Mediavine Income Report: My First Month as Health Blogger

You’re more accustomed to reading here about your rehabilitation and health. However, another aspect of my work as a physical therapist and scientific writer is also to generate income to be able to make a modest living from this activity!

As a small independent, French-speaking publisher, it’s a real challenge! This year, I managed to join Mediavine (a company that helps website owners earn money by displaying ads on their site).

I’ll explain why I made this choice and how I hope this change will enable me to continue delivering independent and high-quality content on health!

What is Mediavine and why I decided to work with them

I’ve been writing about health on the internet for over 15 years. Because I love it, but also because I find that many articles are not factual enough and don’t rely sufficiently on our scientific knowledge.

One of the reasons that can explain this is related to the economics of websites. Many health websites make money by promoting products, and this influences their opinions or what they say about the benefits of these products.

I’ve been a freelance health writer for major French-speaking websites. I decided to make a living from writing on my own site to have complete editorial freedom, to choose the topics I cover (even if they are not profitable), and to say what I believe is most relevant.

For this, I decided to monetize my site in part through advertising because I don’t earn more or less based on what I write and how I influence my readers.

And precisely, Mediavine, which I’m going to talk to you about today, is an American company that allows me to display advertisements.

My blogging ads income before Mediavine

I created my blog in 2019 and started displaying ads on my site in 2022 when it began to attract hundreds of daily visitors. I initially used Google AdSense, a major advertising network also responsible for ads on YouTube.

I shared my earnings with AdSense here.

In January 2023, I explored various advertising networks and switched from AdSense to Hitopic, a French advertising network I found satisfactory, as discussed here.

By the end of September 2023, I made the move from Hitopic to Mediavine. I will explain why and how in this post.

My Income Report with Adsense in 2022 (January to December): €2,142 (559,833 page views)

My Income Report with Hitopic in 2023 (February to September): €8,915 (1.7 Million page views)

These are my gross earnings, before expenses, social contributions, and income taxes (you can deduct almost 50% for net income).

How I ended up getting accepted by Mediavine

To be able to display ads on your blog through Mediavine, you need to have at least 50,000 sessions per month, which is roughly equivalent to 60,000 monthly page views.

In January 2023, I crossed this threshold, so I applied to join Mediavine. However, my application was initially rejected because my audience is primarily French, and ad revenues from France are lower than those from the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand.

That’s when I decided to translate my site into English and German (as ad revenues are higher for German). I explain in French here how I went about it using AI.

And it worked! I began to attract more and more readers from English-speaking countries. I was finally accepted by Mediavine when my traffic reached around 200,000 sessions per month, and 17% of my audience came from one of the top 5 countries in Mediavine (United States, etc. : tier-1 countries).

This happened just before a significant drop in traffic due to Google algorithm updates! Fortunately, Mediavine still welcomed me. 😉

My earnings in my first month with Mediavine

Now, here’s how much I earned for my first full month with Mediavine.

I’m very satisfied: despite a 50% loss in traffic, and most notably my US traffic, I still earned as much as with my previous ad network!

Plus, I removed certain ads that were affecting the user experience: the full-screen ads that appear when you click a link (interstitial ads) – I disabled them with Mediavine.

So, this month, my advertising revenues amounted to $1,822 for 149,131 page views. Compared to $1,944 and 252,000 page views the previous month with my former ad network.

This is still the gross amount, before expenses, contributions, and taxes. It’s a portion of my income from my site because I also sell ebooks, and I work as a Wikipedia freelance consultant.

Two things to consider as well:

• October is typically a month where advertising revenues are higher than other months, regardless of the ad network used.
• Normally, it takes several weeks for advertisers to get to know our site. Therefore, revenues for the same number of page views or sessions are expected to increase over the weeks (something I haven’t observed yet, as mentioned below).

Another reason why I’m creating this income report: before being accepted by Mediavine, during my market research, I extensively searched for blog income reports from non-US-based bloggers. Primarily from bloggers who wrote in other languages.

And I couldn’t find any! However, it’s interesting to know specifically what income to expect when our audience is primarily French-speaking, for example.

This table precisely shows how much my visitors from different countries contribute to my earnings for the same number of page views (the last column on the far right).

Traffic from readers based in the United States and Canada generates over twice as much revenue as French traffic (for the same number of sessions/ page views).

Another advantage of Mediavine compared to Hitopic or other ad networks is the data we have access to. It is very comprehensive and well-organized. With my previous ad network, I didn’t have access to this level of detail.

My hopes for the future with Mediavine

I am very pleased with my first month at Mediavine. I continue to learn alongside this network about the best practices in this industry, which is quite challenging for someone with a background in physical therapy and no initial knowledge of ads!

My goals for the coming months are to keep writing new articles to increase these earnings and make a long-term living from it. I have little hope of regaining the traffic I lost since the last Google update, but I have confidence that over the long term, my focus on producing high-quality articles will continue to pay off.

I am still writing in three languages, but I don’t translate all of my articles. I am trying to refine my strategy based on the statistics provided by Mediavine.

If you want to learn more about how I monetize my health blog besides using ads, you can read my September 2023 blog income report. And if you’re looking for a better ad network than Google AdSense, my comparison of 39 ad networks for bloggers should interest you!