17 Highest Paid Bloggers (And How Much They Earn)

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Top 17 Highest Paid Bloggers

Are you wondering who the highest paid bloggers are?

Top earning bloggers can make a lot of money! Blogging is a type of business that has an incredibly low start-up cost (as little as $2.95 a month for web hosting and a domain name) but a very high potential for profit.

There are tons of bloggers earning a full-time income from blogging, myself included. But what about the top earning bloggers making millions?

Believe it or not, there are quite a few of those too! Below you’ll find some of the highest paid bloggers, and how much they earn from blogging.

If you haven’t started your own blog yet, sign up for my free Blogging Bootcamp below to learn how to start and grow a profitable blog in just five days:

Or read my guide on how to start a blog for beginners.

Are you wondering how much the highest paid bloggers can make? Read on!

Who Counts as a Blogger?

If you Google “highest paid bloggers” you’ll find articles listing websites like BuzzFeed and Huffington Post as blogs. This is pretty misleading, since these are actually massive content publishing websites with teams of hundreds of writers.

For the purpose of this list of highest paid bloggers, I am only counting individual bloggers, and not huge digital media corporations.

While some of these bloggers may have a small team working for them now, they all started out growing their blogging business on their own.

On this list you’ll find bloggers in a wide variety of niches, including personal finance, food, travel, online business, lifestyle, and health and fitness

Bloggers Who Share Income Reports

This list is incomplete because I am only compiling data from bloggers who publicly share their income online, which is a small fraction of all bloggers.

Bloggers who share income reports publicly also tend to skew towards certain niches, such as personal finance and online business.

There are countless bloggers in niches like fashion, lifestyle, travel, beauty, food, parenting, and more who are earning six or seven figures annually from their blogs. They’re just not sharing their numbers online!

I have a big list of over 200+ blog income reports you can check out if you’d like to get an idea of how much money other bloggers are making.

But just keep in mind that the majority of full-time bloggers (including those earning six and seven figures per year) are NOT posting about it online, so this list is not exhaustive and represents a small portion of top earning bloggers.

Who Pays Bloggers?

One last thing before we jump into this list – how are these bloggers paid?

A lot of people don’t fully understand how bloggers make money. The truth is, most bloggers have several income streams as part of their business.

Most bloggers earn money in a variety of different ways, including:

Displaying ads on their blog
Affiliate marketing
Working with brands on sponsored content
Selling their own products

You can read more here: How Do Bloggers Make Money? Top 5 Ways Explained

Now let’s get into this list of the highest paid bloggers, including how much they earn and how exactly they earn their money blogging.

1. Making Sense of Cents

Michelle from Making Sense of Cents runs one of the most popular personal finance blogs on the Internet. She earns over $1.5 million per year from her blog, with the majority of her income coming from affiliate marketing.

You can read more from Michelle in my interview with her.

She also has a great online course for bloggers called Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing that explains how she earns so much from affiliate marketing.

2. It’s a Lovely Life

Heather and Pete are behind the blog It’s a Lovely Life, which focuses on family travel. They travel the world with their three kids and blog about it.

They earn around $150,000 a month from It’s a Lovely Life, which means they are earning well over a million dollars annually from their blogging business.

3. Just a Girl and Her Blog

Just a Girl and Her Blog is a successful lifestyle blog run by Abby Lawson. She writes about a variety of topics including organizing and decorating.

And she earns over $40,000 a month from her blog, which works out to close to half a million dollars per year, making her a very high earning blogger as well.

4. Busy Budgeter

Rosemarie Groner from Busy Budgeter is a great example of a blogging success story. She went from being a state trooper not earning much money and living in debt, to running one of the world’s top personal finance blog.

She earns over $86,000 a month from her blog, with the majority of her income coming from selling her own products such as a budgeting workbook, affiliate marketing, and lastly display ads and sponsored posts.

5. The Savvy Couple

Kelan and Brittany started The Savvy Couple to help other families organize and simplify their finances, pay off debt, and save extra money.

Now they’ve turned their blog into a highly profitable business earning over $43,000 a month and over half a million dollars per year. Their blog is unique in that they earn most of their income from brand sponsorships.

6. Pinch of Yum

Pinch of Yum is one of the world’s most popular food blogs and it’s not hard to see why with all the delicious and easy to make recipes they publish.

Lindsay and Bjork, the couple behind the blog, are highly paid bloggers earning over $1 million per year from their blog with a huge amount coming from ads, followed by sponsored posts and affiliate marketing.

7. Melyssa Griffin

Melyssa Griffin is a business blogger who writes about topics like marketing and online business and creates course to help online business owners.

