How Much Do Bloggers Make Per Post? The Whole Truth
As you probably know, the type of earnings the millions of blogs out there generate varies hugely. Some of the factors that influence how much a blog can make are niche (market), blog size (amount of content), and monetization (revenue sources).
People often ask me how much a blogger makes per post. While the average income per post is extremely variable – including for a single blogger, an average post can typically earn between $10 and $20 per month assuming a 50-post blog monetized through ads and affiliate links.
Such earnings per post estimate is based on very specific assumptions, and changing these assumptions will greatly affect the estimate.
Table of Contents
It’s about traffic first
How much you make per post as a blogger depends on how much your blog makes overall, which is typically (though not always) proportional to your blog’s traffic. The more traffic your blog attracts, the more money the blog can make, increasing your earnings per post – provided your earnings grow faster than content amount.
Here are some examples of earnings per post from real-life blogs:
| monthly Blog revenue | nbr of posts | revenue per post |
|---|---|---|
| $2.500 | 159 | $15.72 |
| $700 | 30 | $23 |
| $1.500 | 120 | $12.5 |
Amount of content on your blog
The first factor that will affect how much you earn per post is the number of posts are published on your blog. The more posts you have, the more likely some of them will hit the first page of Google SERP’s (search results) over time, and the more traffic you’ll get for these posts. As mentioned earlier, more traffic generally will translate into more income (keep reading).
To get a blog going in terms of traffic (and hence earnings), you need a “critical mass” of content. Some bloggers may start seeing traction after publishing 30 posts, while others need to write at least 50 posts before they see any significant traffic. The amount of content also depends on the topics you pick (a broad subject!)
Blog content age
Besides the amount of content, content age, aka maturity, is another key factor in how well your blog posts will rank on Google, and consequently how much money they’ll generate on average. Higher Google SERP rankings (at least top 10 = page 1) means more traffic and hence more income (see below).
Assuming you have at least 30 posts published on your blog, it can take anywhere between 8 to 12 months for a post to rank on first page and start bringing noticeable traffic. Thus, you have to let your posts age for a few months before you can expect them to bring any views and money.
It’s important to note that for aged posts to rank and start bringing traffic, they also need to target the right search topics (aka keywords). They must also contain helpful content that addresses the topic in a useful way.
Niche popularity & competition
The niche your blog is in also greatly affects how much money you’ll eventually make per blog post. A popular niche, e.g. in the pets, parenting, home & gardening, consumer electronics, personal finance, or internet marketing markets, generally attract higher traffic (and thus revenue) to a post ranking on page 1.
On the negative side, though, popular niches are often very competitive, so ranking on the first page of Google SERPs for highly-searched topics can be a lot harder compared to a less searched niche.
You may choose a less popular niche to get lower competition, and as a result, your posts will rank faster, albeit with lower traffic. On the other hand, if you have strong topic research and writing skills – and the resources for creating a lot of posts – you can choose to select a more competitive niche in the hope to get more traffic and make more money per post.
Average pageviews per post
A related factor that will influence how much a blogger can make per post is how much traffic you get on average for each post. Typically, the average post on a mature website with decent content will attract between 300 and 1500 pageviews per month. Here again, this number depends on many factors such as:
- Search volume – how many searches per month the topic the post targets attracts on Google
- Post quality: the better the post content, the higher it will rank on Google, and the more pageviews it will get
- Post title: the title of your posts affects CTR (click-through rate) which is the share of people who actually click on your post title when it appears in the search results
So again, average pageviews per post depends primarily on the targeted keyword and how the post is written. The topic choice affects search volume, whereas content quality impacts ranking and clicks. More clicks mean more pageviews, which in turns leads to more revenue for the post (see next section).
Blog monetization
So far I’ve focused on the traffic side of things , which primarily revolves around content amount and quality as well as niche and topic selection. In determining how much a blogger can earn per post, however, monetization is the other key factor.
There is a broad range of potential revenue sources for a blogger to monetize their site’s traffic, ranging from ads to affiliate programs to info products and memberships. Obviously, the more profitable a revenue source, the more a blogger will earn per post from that source.
Ads, for example, can reap anywhere from $2 to $30 per thousand pageviews – a metric called RPM, or revenue per thousand. Affiliate programs vary a lot in terms of RPM, depending on the average price of the products or services being promoted and on the program’s conversion rate (the % of users who actually buy something after visiting the vendor’s site).
Amazon Associates, for example, can bring in RPMs ranging from $5 to $40 depending on the blog’s niche and level of traffic. Affiliate programs for intangible products like software or insurance can reap much higher RPMs e.g. $50-$100. More profitable affiliate programs lead to higher income per post.
Post profitability
Not all posts are created equal on a given website. Some posts can be highly profitable while others will barely generate any income. Posts that target so-called “buying intent” topics (e.g. product review keywords) tend to perform a lot better from a monetization standpoint than purely informational posts. With these posts, readers are much more likely to click on an affiliate link and possibly purchase the product, generating a commission for the website.
Likewise, some posts are more attractive than others to advertisers, who tend to bid higher for ad placement. These posts generate more ad revenue than others, which helps increase the site’s average earnings per post. For this reason, bloggers often choose a mix of informational posts for traffic and commercial posts for revenue, carefully interlinking the two types.
Ad rates
As mentioned earlier, the RPM you get from ads on a blog can vary widely, which in turns will affect how much you earn per post on average. Ad rates are typically determined dynamically by an ongoing automated bidding system, driving the rates up or down based on advertiser demand and publisher ad space inventory on blog pages. The following factors influence ad rates:
- Your niche/market: e.g. a soundproofing website will likely have higher ad rates than a running site because of the higher-ticket products
- Your audience: ad rates vary based on things like income level, demographics, and geographic distribution of viewers.
- Your content: bigger sites with bigger traffic generally get higher ad rates as they can get into more profitable ad networks.
- Content type and format: content with in a certain format (e.g. with shorter paragraphs) as well as multimedia content, tend to get much higher ad RPMs.
Other revenue sources
Some alternative revenue sources can hugely increase how much a blogger makes per post, allowing your website to be highly profitable with significantly less content and traffic than normal. Info products (e.g. high-value training courses), membership websites (subscription-based apps or SAAS services), and lead generation deals are examples of alternative monetization that can make your earnings per post shoot skyrocket.
Though this is an ideal scenario, building and marketing an info product requires a lot of work and expertise. Likewise, putting together a subscription website means first creating a compelling product or service people are willing to pay a recurrent fee to access. Lead generation is highly competitive and also involves solid sales and marketing skills.
Final thoughts
The amount of money a blogger makes per post is highly variable including from month to month. This amount depends on both the total revenue the blog earns and the number of posts published. Revenue is typically related to traffic, which is itself a function of the number of post and the content quality. Monetization also affects income and hence earnings per post.