What Blogging Income Streams Are Thriving in 2025?

Display Advertising

As a revenue stream, display advertising was always the top of the food chain for many bloggers. High RPMs, especially on premium ad networks like Mediavine and Raptive (for sites that qualified at least), would bring in considerable revenue tied to the pageviews you could bring in.

In recent years, we'd average about $25 to $30 RPM on a pageview basis across the whole year (closer to $30-$35 RPM on a sessions basis), and on the best days of the year, could see $30, $40, or $50+ RPMs- more common in late Q4 around the holidays here or there.

In 2021, my best year, I made $92,000 on close to 2.6 million pageviews- or about $35 RPM on average on a pageview basis (hitting about $40 RPM on a session basis).

Unfortunately, display advertising has been on a downward trajectory since then. Part of this is not the fault of display advertising at all- web traffic is down across the board with the rollout of AI and other updates taking away traffic from sites. If your traffic drops by 50%, display revenue likely will drop somewhat proportionally.

But ad spending does appear to be down globally as well, with some estimates suggesting ad rates are down 25% or more from peak. Personally, I'm still holding at around $24 RPM on average across my sites, which is a decrease of 30% from all-time highs, and up about 10% from averages pre-pandemic.

If I could speculate why there was such a surge and drop, it would likely be the markets getting flooded with money post-shutdown (particularly in 2021 and 2022 as the world opened back up), but now businesses are tightening their belts once again in the wake of many economic uncertainties that we still don't have answers for.

As such, I wouldn't be surprised if my 2025 revenue from display advertising barely breaks $30,000- a drop of over 66% from peak. Will it recover? I'm hopeful, but I'm also not holding my breath as overall web traffic continues to decline. Is it still proportionally my highest-earning income stream? Ironically, yes. But I am not expecting that one to last much longer, as other players are making moves (thankfully!).

• Peak display advertising income years: 2021 to 2022
• Peak percentage of income pre-2025: 81.5%
• 2025 share of income: 35% and dropping

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing, as we discuss regularly on this site, is all about selling other people's products for commission.

I've admittedly always thought I could do better with affiliates despite substantial testing over the years, primarily because display advertising revenue covered most of what I needed. But with ad revenue drops, I've put a greater focus on affiliate marketing to cover the difference.

Part of this is on me, but another part of it is because new products in the tech space are coming out to really help supercharge earnings. Stay22 in the travel space, for example, has tons of AI-powered tools that help target the right affiliate product for the right user, and has supercharged my earnings considerably- some months coming close to matching my Mediavine income outright!

In fact, despite traffic drops, now is probably the best time to get more into affiliate marketing in my 17 years as a content creator, simply because so many novel tools exist that take the guesswork and trial-and-error testing out of affiliate marketing outright. Making more on less? Well, that is precisely what we all need right now.

In 2023, my best year, I made just over $24,000 on about 2.7 million pageviews- or just under $8 RPM. In 2025, I'm on track to hit about $25,000 on 1.3 million pageviews if traffic holds- or $19 RPM.

Yes, the gross revenue will be about the same, but making that on 50% fewer page views really shows that the earning potential is climbing. If only these products existed when we had peak traffic!

Still, it is because of this that we expect affiliate marketing to be rising in the coming years, and may even overtake display advertising as our top grosser very soon.

• Peak affiliate marketing income years: 2023
• Peak percentage of income pre-2025: 25%
• 2025 share of income: 32% and rising

Sponsored Campaigns

If you follow This Week in Blogging's weekly newsletter, you've probably seen story after story after story about how the sponsored content field is booming, with each passing year setting new records of money flowing to influencers and creators with branded campaigns.

We're all seeing it, and for many, sponsored content greatly exceeds all other revenue streams because there really is a lot of money out there.

Much like affiliate marketing, I have to admit I never really focused on sponsored content in the past, for the same reason that display advertising was enough of a workhorse for me to not have to care. But, when display revenue began to drop in 2023, I started to put a more substantial effort into my social media work, and also created features on my blogs that could open up for sponsored listings- like a paid event calendar and business directory.

Naturally, as my product offerings began to develop, so came the inquiries, and 2025 is set to be a new record in sponsored content income, even with me being incredibly picky about what campaigns I take on to begin with!

Prior to 2023, when I started to actually care more about this revenue stream, I'd be lucky if I made $1,000 annually. This is, again, entirely on me as I'm incredibly picky on campaigns. But in 2023, my sponsored campaign income jumped to $20,000. In 2025, despite a major traffic drop as noted above, I'm on track to hit about $25,000 if the trend continues. This probably would've been double or even triple if I said yes to everything offered, but I just can't agree to low rates, even if it is still income.

But sponsored campaigns have a few other considerations to keep in mind for bloggers. First, it seems like prized areas with all the money flowing in are social channels, with Instagram Reels and TikTok videos being favored the most by many marketers. My 140k followers on Facebook that often triggers more reach and engagement than my 40k following on Instagram? Many brands just don't seem to care, which is a shame.

