Mediavine Review – How I Grew My Blog To $20,000+ Per Month
Like many bloggers, I started out with dreams of creating a money making blog and generating a significant online income.
And, like many other bloggers, I ended up realizing this process takes an insane amount of time…like, multiple years sort of time (unless you're some sort of marketing guru or SEO god).
Now, as I've shared in many of my blogging income reports before, WebMonkey was stuck at around $500 of monthly income for quite a while. I found it incredibly hard to scale my website, and I could never afford to outsource that much work or to pump money back into growth.
All of that changed the second I got approved for Mediavine.
Within a month, I doubled my blog's monthly income from display advertising and surpassed $20,000 per month!
If you want to learn more about why Mediavine is my favorite ad platform, Mediavine's requirements to join their network, and my tips for getting approved, be sure to read this Mediavine review until the end!
Let's get to it!
What Is Mediavine?
Mediavine is a full service ad management platform that aims to “build sustainable businesses for content creators.”
In a nutshell, Mediavine acts as a website's ad manager, allowing the website owner to focus on content. Once you're approved for Mediavine, you simply have to install its script and let their tech team handle the ads on your website. It's as simple as that.
In return for this service, Mediavine splits advertisement revenue with its publishers. This symbiotic relationship is what has enabled Mediavine to partner with thousands of publishers and become one of the largest ad management services around.
Mediavine has also been in the publishing game since 2004, so they understand where bloggers are coming from. Mediavine brands include The Hollywood Gossip, TV Fanatic, Movie Fanatic, and Food Fanatic.
After Food Fanatic launched in 2013, Mediavine opened the doors for other publishers to come along for the ride.
Mediavine Income Report – My Results After 3 Years
I joined Mediavine in December of 2019. In my first few months, I was able to make over $1,000 per month just from Mediavine display ads. And since then, my Mediavine earnings have surpassed $20,000 a month and let me become a full-time blogger.
In fact, in 2022, WebMonkey made $272,000. Mediavine income accounted for approximately $152,000 of this income.
I made a YouTube video that shares more insight on my Mediavine income report and my other blogging streams. But for some context, here are my all-time stats in terms of Mediavine income as of June 2023:
- Sessions: 8.8 million.
- Mediavine Income: $354,800.
- Mediavine RPM: $40.14.
My Mediavine income has been life-changing. I'm now a full-time blogger thanks to the company, and I now get to travel the world, making money with my laptop, blogging along the way.
I also have to say just how impressed I am with Mediavine's performance and how quickly it scaled my blogging income.
When I switched from Monumetric to Mediavine, my RPM increased significantly and I started making over $1,000 per month in Mediavine revenue. It wasn't long before I was making $10k a month, and more recently, I've passed the $20k a month mark quite handily.
My Mediavine RPM is around $35 to $40 depending on the time of year and what pages people read on my site.
It's been an insane experience to watch the ad revenue grow as my blog scales, and honestly, Mediavine has been the best company to work with along the way.
Its publisher support is incredible, and I always get timely responses when I ask questions over email.
Furthermore, Mediavine continues to innovate, adding new ad optimization settings and other tech to help publishers make more money while keeping readers happy.
I have to say, Mediavine changed my life and helped me create a career, and I truly believe this is the best ad network for bloggers (I'm obviously a bit biased, but still!)
I hope this Mediavine income report inspires you to grow your blog if you're not currently a publisher, or to even scale your traffic if you're currently with Mediavine!
Need help finding winning keywords? I suggest using SEMRush for all your SEO needs.
Mediavine Requirements
Mediavine has several requirements in place to ensure only high quality sites are allowed into the program.
However, Mediavine is not just for massive websites, and I believe it is possible for hobby bloggers to get into this ad network with 1-2 years of smart, hard work.
Traffic Requirements
As of June 15th, 2020, Mediavine has new requirements for publishers looking to join this ad platform. Mediavine now requires 50,000 sessions per month to apply, which is double the previous amount.
This is for applications moving forwards, so if you've already applied and are waiting, you're not subject to these rules.
