---
title: "The Cited #3: What Each of Your Visits Earns"
url: https://hostmy.blog/what-each-visit-earns/
date: 2026-10-06
modified: 2026-10-06
lang: en
author: "Aditya Sharma"
description: "What a blog earns from each visit, why it helps to know whether visits or earnings per visit moved, five headlines worth your minute, and a free 15-second check on whether AI can read your blog."
categories:
  - "The Cited"
word_count: 1489
---

# The Cited #3: What Each of Your Visits Earns

Open the ad dashboard you already check, whether that is Mediavine, Raptive, AdSense or another ad partner. Most ad dashboards show ad earnings per 1,000 pageviews, often called page RPM, right next to your visits. Some show it per 1,000 sessions instead, so check which one yours uses. Find last month’s pageviews, last month’s RPM and your total income for the month. It takes about a minute.

Write those numbers down, and the same ones from a year ago if you can find them. Keep them open, because we are about to put a real set next to yours.

**Most of us watch our visits. Far fewer of us watch what each visit earns.**

Welcome to issue three of The Cited. In the last issue, [Where Your Readers Really Come From](https://hostmy.blog/where-your-readers-really-come-from/), we looked at where readers come from, using one big food blog’s own numbers. Thank you for reading it.

The Cited is a short note from Host My Blog for people who run a blog, food or otherwise. Each issue has one number, the news worth your minute, and one small thing about whether AI can read your blog. This page is the longer version, with the charts and every source. You can also [get it in your inbox](https://hostmy.blog/the-cited/).

This time: what a blog earns from each visit, and why it helps to know which moved, visits or earnings per visit. Then five headlines worth your minute, and a quick way to see whether AI can read your blog.

## One number to hold onto

**$43 was the average earned per 1,000 pageviews, from all income sources combined, by bloggers with ten or more years behind them, against $53 for those with five to ten years.**

That comes from [Eb Gargano’s Blogging Income Survey 2025](https://www.productiveblogging.com/how-much-do-bloggers-earn-2025/), which collected answers from 187 bloggers between 24 January and 21 April 2025. [The Blog Herald wrote it up](https://blogherald.com/interviews-commentary/n-blogger-income-rpm-drop-after-10-years/) on 7 September 2026. The respondents came mostly from Gargano’s own email list, course students and Facebook group, so it is a picture and not a promise for yours. The answers are self-reported. The figure counts everything a blog earns (ads, affiliate links, sponsored posts, products and services), not only ads, so do not hold it up against your ad dashboard on its own.

![Bar chart of average revenue per 1,000 pageviews from all income sources, by years of blogging. Bloggers with 10 or more years earned 43 dollars and 41 cents. Bloggers with 5 to 10 years earned 52 dollars and 59 cents.](https://hostmy.blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/cited-3-what-1000-pageviews-earned.svg)Source: Eb Gargano, Blogging Income Survey 2025. Average revenue per 1,000 pageviews from all income sources, 187 bloggers (self-reported) surveyed 24 January to 21 April 2025.

Lower earnings per visit sounds like bad news, and for the ten-year veterans it came with better news. They still earned more overall, about $5,625 a month against about $2,621, because their blogs had around 2.6 times the pageviews, 129,562 a month against 49,841.

The three numbers fit together. 49,841 pageviews at $52.59 per 1,000 comes to about $2,621 a month. 129,562 pageviews at $43.41 per 1,000 comes to about $5,624. That multiplication is mine, from the survey’s figures, and it lands within a dollar of what the survey reports.

![Three small bar charts comparing bloggers with 10 or more years and 5 to 10 years. Pageviews a month: 129,562 against 49,841. Earned per 1,000 pageviews: 43 dollars 41 against 52 dollars 59. Income a month: 5,625 dollars against 2,621 dollars.](https://hostmy.blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/cited-3-more-visits-less-per-visit.svg)Source: Eb Gargano, Blogging Income Survey 2025. Group averages, 187 bloggers in total. Each panel has its own scale.

So income is two numbers multiplied together, and the total can hide which one moved. Here is the question worth holding: is your income moving because of how many people visit, or because of what each visit is worth?

## It is not only you

Both can move at once. Amanda Williams has run the travel blog A Dangerous Business for about fifteen years. [She wrote](https://www.dangerous-business.com/how-google-and-ai-are-killing-travel-blogs-like-mine/) that her Google visits fell from more than 1.3 million in 2023 to around 870,000 in 2024. Her overall traffic fell roughly 40% that year, and her ad income was down 34% year on year.

If both have slipped on your blog, you are in good company.

Ad rates are not falling everywhere. The ad data firm DataBeat reported US display ad rates up 26.9% in June 2026 against June 2025. That comes from its own network of partners, a vendor’s data and not a census of the US market, so read it as a direction and not your number. ([ppc.land, 4 Aug 2026](https://ppc.land/us-programmatic-cpms-gain-51-year-over-year-databeat-finds/))

The survey author’s own reading is that ads pay the lowest rate of the ways a blog can earn, and the long-running blogs in her survey earn mostly from display ads. Display ads came out at $33.80 per 1,000 pageviews, the lowest of the six ways the survey asked about and below the blended $43 above. Digital products came out highest at $283.64. I cannot tell from here how many of the 187 bloggers earn from each, so I would not read it as advice to change what you sell.

