Note: Affiliate links may be used in this post. When you buy through my affiliate links I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Full disclosure here.
How Many Pageviews Do You Need to Make Money Blogging?
How many pageviews do you need to make money blogging?
What amount of traffic do you need to make a full-time income from your blog?
How many pageviews is good for a blog?
These are some common questions that bloggers have. And while there’s no “magic number” answer, I’m going to do my best to answer this question.
Once you have started a blog you might be wondering how long it will take to actually make money blogging. Obviously, you are going to need a good number of people actually reading your blog in order for that to happen.
You probably already know that you aren’t going to become rich from blogging if it’s only you and 3 other people (one of whom is your mom) reading your blog.
But how many pageviews a month is good? Is there a specific threshold of traffic you need to reach in order to start making money from your blog?
Let’s talk about how many pageviews it takes to make money!
How to See Your Blog Traffic
First, you might be wondering how to see how much traffic your blog is getting.
If you have not already set up Google Analytics for your blog, you will want to do that immediately. All you have to do is install a bit of code onto your blog so Google Analytics can start tracking. This guide covers exactly how to do it.
Once you have Google Analytics installed, it will track how many people visit your blog. You will also be able to see other useful data points like which of your blog posts are getting the most traffic, how long people are spending on your blog, how they are finding your blog, and the demographics of your audience.
For traffic, you will see a few metrics, including pageviews, sessions, and users.
Here’s a quick overview of what those measurements actually mean:
Pageviews vs. Sessions vs. Users
Users are how many unique people are visiting your blog. Sessions are how many instances they come to your blog. So if you have 10,000 unique users in a month, you might see that you have 12,000 sessions, because some of those users ended up coming back to your blog once or more during the month.
And finally, pageviews are how many pages on your blog were viewed in one session. So if someone came to your blog and clicked through to five different blog posts, those would register as five pageviews. If your blog had 12,000 sessions in a month, you may have 17,000 pageviews, for example.
All of these traffic metrics are useful to you as a blogger.
The difference between them can be quite confusing, but they are all related. For the purpose of this post, I’ll be talking about pageviews.
So How Many Pageviews Do I Need?
How many pageviews is good for a blog?
Like I said at the beginning, there is no “magic number” of pageviews you need to reach in order to make a full-time income from blogging.
It also really depends on the blog, and how it’s monetized. I’ll be going through each of the most common monetization methods for bloggers below.
Some bloggers make a full-time income with less than 20,000 pageviews a month, while other bloggers make less than $1,000 a month with 200,000 monthly pageviews. It really depends on many different factors.
Here’s a look at some of the factors at play:
More Pageviews = More Ad Revenue
If you want to make money from displaying ads on your blog, then more traffic directly correlates with higher earnings, plain and simple.
Most ad networks for bloggers pay based on RPM, which is revenue per 1,000 pageviews. So the more traffic you get, the more you will earn.
RPM depends on a lot of factors, including your blog niche, the time of year, the ad network you’re with, the geographic region where most of your traffic comes from, the length of your blog posts, and more.
But in general it can be anywhere from $5 to $50 per 1,000 pageviews.
So if you are getting 100,000 pageviews per month, you could earn anywhere from $500 to $5,000 a month just from display ads on your blog.
More Pageviews = More Impressions on Affiliate Links
Another common way to make money is affiliate marketing.
This is where you use affiliate links in your blog posts, and earn a commission if someone makes a purchase after clicking on your link.
Having more traffic CAN lead to more affiliate sales, but it’s not a guarantee.
The reason for this comes down to user intent. If most of your popular blog posts are informational, then people reading them aren’t likely to be in a mindset to make a purchase, and you won’t see as many affiliate sales.
But if you write blog posts targeting people who already have buying intent (such as a gift guide or a comparison between two products) then you are more likely to make affiliate sales, because your reader is ready to make a purchase.
So this is why I say that more pageviews leads to more impressions on your affiliate links, but not necessarily more sales. This is why it’s important that you are targeting buyer intent when writing blog posts with affiliate links.
On Blogging Her Way, I make thousands of dollars per month from affiliate marketing with less than 15,000 pageviews, because I have a number of blog posts that are highly targeted for making affiliate conversions.
More Pageviews = Easier to Grow Your Email List
Starting an email list is a great way to make money as a blogger.
With an email list, you can build a deeper relationship with your audience. If you don’t have an email list, someone might find your blog, read a few posts, and then forget about it and never come back again.
But with an email list, you can keep them in your orbit and direct them back to your blog, along with using your email list to make sales. You can use your email list to sell your own digital products, or to make affiliate sales.
And the more traffic you get to your blog, the more potential subscribers you have. It’s also important to optimize for email list signups: create a free opt-in incentive to offer subscribers to entice them to join your email list, and make sure you have multiple opt-in forms in highly visible places on your blog.
More Pageviews = Sponsored Post Opportunities
Brands are more likely to work with you on sponsored posts if you have a good amount of traffic, and the more you have, the more you can charge.
A good baseline to aim for is 10,000 pageviews per month before you start working with brands on sponsored posts. At this level, you can reasonably charge a couple hundred dollars for a sponsored post. I know many bloggers getting 100,000 pageviews a month who charge $1,000+ for a single blog post.
With sponsored posts, it also helps if you have an audience on social media. Many brands are interested in working with influencers on platforms like Instagram, rather than “just” bloggers. This is why I personally don’t do as many sponsored posts, and focus on solely blog-related income streams instead.
However, if you do have an audience on a platform such as Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube in addition to your blog, this is something that might interest you.
More Pageviews = More Leads for Services
If you offer a service on your blog (such as freelance writing, graphic design, being a virtual assistant, or social media management) then having more traffic can help you can get more leads and potential clients.
You can use your blog as a portfolio to showcase your work, and you can have a prominent page on your blog that outlines your service offerings.
Let’s say you have a blog about digital marketing, and you offer freelance marketing services. People who find your blog may be interested in booking your service, and you can cast a wider net with more pageviews.
Just Tell Me a Number!
Now that I’ve discussed how the amount of traffic you get can affect different blogging income streams, you may still just want a definite number.
In that case, I would say the number to aim for is 50,000 pageviews per month.
This is an amount of traffic that can almost always generate a full-time income for your blog if you have multiple income streams in place.
It’s the amount of traffic that will allow you to apply for the premium ad network Mediavine, and you can also start making real money from affiliate marketing, sponsored blog posts, and other income streams like selling digital products.
Of course, as I’ve said multiple times, there’s no hard and fast rule though. I personally make a full-time income from Blogging Her Way, and yet my traffic is actually nowhere near 50,000 pageviews per month.
Meanwhile, I have had blogs in other niches that get 50,000 to 70,000 pageviews a month, and I earned less from them than I do with Blogging Her Way.
So it really does depend and can vary from blog to blog!
But if you want a goal to aim for, 50,000 pageviews a month is a good one.
This is something that is achievable within one or two years if you have a solid strategy in place and you know how to build your traffic.
Pageview Goals for New Bloggers
If you’re a new blogger, I would first aim for 10,000 pageviews a month.
This is a great goal to reach for in your first year of blogging. Once you reach this number, you can start to make a consistent income from blogging.
With 10,000 pageviews, you can apply to a better ad network for bloggers and start making $100 to $300 a month from ads on your blog.
You can also expect to make some affiliate sales, make sales of your own digital products, and have enough traffic to grow your email list.
How Much Traffic Do You Need to Make Money Blogging?
Hopefully this post helped you understand how many pageviews you need to make money from blogging, especially to earn a full-time income.
For more tips on how to make money blogging, you may want to read…