And, if a website changes ownership, the new owner must re-apply. This is a big deal for anyone considering website acquisition, although clean sites shouldn't have a problem getting in again.
According to Mediavine, recent events have accelerated applications to the point where customer support and existing publisher support was slipping, hence the change.
Mediavine already has 9,000+ publishers and turns down 72% of applicants, so you can only imagine how many applicants they get per month.
Mediavine requirements might seem tough, but they're fair: this traffic restriction is in place to view how engaged a website's audience is, as well as monetization potential (Mediavine needs to make money too, after all).
If you're far-off from these session numbers, I definitely suggest taking a look at my Monumetric review to consider another advertising alternative!
Quality Requirements & Site History
Mediavine considers other metrics besides a simple session count.
Here are some other Mediavine requirements publishers should make note of:
- Original & Engaging Content – The Mediavine support team analyzes your top-performing and recent posts to analyze engagement.
- Clean Traffic – Potential publishers submit a Google Analytics PDF which outlines user acquisition and behavior. This is to remove sites with heavy bot traffic or fraudulent practices from consideration.
- Good Standing With Google Adsense – Mediavine doesn't work with Adsense-banned websites.
- Brand Safety – Mediavine has to protect their advertisers. Therefore, if your site contains anything that could tarnish their image, you won't be accepted. Basically, don't have radical, hateful, racist, or just generally terrible info on your site a brand wouldn't want to touch with a 10 foot pole.
Outside of that, having a high level of organic traffic will help your chances of getting in. This is because organic traffic is naturally more engaged than social media traffic. I suspect that having traffic from premium advertising countries (i.e. North America, Europe) will help as well.
Additionally, your site must be compatible with their ads. This won't be an issue for many WordPress websites or normal themes, but wonky sites might have to make some changes.
How To Apply To Mediavine
One of my favorite parts about working with Mediavine was just how simple everything is on the publishing side of things.
Here are the general steps that take place for becoming a Mediavine publisher:
- Submit An Application – Use this form to apply for Mediavine. This takes a few minutes.
- Send A Google Analytics Report – You'll be asked to send over a specific report from your Google Analytics if you pass step one.
- Partner On Google Ad Manager – Submit consent to let Mediavine to manage your ad inventory.
- Wait For Approval – Mediavine's various ad networks will have to approve your site before you're allowed in.
- Select A Launch Date – Choose when your Mediavine ads will go live!
If you partner with another ad network, be sure to read their Terms of Service before making the switch. Many networks require 30 days notice before leaving, and you don't want to jeopardize your earnings by leaving early, even if it is for Mediavine!
This process was incredibly easy to follow. It took roughly a month and a half from application submission to becoming a Mediavine publisher, which isn't too bad!
And let me stress this: Mediavine has amazing publisher support. I receive amazing responses and help whenever I reach out, and they've been such an amazing company to work with for the last few years.
Other Mediavine Features
Another aspect I love about being a Mediavine blogger is just how much the company continues to innovate.
Mediavine is a massive publishing network, and it keeps coming out with new features to help publishers make more money and nurture their audiences. Here are some of my favorite parts about working with Mediavine:
Mediavine Performance – Website Speed & Dashboard Control
If there's one thing you should know about Mediavine, it's that they are obsessed with speed.
In fact, Mediavine has invested into their tech so heavily and focuses on speed to the point that they claim to be 200% faster than their competition.
Mediavine accomplishes this largely by lazy loading their ads, as well as focusing on optimizing ads for desktop and mobile page speed.
It's also easy to set ad preferences, limits, and to adjust spacing through the Mediavine Dashboard.
The ability to tweak your display advertising frequency and to play around with various speed settings is why I like Mediavine more than any other ad platform (plus the added revenue is awesome).
With Adsense, you have to figure this out yourself. For Monumetric, you have to email their support team. With Mediavine, you just have to check some boxes.
Plus. the Mediavine Site Health Check feature lets you constantly monitor your website to ensure you're ‘staying teal:'
Mediavine Dashboard
I'm editing this post as of 2020-05-07 because the new Mediavine dashboard is absolutely unreal. It wouldn't be a fair Mediavine review if I didn't mention how awesome these new changes are.