She makes over $1.5 million per year from her blog (with single months on her blog bringing in as much as $140,000.) This is mainly from her online course sales, with a smaller percentage coming from affiliate marketing as well.

8. Smart Passive Income

Smart Passive Income is a blog created by Pat Flynn about online business. Pat is a successful affiliate marketing who has earned millions from it.

He earns over $127,000 per month from his blog. While the majority of it comes from affiliate marketing, he also earns money through selling his own products, selling sponsorships for his podcast, and consulting/public speaking.

9. Kara and Nate

Kara and Nate are popular travel bloggers and vloggers who are mainly known for the travel videos they share with their audience on YouTube.

They earn over $600,000 a year from their business ($150,000 quarterly) and this comes from sponsorships on their blog and YouTube channel, affiliate marketing, ads, selling their own products, and running a membership community.

10. Show Me the Yummy

Some other top earning food bloggers are Trevor and Jennifer from Show Me the Yummy. They share yummy recipes on their extremely popular food blog.

And thanks to their blog, they are able to earn $46,000 per month (over half a million annually) from ads, sponsored content, and their own products.

11. Avocadu

Alex and Lauren are the founders of Avocadu, a health and fitness blog for women they were able to grow to six figures within the first year. They also run Create and Go, a website with resources for other bloggers.

Between their two blogs, they bring in over $67,000 per month, with income evenly split between their health and fitness blog and their blogging blog.

12. The Shabby Creek Cottage

Gina started The Shabby Creek Cottage as a place to share recipes, DIY projects, crafts, holiday ideas, and decorating idea, and now she has grown it into a high profitable business earning multiple six figures per year.

Her blog generates $25,000 a month in income that is pretty evenly split between ads, affiliate marketing, and working with brands on sponsored content.

13. Chasing Foxes

Chasing Foxes is a lifestyle blog started by Grace and Silas, a couple who were able to quit their low-paying jobs and travel the world thanks to blogging.

They blog about a very wide variety of topics on their blog, including lifestyle, money, style and beauty, and travel. These two bring in nearly $20,000 a month primarily from ads as well as affiliate marketing on their blog.

14. Dollar Sprout

Jeff and Ben run the extremely successful personal finance blog Dollar Sprout, which they earn $61,000 a month from (over $700,000 per year.)

Their earnings come almost exclusively from affiliate marketing on their blog, with a small amount coming from ads and selling digital products.

15. Ryan Robinson

Ryan Robinson is a top earning blogging in the online business niche. In fact, he is able to earn over half a million per year ($43,000 in a month) from blogging.

He mainly makes money from affiliate marketing web hosting and business software, along with selling his own online course for bloggers.

16. Local Adventurer

Some top earning travel bloggers on this list are Esther and Jacob from Local Adventure. They make over $23,000 per month from their travel blog.

Their multiple six figure blogging income is made possible through affiliate marketing, ads, and working with brands on sponsored content.

17. Start a Mom Blog

Suzi Whitford is the founder of a blog that, as the name suggests, helps other moms to start their own successful blogs! She is a former engineer turned mom blogger turned blogging educator, who mainly earns money through selling her own products such as online courses for bloggers.

You can learn more about Suzi in my interview with her.

She makes close to $25,000 a month on her blog from selling her online courses for bloggers, as well as through affiliate marketing on her blog.

Highest Paid Bloggers Income

These are some of the highest paid bloggers and how much they earn!

If you are interested in starting your own blog and learning how to make money blogging, be sure to sign up for my free Blogging Bootcamp course:

I started blogging as a college student just to earn some extra money on the side, and within just a few months, I was earning an extra $1,000 a month.

Now, I have turned blogging into my full-time career!

For more tips on how to start a money-making blog, be sure to read:

How to Start a Blog for Beginners

Want to get started ASAP?

If you’re ready to start your own blog, here are the steps you can follow to get everything up and running today!

Starting a blog is extremely easy and you can get your site up and running in under an hour following these steps.

You can also sign up for my free Blogging Bootcamp email course that will walk you through the steps of how to start a blog:

Here’s how to start your blog in four simple steps:

Step 1: Choose Your Blogging Niche

What will you write about on your blog?

If you’re blogging just for fun or as a hobby, a defined niche doesn’t matter as much. But if want to make money blogging, you should pick a topic (or niche) to focus on. Make sure to choose something you enjoy writing about.

If you can’t see yourself writing about your chosen topic long-term or don’t feel that excited about it, then pick something else!

