This is what I made in a year after being accepted into Mediavine.

If you’re new here and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical and magical powers of the Internet, welcome! I assume you probably came from Google, like many of my other visitors, but this website is where I keep my digital archive. I started the site as a portfolio for my author work in 2020, but then began a blog in the beginning of 2021.

Throughout the years my blog has seriously changed. I began it as a little digital diary, but then I began opening up and doing book and movie reviews. I was watching and reading so much during the pandemic that I wanted to document what I was coming across throughout this short amount of time.

I’ve always been a big reader, and worked as a professional film critic at an online outlet, but I wanted my own space and site to discuss what I was watching/reading/seeing. I was coming across so much that I was slowly but surely starting to forget, even if I loved a book or movie, and I wanted to capture the spirit of my thoughts in writing.

I expanded later on into travel dairies and capsules to keep track of all of the adventures I’ve been on throughout the years, then theater and travel reviews. Occasionally I do a career post where I chat about my life as a writer, journalist, and freelancer, which has opened up new discussions with my beloved blog audience.

In the beginning, I never thought about monetizing this blog. I was actually reading another blogger’s post about Mediavine and sites that run ads, and how for creators, this is actually a more stable form of income (or, at least, stable until the algorithm overlords change everything up).

That had me apply for Google Adsense. I was on Adsense for about six months before I realized I had the traffic threshold for a more premium platform like Mediavine. I was accepted into Mediavine in mid-January 2024, when I was on a three week trip to visit relatives in Malaysia, and ever since then it’s been a wild journey.

This post is dedicated to how much I made while on Mediavine for a year! Spoiler: it’s been a slight game changer, but not a full-time income as an American.

It was a year full of ups and downs when it came to website traffic.

As I mentioned before, it was quite the journey of getting here. An ironic aspect of my blog is that when the September HCU update happened, which devastated so many other bloggers, I actually found my traffic doubling and tripling. It was thanks to the Google updates that my traffic met the threshold for platforms like Mediavine.

Through this, though, I learned how quickly it could all come down. For a few months I was riding the high and getting over 150,000 hits per month on this site. I was so incredibly shocked at what I was seeing, and I began to think this could be a full-time income.

But, eventually, everything must come down, and after the March and April updates in 2024 I found myself slowly declining. Nowadays I still get higher traffic than what I got in previous years, before the HCU update, but it still isn’t the same amount I was getting when I was first on Mediavine.

That hasn’t discouraged me though. I know I don’t want to rely fully on this site for an income, so I’m working on it as a look for other income sources and a full-time job.

I began to focus more on the content that I was more interested in.

When I got onto Mediavine, and saw how my earnings were exponentially growing, I saw the potential of this blog. For example, when the second Dune movie came out, my blog post for the first Dune movie blew up, and I made almost $1,000 in the span of a few weeks with the help of that traction and foot traffic to my site.

I began a spreadsheet of all of the blog posts I’ve put out into the world, and I’ve been slowly but surely tracking all of these posts and their profitability. I do this out of curiosity, and while I still do watch television shows and movies I want to watch, I might not write reviews for all of them.

That saves me more time and frees up my attention to do other things I enjoy and work for, such as my creative writing career. A lot of my blog earnings go and support my writing endeavors, which means any profit tends to get recycled back into not only maintenance for this site, but submission fees for trying to get my next book out there in the world.

A serious warning about this is that it will suck the joy out of blogging for some people, and you’ll begin chasing after the money rather than the things you enjoyed. I set hard boundaries for myself when it comes to this week, so if I want to watch a random movie five other people have seen and don’t want to review it, that’s fine. I’m happy with that, but I can see how it might consume other people.

Blogging is seriously a long term game if you’re looking at it as a business.

This is more obvious, but you’re not going to make millions off of blogging immediately. It took me three years to start earning money somewhat seriously on this blog, and it was because I got onto a platform like Mediavine.

Before, when I was on Google Adsense, I was literally making pennies a day. I was getting excited if I ever made more than a dollar in one night, and it was something that brought me so much joy.

It still brings me joy to see any number. I never expected any of this, nor anyone to read my posts. I love getting emails and DMs on social media from my readers asking questions, telling me they loved the post, or when they offer some constructive feedback.

I have also gotten hate messages, but that’s fine! That means I’m reaching someone out there, and I try not to take those messages too seriously.

These are my yearly analytics for revenue, RPM, and sessions as a lifestyle blog.

In 2024, when I started on Mediavine for my first year, I had 889,217 sessions on my advertisements. This is paired with a traffic of over one million unique visitors for the year, which, as I mentioned before, was so incredibly shocking for me to see. I’m truly grateful for everyone who comes to visit my site.

My average RPM, which is revenue per mile (how much I make per one thousand impressions) for the year of 2024 was $10.53. This is a bit of a lower RPM, but it makes sense because of my niches and focus as a lifestyle blogger, as well as the fact that only 40% of my traffic is usually from the United States.

The one pitfall of focusing on international and BIPOC cinema is that I draw in a larger global audience, and RPM is largely influenced by that. The US audience tends to generate a larger RPM, while India and the Philippines are lower. I don’t mind the lower RPM because I prefer to not lose my authenticity for the sake of money.

All of this said, I made $9,367.91 in 2024 off of Mediavine ads. As I mentioned before: I am incredibly grateful for this, and I never expected anything. All of this is used to help pay for my writing expenses, and it helped with my student loans as well.

In 2025 I’m excited to see where things go, and I’m hopeful for the future. I know things might seem a little volatile, but this little blog has been my solace, and I’ve built a lovely little community through it.

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