First and foremost, the new dashboard now provides a breakdown of RPM by page level:
This is incredibly powerful for boosting your blog revenue and figuring out what's working and what isn't.
As you can see in the post above, there's a huge RPM discrepancy between my post on apps that pay you to workout and my post on trivia apps that pay.
This can vary for a few reasons. Engagement, content, and what advertisers are specifically bidding on all have an impact.
But, having more granular data is always better. With the new Mediavine dashboard, you can now prioritize backlinks and social media promotion for the posts that bring home the bacon.
The new dashboard looks more sleek overall, and there's also a handy RPM by country chart as well:
Ultimately, all of these changes to the new dashboard just give publishers more power and control over how they make money. Pretty awesome stuff!
Mediavine Grow.Me
I'm updating this review one more time because Mediavine recently released Grow.me, a new user engagement suite that's already driving some cool results.
In a nutshell, internet privacy standards are changing. Collecting first-party data, which is data publishers (bloggers) provide to advertisers, is going to become more important to help keep RPMs up and serve relevant ads.
Thankfully, Mediavine's Grow.me is starting to solve this issue by collecting first-party data as third-party cookies are phased out.
This has two implications.
Firstly, you now make more money today since third-party cookies are being phased out on IOS. Secondly, it will enable Mediavine publishers to thrive in the future when privacy standards change.
Anyway, Grow.me has other cool features too, including:
- Letting users favorite your site or specific articles
- Social share icons
- A search bar for your site
- Recommended content
I've enabled Grow.me and have seen some promising results so far in Google Analytics:
It's these sorts of innovations that are why I love being a Mediavine publisher. The internet is a volatile place, but the tech advancements at Mediavine seem to be one step ahead of the game.
Plus, these sorts of plugins and changes are better for user experience, blogger revenue, and privacy laws. Win, win, win!
Tips For Getting Into Mediavine
In my opinion, the best way to get into Mediavine is to consistently create quality content that focuses on SEO. This is how I got into Mediavine, and by publishing long-form blog posts that target specific keywords, I also got another niche site into Mediavine in 2021.
That said, getting to 50K sessions might seem daunting, and honestly, it is…it took me two years to figure out how to do it.
The main tips I can give are similar to ones I have outlined in posts like my Road to $500/Month Blogging:
- Learn SEO – Write content that targets keywords and focus on building backlinks.
- Diversify Traffic – Nail SEO to develop organic traffic, and focus on 1-2 other platforms for additional readers. Personally, I outsourced my Pinterest marketing and used Tailwind.
- Reinvest Your Earnings – If you make solid money from platforms like Monumetric, reinvest the money into more content, outsourcing, better hosting, or something that will benefit your blog. Your website is a business, after all.
- Use Data: When researching what to write about, keyword data is your best friend. Personally, I use SEMRush to find all of my post topics and juicy low-competition keywords.
And, lastly, if you really want to get into Mediavine, I suggest dedicating a month to absolutely push your website if you're sitting around 30,000 to 40,000 page views
In October of 2019, I decided to work on WebMonkey every single night. I published a ton of content, promoted my posts on Reddit, grinded out Pinterest, link-dropped on Facebook groups/Quora, and did whatever I could to reach the sessions
After a month of long nights, it finally worked. If you're getting close to Mediavine's requirements, I say go all-in.
Focus on SEO, great content, and one social media source. The rest comes with time!
Note: I got into Mediavine when the requirement was 25K sessions, but I think the same logic above still applies.
Mediavine Pro & Premiere – Two New Tiers For Bloggers
On August 31st, 2022, Mediavine announced it's releasing Mediavine Pro in October 2022. This new tier is for high-performing, full-time publishers and provides some incredible perks like:
- An 85% base revenue share (doesn't include your loyalty bonus)
- A dedicated Pro Support team
- A private Pro Facebook group
- The ability to add other sites you own to Mediavine with just 25,000 sessions
Your site needs to earn at least $100,000 in Mediavine revenue for the last trailing 12 months to qualify for Mediavine Pro.