Some popular blogging niches are fashion, travel, lifestyle, personal finance, beauty, parenting, health & fitness, and business. Getting even more specific is a good idea; for example, a travel blog about extreme budget travel, or a business blog about how to run your own wedding photography business.

Don’t worry if you can’t decide on a niche right now. Just start by writing about whatever you’re interested in, and you can narrow or change your focus as you go on and see what’s working best for you.

Step 2: Pick a Domain Name

Once you know what you’re going to blog about, it’s time to choose a domain name. Your domain name is your blog’s address on the web.

Here are some tips for choosing a domain name:

Make your name easy to spell and say. Don’t use misspelled words, numbers, or hyphens in your domain name. All of these things will make your name a lot harder for people to remember.
Make sure that the .com of your chosen name is available. Try to avoid endings like .net or .org because they are less common and harder to remember.
Make your name related to your niche. This way people will instantly know what your blog is about. For example, Carly’s Kitchen for a food blog, or Wandering Footsteps for a travel blog.
Add modifying words. If the name you want is not available, consider adding modifying words. For example, I suggested the name Wandering Footsteps above. If that’s not available, you could do My Wandering Footsteps, Our Wandering Footsteps, These Wandering Footsteps, etc.
Use your own name. If you can’t think of a catchy name for your blog, using your own name as your domain name is always a safe bet.
Don’t overthink it. Try not to spend too much time on this step or worry about picking the “perfect” domain name. Chances are, whatever name you pick will grow on you and start to feel like a great fit.

In the next section of this guide, I will show you exactly how to get your domain name for free (as opposed to paying $15 to $20 for it.)

Note: If you can’t decide on a domain name, don’t worry! You will have the option to go ahead and set up your blog and choose a domain name later with Bluehost.

Step 3: Set Up Web Hosting

If you want to make money as a blogger, you will need to have a self-hosted blog. This means that you own all of your content and your blog is totally yours, as opposed to using a hosted platform such as Blogger, Wix, WordPress.com, etc.

Even if you are not a very technical person, setting up web hosting is extremely simple and only takes a few minutes.

First, you will need to choose a web host.

The web hosting company I use and recommend is Bluehost.

Here are a few reasons why I like Bluehost:

They have some of the most affordable web hosting plans out there.
You can get your domain name for free with them (as opposed to paying $15 to $20 with an outside company.)
Their service is reliable and robust, so you will never have to worry about your website going down or loading slowly.
Many of the most successful bloggers I know use Bluehost.
They have great customer support and I have always had my questions answered quickly whenever I needed help.

Bluehost has very generously offered hosting packages starting at just $2.95 a month for readers of Blogging Her Way, along with a FREE domain name.

To get this special pricing, just be sure to use any Bluehost link in this article!

Here’s how to set up web hosting with Bluehost:

1. Click here and then click the “Get Started” button:

2. Select your hosting plan

3. Put in your domain name

Select this option and you can go ahead and set up your blog now, then use the free credit to buy your domain name later.

4. Create your hosting account

5. Choose your package and pay

I recommend the 12-month plan for $2.95 a month, for a total cost of $35.40 for the year. But you can also choose a 24-month or 36-month plan.

6. Congrats, you’re done!

Now you’re all set! Bluehost will automatically install WordPress for you.

What exactly is WordPress? WordPress is the content management platform that your blog will run on. Your WordPress dashboard is where you will go to edit the look of your blog, write blog posts, upload images, etc.

It’s extremely easy to use, even if you’re a total beginner.

Step 4: Design Your Blog

Now it’s time for the fun part – designing your blog!

When you log in to your WordPress dashboard for the first time, you will be prompted to go ahead and choose a theme for your blog:

You can pick one of these default themes if you want, but I don’t recommend it.

For one, the majority of these free default themes are not designed with bloggers in mind. Most are designed for business websites.

Additionally, choosing a premium theme over a default theme will make your blog look more professional right from the start.

The themes I recommend most for new bloggers are Bluchic themes because they are so easy to set up and have great customer support. I am using their “Victoria” theme on my blog right now!

Here are some other great themes I have worked with before:

17th Avenue
Pix & Hue

Once you have decided on and purchased a theme, it’s time to install it!

To install your theme, go to Appearance > Themes in the lefthand menu of the WordPress dashboard, which looks like this:

Then simply upload your theme file and click “Activate.”

Congrats on making it this far! What should you do next?

Write your first blog post! For new bloggers, I recommend getting 5 to 10 solid blog posts up first and working on building your audience.

About the author: Dale is the founder of Blogging Her Way and the creator of several other successful blogs. She's here to help you start and grow a money-making blog and profit from your passions.