Mediavine Review: How I Earn $30K+ in Ad Revenue Annually

Reading Time: 10 minutes

Updated: 12/6/2021 | Mediavine Review

Disclaimer: This review is my experience with Mediavine and their ad management services. All opinions are my own and 100% honest.

I decided to publish my Mediavine review after using it for a full year. I joined in March 2018 and immediately began seeing results.

I switched over from Google Adsense and the difference was like night and day.

Update: In 2019 (when this post was published) I was making around $20,000 annually in ad income through Mediavine. Fast forward to 2021, I am now earning $32,000+ annually! 

I currently make $3,200+ a month from ad revenue thanks to Mediavine. The number is only going to continue to increase as I grow my blog.

But let’s get to the real reason why you’re here. You’re probably reading my Mediavine review because you’ve been deciding if you want to give them a try. Read on to find out whether you should join Mediavine…or not!

Well let me convince you with an image. Here’s a photo I took while earning passive income watching a beach sunset in Phuket, Thailand!

Is it something you want too? Well, read on.

What is Mediavine?

Mediavine.com is an ad management company that pays blog publishers for displaying ads on their website. What this means is that they auction off your site to advertisers and the highest bidder with the best type of ads for your site wins.

Display ads are a great way for sites to earn passive income.

Mediavine currently has over 5,200 publishers in their network and this number is constantly growing.

Mediavine was co-founded in 2004 by Eric Hochberger, Stephen Marsi, Amber Bracegirdle and Matt Richenthal. Their headquarters are based in Florida, U.S.

Mediavine takes care of programmatic display advertising on people’s websites and blogs. They do this exclusively, which means that once you’ve signed up with Mediavine, you will need to remove all your current ads (usually Google AdSense ads) from your site.

This is actually a great thing because it means that as a Mediavine publisher, you can focus on publishing good content while they manage ad placements for your blog.

Mediavine founders have also been Internet publishers since 2004. They own and operate several high traffic websites such as The Hollywood Gossip, Food Fanatic and other personal blogs run by their staff members.

Finally, Mediavine is officially a Google Certified Publishing Partner. That’s kind of a big deal because there aren’t many companies out there that can claim this.

To become a Google Certified Publishing Partner, an advertising company will have to meet strict qualification standards to prove that they are specialists in Google’s ad products.

There’s no doubt that Mediavine is on top of their game when it comes to programmatic display advertising. This is demonstrated through their high customer satisfaction with ad viewability rates and a focus on mobile-first and video technology.

How Does Mediavine Work?

Mediavine caters to two audiences; the Advertiser and the Publisher (or bloggers).

Advertisers partner with Mediavine so they can get their product or service to a certain segment of the market. Advertisers pay Mediavine to advertise on their behalf on their network of publishers.

Mediavine then works with content publishers (bloggers) by displaying these ads on their websites in return for shared revenue.

As of now, publishers receive 75% of advertiser payment and Mediavine keeps 25%. Sounds fair since they’re doing most of the heavy lifting and I am just reaping passive income.

How to Qualify for Mediavine?

Mediavine has minimal requirements as most ad management agencies do.

Mediavine requires a minimum of 50,000 sessions per month to be accepted into their ad management program. It was previously a 25,000 session requirement. 

If that requirement is met, publishers can fill in an application form and wait up to 4 weeks for approval.

The reason they use sessions as a metric instead of page views because sessions are more valuable and an indication of higher quality publishing than a single click. Pages using slideshows can easily increase their page clicks, but it does not always mean those clicks bring any value to advertisers.

The main reason behind these requirements is that advertisers need to be assured that the traffic websites are sending to them via Mediavine is engaged, high-quality, and worth bidding on.

Mediavine chooses to high-value sessions over page views because it’s an accurate snapshot of how visitors are interacting with your site.

You can determine your sessions in Google Analytics.

How Much Can Mediavine Publishers Make?

At the time of this review a Mediavine publisher earns 75% of what the advertisers are willing to pay. That means Mediavine takes the other 25%.

A publisher’s earnings percentage can increase based on your volume of traffic. Thus the number of times ads will appear on your site, known as ad impressions.

Here are some examples of how that works:

• If your site gets at least 5 million ad impressions over a 30 day period, you will now earn 80% of net proceeds paid by advertisers.
• If your site gets at least 15 million ad impressions over a 30 day period, you will receive up to 85% of net proceeds paid by advertisers.

Just keep in mind the revenue is based more on ad impressions, so if your site is properly optimized to increase ad impressions, you could still see a boost in income even without the need to boost your traffic.

The dashboard Mediavine provides is very helpful in showing you how to improve your ad impressions.

Benefits of Using Mediavine

There are so many benefits to using Mediavine. I’ll go over my top reasons why I am sticking to Mediavine as my ad management company.

#1 Increased Ad Revenue. Compared to Google Adsense, Ezoic, etc., Mediavine pays way more than other ad management companies. I made 120% more when I switched from Adsense to Mediavine and this has changed my quality of life!

#2 Real Life Expertise. The Mediavine team members actually have their own blogs, so they do a lot of testing before rolling out suggestions to their publishers.

#3 Mediavine Rewards High-Quality Content. My content creation has changed based on my membership with Mediavine.

#4 The Opportunity to Work From Home. I could work from home, but I chose not to. I still have a full-time job because I love learning and making a difference in the world.

#5 MVP Loyalty Bonus. While Mediavine doesn’t have a referral program, they do reward current publishers for sticking around. For every year that you are a Mediavine publisher, your revenue share increases by 1% (up to 5%) as our way of thanking you for being one of their valued publishers.