Thankfully, WebMonkey meets this requirement. Since I've joined Mediavine Pro, I've noticed an immediate spike in earnings. And I've even made $1,000 a day or more from Mediavine ads alone.
In their announcement, Mediavine also released news about Mediavine Premiere, an even higher tier that provides perks like a 90% base revenue share and annual premiere retreat. However, you need to earn at least $500,000 in Mediavine revenue for the trailing 12 months to qualify.
It's programs like Mediavine Pro and Premiere that make this ad company so amazing to work with. And if you can't qualify for Pro yet, don't sweat! You can set your sites on the $100,000 mark and chip away at it with new energy!
Frequently Asked Questions
Mediavine Vs. Adsense – Which Network Is Best?
In my experience, Mediavine pays significantly more than Google Adsense and is a superior advertising network. I also like that it gives publishers more control and pays a high rpm.
I mention the difference between a managed advertising platform and Adsense in my Monumetric review, but I'll break it down here as well.
If you run Google Adsense on your blog, you will only show ads from companies advertising within the Google ad network.
This has implications for your website's RPMs, or how much you earn in advertising revenue per thousand visitors. This is because running with one single ad network is not as competitive.
I mean, just take a look at my all time Adsense earnings from WebMonkey…it took several months to achieve what Mediavine can produce in 15 days or so (granted I have more traffic now, but my RPM used to be around $7 compared to $28 now).
So, why the difference in RPM?
Well, when publishers opt-in for ads from platforms like Adsense, they're only opening the door to a single pool of advertisers. Additionally, platforms like Adsense ram ads onto your site almost 100% of the time, and don't have much of a bidding floor.
In contrast, Mediavine uses a variety of ad exchanges to ensure that the highest paying advertisers across a wider pool of competition are placing their ads on your website.
Plus, Mediavine doesn't use a 100% fill rate. This means a Mediavine publisher's website doesn't always show ads. In fact, Mediavine's fill rate fluctuates between 70% to 99%, but it's never 100%.
This is actually a good thing. A 100% fill-rate (which you basically get with Adsense) means that just about anyone can advertise on your website…there's no price floor advertisers have to cross to compete to show ads on your website.
Mediavine implements a pricing floor to ensure that only premium advertisers who are willing to pay well can show ads on your site.
This increases your average RPM and actually results in a much better user experience than clogging your website with tons of lower paying ads absolutely 100% of the time. It's a win-win!
Mediavine Vs. Monumetric – Which Network Is Best?
It wouldn't be a fair Mediavine review if I didn't compare Mediavine to some of the other ad networks I've partnered with.
Obviously, managed ad networks are a step above platforms like Google Adsense. But, there isn't a cookie-cutter solution for what's best for your website.
Personally, Mediavine has emerged as my favorite partner.
Don't get me wrong, I really like Monumetric. I had a great experience with them, and the earnings from their network helped push WebMonkey to a new level.
However, from a revenue perspective, Mediavine is performing twice as well:
The revenue is stable, and the ads aren't clogging my website. Frankly, I'm kind of blown away by how great Mediavine is. Plus, from an onboarding and support standpoint, Mediavine is unmatched.
Granted, Mediavine has some boosted December RPMs, and I am also more aggressive with my ad layout than I was with Monumetric.
Ultimately, I think publishers should try both ad networks to see what works best for them.
Besides, Monumetric only has a 10,000 monthly page view requirement, and I think they're a great company to work with as long as you explain exactly what you want for your site during onboarding.
How Much Does Mediavine Pay Per 1,000 Views?
How much Mediavine pays per 1,000 views depends on your niche, how long advertisers have to get used to your website, and on-page RPM optimization. My historical average RPM is around $40. I've been with Mediavine for just over three years.
Your blogging niche is one of the main factors that determines Mediavine's RPM. This is because advertisers in certain categories pay more on advertisements each quarter than others.