• I should also note, calculating out sponsored campaign earnings on an RPM basis is a bit harder sicne many campaigns are also social only. But because a lot of my own sponsored content does involve our website, I'm showing this in the above graph even if it may not be that helpful.

Likewise, we are approaching a trend where many creators are really leaning into sponsored campaigns, so much so that their feeds are constant ad campaigns after ad campaigns without an original thought in the mix. If you're okay with letting your brand become a commercial, I can't really argue- get that money. But there is a reason why I'm also arbitrarily keeping this income stream lower than others who may vastly outearn me, even with a smaller social presence- I don't want to take on too much.

Either way, sponsored campaigns are one of the largest forms of income out there in content creation today, and it looks like it will continue to grow. So don't sleep on partnerships when they are a fit.

• Peak sponsored content income: 2023
• Peak percentage of income pre-2025: 17%
• 2025 share of income: 27% and rising

Social Media Monetization Programs

Of all of the income streams discussed here, social media content monetization is the newest, which, quite frankly, caught us by surprise.

As a means to generate creator loyalty (and, let's be honest, increase output), many social networks like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and even YouTube have rolled out monetization programs in recent years- often solely for the US market.

How the revenue streams work on each individual network varies, but they all seem to coincide around a loose set of rules- accounts of a certain size will make revenue for engagement and views.

In 2024, for example, I had one photo share go viral on Facebook and was shared thousands of times over with several million views in a week, and made me a whopping $660. Not bad for an evening out on the town. Average performance, on the other hand, is often lackluster, with an okay-ish post making just a few dollars if that.

Still, there is a lot to unpack there. If I make 10 posts a day, and each performs decent and makes a couple of dollars, I could make $20+ per day in just a few minutes work scheduling content. Or, if I get lucky, one may blow up and get $20, $50, or $100+ on a single share (this is still rare, for what it is worth). In either case, by making a conscious effort and working on changing posting styles around for engagement, I've increased income from $150-$200 per month to $500+ per month and rising.

Even better? This has also resulted in an engagement uplift on my pages at the same time. More views and engagements mean follower growth, which is helping me break out of stagnant cycles that have plagued my profiles for a while.

I still don't expect to break $7,000 in 2025, partly because I'm starting to find my stride in the second half of the year. But with the upward trajectory of this one, it is something creators who have access to these programs should not overlook. Once you find a groove, payments could be significant. That said, we also have no idea how long these programs will last, so I also won't be surprised if they go away once any given social network feels set with its market share.

But if all that means is we are left with a highly engaged page at the end of the day, well, I've had worse things happen when monetization opportunities dry up.

• Peak social content monetization: 2024
• Peak percentage of income pre-2025: 7.5%
• 2025 share of income: 5% and rising

What We're Targeting Now? Balance

To finish this one, I want to take a moment to talk about an issue that I've personally had to endure in my blogging journey, and that is putting all my eggs in one basket.

For many, many years, I relied on display advertising simply because it was so easy (and worked). I created several websites, generated traffic, and made ad revenue from the views. I was very, very good at it, and at my peak display ad revenue accounted for almost 82% of my overall revenue, whereas affiliate marketing and sponsored content accounted for under 10% each. I treated these like a bonus, and not a dedicated revenue stream to put a lot of effort into.

I thought I was diversifying by having many baskets (multiple blogs), but at the end of the day, one revenue stream still dominated all of them. That is, until traffic and ad revenue started to collapsed and I had to diversify out of necessity. (I will say that some of my newer sites were designed to focus on affiliates from the start, so pivoting into them was a bit easier when I needed to jump on it.)

In this pivot, I decided to set a target of trying to get my income streams to be a bit more in balance with each other- targeting 33% for advertising, 33% for sponsored content, and 33% for affiliate revenue. This, in theory, helps create more stable income streams and mitigates risk a bit more. If one goes down (like display ads), perhaps we could pivot into another (sponsored content).

In 2025, I'm going to come close to this goal, and to date, my income is 27% on sponsored content, 32% on affiliates, and 35% on display advertising. Admittedly, a lot of this fell into my lap simply because display advertising is down just that much (meaning everything else is up by default). But my income on an RPM basis is also on the rise, showing my work is paying off either way, and I'm expecting a 30% YOY increase in 2025 income all the same (still down 33% from our best year ever, but maybe next year!).

In fact, the rise in social media content monetization revenue has now accounted for about 5% of my revenue, and I'm going to take this one further and try and target a 25% split between the four by the end of the year. I'm also launching some products to perhaps even try and target 20% split between five streams to diversify further. You know what is better than one income stream making $30k? Five income streams making $30k, and that's exactly what I'm shooting for.

That certainly sounds a bit more doable than getting display advertising back up to $90k, I have to admit, and that is exactly where the industry appears to be moving all the same.

So embrace multiple income streams. The money is still out there, even if it may not be in the basket you originally intended when starting your blogging journey. The time to pivot is now!