#6 Excellent Tech Support and Customer Service. If you’re not a web developer, Mediavine’s tech team will implement changes to your website. They will also work with you to install Mediavine and other changes to help you increase your RPM.

They’re also very responsive. I typically get a response within 24 hours of submitting a request.

#7 Doesn’t Negatively Impact Your SEO. As you may or may not know, ads can definitely slow your site down and negatively impact your rankings in Google. This can also lead to your visitors leaving your site earlier because of a page loading slowly. The great thing with Mediavine is they have tested technology to ensure their ads comply with SEO & Ad Placement best practices. They have done a lot of testing on their own blogs to ensure their ads speed up your site and not slow it down.

#8 Customizable Ad Frequency. You get total control over how often you want ads to show up on your blog. More ads = more money, but if aesthetics are important, then, by all means, change it up so that your blog represents who you are as a blogger.

#9 Lazy load ads. This is a biggie for me. Mediavine only loads 2-3 ads on site load which keeps my site speed optimum. Instead ads load as the reader continues down your page this means there is little to no impact on site speed.

#10 Know How Much Your Earn Daily. By 10AM EST the next day, you should be able to see your daily earnings on your dashboard. I really appreciate that blog stats are updated daily.

#11 Facebook Group Support. Once you’ve been accepted as a Mediavine publisher, you can join their Facebook group. The group is packed with information that is very helpful in terms of understanding and improving your blog performance.

Here are my current ad frequencies. Feel free to use my settings!

Cons of Using Mediavine

#1 Ads Everywhere! Ads don’t necessarily make your blog look attractive, but it’s a great way to earn money. It would behoove you to inform your readers that the ads are how your blog makes money and how you can continue to offer FREE content. Being transparent will help your audience understand how to support your blog.

#2 Minimum session requirements. I remember waiting an excruciating 3 months before I could apply to their ad network. I needed a minimum of 25,000 sessions and was pumping out quality content to get there.

#3 Other Ads are Not Allowed on Site. Mediavine prohibits other ads on your site as it interferes with the ad programs. This exclusivity also allows them to offer you the best ad placements.

#4 Net65 Payments. Mediavine’s terms are net65 because they need to get paid before paying their publishers. Once you’ve waited the initial 65 days, you will get paid every 15th of the month.

Payments will also be direct deposited into a bank account of your choosing.

How to Increase RPM With Mediavine?

Increased RPM is important because high RPMs mean more money. I did these 8 simple things to increase RPM on my blog.

#1 Reach for the Teal Stars

Teals stars to be exact. Mediavine encourages you to optimize your posts for their ads. The more stars you attain, the higher your RPM will be.

Work for teal by clicking on the links below that read “how do I improve it?” These guides will give you helpful tips on how to get to and stay teal.

#2 Increase Paragraph Spacing

Increased paragraph spacing means more scrolling time when visitors come to your page. Paragraph spacing also makes it easier to read content on mobile.

This, in turn, increases mobile-friendliness, which is good for SEO purposes.

#3 Increase Font Size

I increased my font size to 18px and I saw my RPM increase by 20%. Font size impacts SEO and is measured by Google in terms of mobile-friendliness for websites.

Google recommends that your font size in the body of your posts fall between 16px-18px.

You can change your font size in your child theme OR Customize CSS settings. If this does not make sense to you, please contact Mediavine’s support team to make the changes.

Below is the CSS settings I use on my blog posts.

body {
line-height: 1.625;
font-size: 18px;
font-weight: normal;
background: #fff;
color: #333;
font-family: “Lato”, sans-serif;
-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
-moz-osx-font-smoothing: grayscale;
}

#4 Focus on Long Form Content

Long form content is king! The longer and more detailed your content is, the better your reader experience will be.

Make sure that your content is also relevant. Never make your content long and drawn out for the sake of doing so. You should also end your posts with a call to action (CTA).

A call to action encourages readers to take action by signing-up for a program, email list, or buying something you’re selling.

I have a retail store on my site, but it is not my CTA.

#5 Add Long Vertical Images

Vertical images will make you posts longer and increase RPM.

Long images will cause readers to stroll further down your post and you know what that means…$$$!

#6 Breakup Your Paragraphs

Paragraphs not only make your online content digestible, it also makes it easier to read on mobile. Mediavine recommends that your paragraphs fall between 1-2 sentences per paragraph.

Anything longer than two sentences within a paragraph is too much. Remember that fewer sentences in a paragraph = more money!

#7 Revamp Old Content

Mediavine’s dashboard will indicate which posts are most visited. Check and update these posts often to keep your readers happy and content relevant.

Get rid of old content that doesn’t drive traffic. Not only will this increase site speed, but it will also prevent your outdated content from cannibalizing itself.

#8 Focus on SEO

We can create all the content we want on our blogs, but if you don’t work on your SEO, your content will go unnoticed.

And this makes me a sad panda. ????

When creating new content, make sure you’re working to get backlinks and optimizing posts onsite and offsite. Share it on appropriate social media platforms and get high-quality backlinks from other outlets and blogs.

At Schimiggy Reviews, we LOVE using Yoast for onsite SEO. It’s a free program that helps get your content found.

Is Mediavine Worth It?

If this post did not convey it enough, I am probably not doing my job!

Yes, I totally recommend Mediavine. It’s a great ad management program that allows bloggers to make some serious passive income.

It has transformed how I blog in terms of content creation and more.

When you reach 25,000 sessions, apply here.

And if you have any questions or need help, feel free to reach out to me. I’m always down to help out a fellow blogger!

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Head over here to read other Mediavine reviews.

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