Blog income is mostly not ads
Display advertising is the income stream new bloggers focus on, and for most successful sites it is the smallest of the three. Affiliate income and owned products routinely dwarf it, because both earn per action rather than per impression.
The calculator separates the three so you can see the proportions. If display ads dominate your projection, that usually indicates untapped potential in the other two rather than a healthy model.
Ad networks and the thresholds
AdSense accepts anyone and pays accordingly — RPMs of two to five are typical. Premium networks pay several times more but impose traffic minimums, commonly around 50,000 monthly sessions for Mediavine and 100,000 for Raptive.
Crossing one of those thresholds is often the single largest revenue jump a blog experiences, frequently a fourfold increase in ad income overnight with no change in traffic. If you are close to a threshold, pushing past it is usually worth more than any other optimisation available.
RPM also varies enormously by niche and audience geography for the same reasons it does on YouTube — advertisers bid on commercial value, and views from high-income markets are worth far more.
The number that actually matters
Total RPM — gross revenue per thousand pageviews — collapses everything into one figure. It is the honest measure of how well your traffic is monetised, and improving it is almost always easier than growing traffic.
A site earning $8 per thousand pageviews at 50,000 views earns the same as one earning $2 at 200,000. The first is a considerably better business, requiring a quarter of the audience and far less content production.
Where the improvements come from
Affiliate income responds most to content type. Comparison, review and "best of" articles convert at multiples of general informational content, because the reader is already deciding what to buy. A small number of well-targeted commercial pages often out-earns hundreds of informational ones.
Owned products have the highest margin and are the least dependent on anyone else's platform, but they require real work to create and support. They also compound: an audience that has bought once buys again.
Being honest about the timeline
The figures here are a projection from numbers you supply, not a forecast. Most blogs take a year or more to reach meaningful traffic, many never do, and the calculation says nothing about whether your traffic will grow.
Costs also grow with scale — hosting, email, tools and eventually contractors. The costs field is included because gross revenue figures quoted in income reports frequently omit them.
Not financial advice
This performs arithmetic on your inputs and does not account for tax. Everything runs in your browser with nothing transmitted.
Frequently Asked Questions
What RPM should I expect?
Two to five with AdSense, around twelve with Mediavine, and roughly twenty with Raptive. Niche and audience geography affect this substantially.
What are the premium ad network thresholds?
Around 50,000 monthly sessions for Mediavine and 100,000 for Raptive. Crossing one is often the largest single revenue jump a blog experiences.
Why is affiliate income usually larger than ads?
Affiliates pay per sale rather than per impression, so commercially focused content earns far more per visitor than display advertising can.
What is the most useful metric to track?
Total RPM — gross revenue per thousand pageviews. Improving it is almost always easier than growing traffic proportionally.
How long does a blog take to earn?
Most take a year or more to reach meaningful traffic and many never do. These figures project from numbers you supply; they do not predict growth.