Seasonality also plays a massive role…just check out my near $60 RPM during Black Friday last year:
Based on my experience and everything I've heard, I think any website should see strong RPMs with Mediavine, but again, your niche matters a lot.
Additionally, you can increase your Mediavine RPM by doing things like:
- Writing longer content.
- Adding images to your articles.
- Embedding ads in videos you place in-article.
- Using a theme that supports high-value ads (like your sidebar).
Is Mediavine Free?
Yes. There is no setup fee to join Mediavine.
How Much Does Mediavine Pay?
How much Mediavine pays depends on your traffic level, RPM, and ad settings. Different blog niches pay more than others, and Mediavine also lets publishers tweak their ad settings to show more or fewer ad units per session.
Personally, I scaled my Mediavine income from $1,000 per month to $26,000 per month at my blog's highest point. But I know some publishers who make even more than me, so the sky's the limit.
Ultimately, Mediavine is regarded as one of the highest paying ad networks for bloggers, and this has been my experience as well.
What Is Mediavine's Revenue Share Agreement?
Publishers start at 75% revenue share and increase by 1% for every year they are a publisher as part of Mediavine's Loyalty Bonus up to a max of 5%. However, sites with more monthly traffic use the following percentages:
- 5 million ad impressions in 30 days – 80% rev share.
- 10 million ad impressions in 30 days – 82.5% rev share.
- 15 million ad impressions in 30 days – 85% rev share.
So, if you have a massive site and stick with Mediavine for 5 years, you'll be at 90%, which is nuts. Even 80-85% is pretty high for the display advertising industry.
Also note that you can get higher revenue share percentages through the new Mediavine Pro tier.
Does Mediavine Have A Referral Program?
Nope! Mediavine states they don't want to skew reviews by offering a referral program.
Isn't Mediavine Just For Food & Travel Bloggers?
Mediavine does cater a lot to these two blogging niches through systems like their Create plugin, but this network is not exclusive to these niches. The main Mediavine niches include:
- DIY
- Health
- Fitness
- Fashion
- Travel
- Crafts
- Education
- Finance
- Lifestyle
- Entertainment
However, Mediavine still accepts and encourages sites outside these niches to apply.
Extra Reading – How To Start A Food Blog.
When Does Mediavine Pay You?
Mediavine pays in net 65. Payments are $USD and publishers choose between PayPal, check, wire transfer, or local bank transfer for deposit.
How Many Pageviews Do I Need For Mediavine?
Since Mediavine requires having 50,000 monthly sessions, you probably need 60,000 to 70,000 monthly pageviews to apply. However, this can vary depending on how well you interlink and how many pages your readers view in a single session on average.
What If I'm Not Exactly At 50K Sessions?
Apply if you're close. If you have a strong traffic profile, engaged audience, and are trending upwards, you might be let in.
What If My Site Is Brand New & Went Viral?
From my understanding, Mediavine doesn't really let brand new websites in. Plus, they want to see traffic diversity and to have confidence that you can maintain 50K monthly sessions or more (and aren't just banking on viral posts once a year).
Note, you won't get kicked out if you drop below 25K monthly sessions. However, I'm not sure what would happen if your blog just died.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to making money by blogging, there are a few approaches (or combinations) people use to start generating revenue…affiliate sales, selling products, sponsored posts, and advertisements.
At WebMonkey, running display ads has always been a core component of my monetization strategy. Whether you love them or hate them, ads are simply a part of the online ecosystem at this point.
Plus, when managed properly, ads should help companies promote their products/services to relevant users without significantly detracting from user experience.
Currently, Mediavine is my absolute favorite managed ad network. I can't say anything bad about them, in truth. I just feel lucky to be a part of the publisher network.
For anyone pushing towards Mediavine, hang in there. As long as you keep things simple and produce the best content out there, you'll get there eventually. And, in the meantime, there are other solid options like Monumetric out there that are a great way to make money online with your website.
Hopefully, this Mediavine review has helped clarify why this company rocks, as well as what to expect from the application and onboarding process.
That's all for now. Catch you guys in the next one!
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