily grow as your blog grows!

This data is also good news for smaller bloggers. Achieving a good income from ads / affiliates / sponsored posts when you don’t have a lot of pageviews is hard – and seems to be getting harder and harder. But if you focus on the revenue streams with higher RPMs, you may still be able to make a very good income, even with a small blog!

Which is the best paying niche?

Next, I wanted to understand to what extent niche affects blogging income…

Average RPM based on niche

Analysis

The first thing I would say about this graph is you should take it with a little bit of a pinch of salt. Due to the large number of niches represented in the survey data, there were relatively few bloggers within most niches. (Food, Lifestyle and Travel were the biggest datasets.)

In fact, drilling down into the data suggests to me that other factors (age of blog, number of blog posts, revenue streams) have much more of an effect than niche.

However, looking across the data, I can still make three important observations…

The first is that the most lucrative niches from an RPM perspective appear to be personal finance and online business. This does not surprise me, since both of these niches are focused on helping other people get richer. Generally speaking, you can earn a lot of money teaching other people to make money. (And if you make other people richer, they have more money to spend on your products and services, so it becomes a virtuous circle!)

What did concern me (though didn’t surprise me!) was how many bloggers in these 2 niches are not making ANY money. It seems a little mad to be ‘teaching’ online business when you are not earning money from your online business yourself!

The second is that, in almost every niche, there are outliers who are vastly outperforming the rest of the bloggers in that niche.

And thirdly, although the data sets are too small to say definitively which niches are the best paying, it is worth noting that the highest earning bloggers all seem to be concentrated in just a few niches…

These are the only niches represented in the survey that included bloggers earning $1,000 or more per month:

• Arts / Crafts
• Beauty / Fashion / Hair
• Education / Home-schooling
• Food / Recipes
• Health / Fitness
• Home décor
• Lifestyle / Multi Topic
• Online Business / Blogging / Social Media
• Parenting
• Personal Finance
• Travel

And these are the only niches represented in the survey that included bloggers earning $5,000 or more per month:

• Arts / Crafts
• Beauty / Fashion / Hair
• Education / Home-schooling
• Food / Recipes
• Lifestyle / Multi Topic
• Travel

(Note: I did not include either of my blogs in the survey. But I can tell you it is very much possible to earn more than $5,000 per month in the online business niche!)

Comparison with last year

The results from this year’s survey are pretty similar to the results from last year’s survey.

Key takeaways

It’s probably possible to make money in almost any niche, however if you want to make more than $5,000 per month, you will probably stand the best chance if you blog in one of the following niches:

• Arts / Crafts
• Beauty / Fashion / Hair
• Education / Home-schooling
• Food / Recipes
• Lifestyle / Multi Topic
• Travel

However, the data in this survey suggests that your financial success in blogging is less related to niche and more related to other factors such as length of time blogging, number of blog posts and revenue streams.