![Bar chart of average revenue per 1,000 pageviews by income method. Digital products 283 dollars 64, physical products 91 dollars 69, sponsored posts 51 dollars 74, affiliates 40 dollars 24, services 34 dollars 36, display ads 33 dollars 80, the lowest.](https://hostmy.blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/cited-3-what-each-way-of-earning-pays.svg)Source: Eb Gargano, Blogging Income Survey 2025. Average revenue per 1,000 pageviews by income method, 187 bloggers.

## Why is this interesting?

Because most of us watch visits and nothing else.

Income is visits multiplied by what each visit earns. If visits fell, the work is getting found again, since fewer people are arriving. If earnings per visit fell, more visits alone will not fix it. Your ad dashboard usually shows ad earnings per 1,000 pageviews right next to visits, so watch that beside your traffic, and your total monthly income beside both.

That is why this issue opened with a minute in your dashboard. Visits and earnings per visit, this month against the same month last year, will tell you which one moved.

## Worth knowing this week

Five headlines, each linked to the original, with a line or two so you can decide in a minute whether to read on.

**[Google’s spam update may have had a second wave around 30 September](https://www.seroundtable.com/google-september-2026-spam-update-two-42209.html)**
Google has not confirmed a second phase, and said the update could take up to two weeks. Search Engine Roundtable puts the first impact on 25 to 27 September and a second surge on 30 September and 1 October, going by tracking tools and what site owners report. If your traffic moved, note the date and leave your posts alone. *Search Engine Roundtable, 1 Oct*

**[Google’s AI payment pilot pays some small sites under 0.1% of their ad revenue](https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ai-contribution-pilot-01-percent-42188.html)**
The Information reports about 100 publishers are in the pilot. Amounts vary widely: one publisher earns more than $1 million a year, while smaller sites have earned under $1,000 over several months. Some participants say they do not know how Google works out the amount. *Search Engine Roundtable, 30 Sept, citing The Information*

**[Google is showing AI answers for more brand name searches](https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ai-overviews-large-brand-names-42195.html)**
One researcher checked about 100 big brands and found an AI answer for roughly 93% of them. News sites were left out, and so was Google’s own brand. DemandSphere later said AI answers on brand searches tripled in September. Big brands only, so it is worth running the blog name search from issue one again. *Search Engine Roundtable, 30 Sept*

**[Google now says to fact-check AI-written content by hand before you publish it](https://www.seroundtable.com/google-updates-ai-content-guidelines-factcheck-review-42217.html)**
Its guidance on AI content now calls that check critical. [Search Engine Journal](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-pulse-google-ai-content-fact-check-gemini-utm-tags/591787/) adds that the check now covers titles, meta descriptions, structured data and image alt text. Worth a thought if you use AI anywhere in your drafts. *Search Engine Roundtable, 1 Oct*

**[Gemini is adding tracking tags to the links in its answers](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-pulse-google-ai-content-fact-check-gemini-utm-tags/591787/)**
Visits from Gemini can then show up as their own source in your stats instead of hiding under direct. A Reddit user spotted the tags, and Google’s John Mueller said he had seen them too. Google has not documented it yet. *Search Engine Journal, 3 Oct*

## Now the other half. Is your site AI ready?

Everything above is about people finding you and what they earn you. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google’s crawlers read blogs too, and whether they can read yours is a separate question from whether your posts rank.

### Find out in about 15 seconds

We built a free audit tool for it, the [AI Readiness Checker](https://hostmy.blog/plugins/rankready/ai-readiness-checker/). It takes about 15 seconds, needs no account, and reads your site the way ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google’s crawlers do.

![The AI Readiness Checker page on hostmy.blog. The headline asks whether an AI agent can actually read your site, with a box to enter a site address and a Run the check button. A dark scorecard beside it lists the layers Reach, Read, Understand and Quote, and shows 41 signals.](https://hostmy.blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/cited-2-ai-readiness-checker.png)The free AI Readiness Checker at hostmy.blog. Screenshot taken 28 September 2026.

### And if it finds gaps

You can fix them with [RankReady](https://wordpress.org/plugins/rankready-ai-llm-seo/), our free WordPress plugin. Install it if you like. It works alongside Yoast, Rank Math and AIOSEO and will not fight them. The [documentation](https://hostmy.blog/docs/rankready/) walks through each setting.

![The RankReady 1.3.0 admin screen in WordPress, showing the plugin header with version 1.3.0 and the five main tabs: Dashboard, AI Visibility, AI Content, Insights and Settings.](https://hostmy.blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/rankready-130-tabs-hd.png)RankReady 1.3.0 running on a clean WordPress install. Screenshot taken 26 August 2026.

The honest limit: RankReady cannot promise rankings or citations. It helps AI read your site.

**[Run the free check](https://hostmy.blog/plugins/rankready/ai-readiness-checker/)**

## The bit at the bottom

So in short: income is visits times what each visit earns, so it helps to know which one moved, and it helps to know whether AI can read your blog.

Which one moved on your blog this year, visits or earnings per visit? Hit reply on the email, or write to [support@hostmy.blog](mailto:support@hostmy.blog), and I will read it. And if a friend runs a blog, [The Cited is here](https://hostmy.blog/the-cited/).

Warmly,
Aditya Sharma
Host My Blog