As a new blogger, you hear more and more about ads –
Bloggers are claiming to make $30k in their first year with their blog strictly from display ads.
Is this for real? Is it legit?
Yes! There are easy ways to make money as a new blogger and using display ads is one way.
When I started blogging, I stayed away from using ads for income on my blog. I was under the impression that they were icky and couldn’t help you establish a core audience.
But, over the years of creating different niche blogs, I’ve learned that this isn’t always the case.
There is a time and place for using display ads as your monetization strategy.
Let’s go over first what is Mediavine and how display ads work before we dive into how to increase revenue with Mediavine.
What is Mediavine?
Mediavine is an ad network where business can buy display ads, and bloggers can display these ads on their site to make money.
The great thing about using Mediavine over other ad networks like Google Adsense is that Mediavine uses impressions rather than clicks as a marker for you to generate income.
This means all you have to do is write a blog post and get eyes to that blog post to make money!
On your research about Mediavine, you might be wondering about using AdThrive instead?
AdThrive is another great advertising platform, but they are picky when choosing bloggers for their platform. My suggestion is to use Mediavine as it’s easier to join, and the potential to make an income is great.
To join, the main things you need are:
- 50,000 sessions to your blog – once you reach your first 25k pageviews the next 25k sessions is easier
- WordPress blog – this isn’t set in stone, but Mediavine does have a WordPress plugin, and bloggers have said it’s much easier for Mediavine to place ads on a WordPress blog rather than a Wix or Squarespace blog
That’s basically it!
So, if you are interested in growth hacks for Mediavine, let’s look at eight simple tactics to increase that revenue!
1. Structure Your Blog Post with A Lot of White Space
Since Mediavine relies on impression-based revenue, you want to have a good user experience on your blog.
And this means creating a lot of white space in your blog post.
Mediavine will generally place an ad or video ad between every 4 paragraphs.
So, to account for user experience, create shorter paragraphs – 2-3 sentences – and vary your paragraph lengths – throw in a 1-sentence paragraph.
This creates more whitespace around your writing and makes it super easy to read a blog post.
2. Make Your Blog Posts Long
What do you think is a more valuable blog post –
A blog post with 3 tips or a blog post with 20 tips?
Obviously, the blog post with more tips will have more valuable content and it will be longer.
Google knows this and uses long-form content – valuable content – as a ranking potential.
And at the blog level, you can see this. Orbit ran a huge blogging survey and found that the bloggers that wrote over 2,000-word blog posts yielded the “strongest results.”
This can be interpreted as more blog traffic, subscribers, and income.
On my blog, 2 out of 3 of my top performing blog posts are over 2,000 words.
So, start creating more longer blog posts as your overall blog plan AND go back to your older blog posts and make them longer.
3. Increase Your Font Size
The majority of your blog readers will be reading your blog post on their mobile devices.
This means it’s hard to read a blog post on a phone if your blog’s font size is small.
As well, it’s been shown that if you increase your font size, it can help you rank in Google.
The recommended size is 16px, but many Mediavine users – including me – have the best RPM with an 18px font size.
Many WordPress themes make it easy to customize your font size like the Astra theme.
4. Increase Your Line Height
The line height is the spacing between your sentences. Again, this is another tactic to increase the white space around your writing.
This helps with people reading your content on mobile, and it creates a much easier user experience, which keeps readers on your blog longer.
And as a blogger that uses Mediavine, that’s your goal – to get eyes to your blog post and keep them on your blog long enough to read the blog post.
The recommendation is about 1.5 line height, but to increase your RPM go with 1.6 or higher for line height.
Again, take a look at your WordPress theme to see if you can customize your line height.
5. Limit Images in Your Blog Post
I’m all for the user experience and white space, so you will notice that a lot of my blog posts have images or screenshots.
But, if you are using Mediavine, this makes it a challenge for a user to read the content, look at your images, and then see Mediavine ads and video ads. This can turn off a reader quickly.
Instead, you want to limit any uneccessary subheading images you might use to split up your blog post.
Mediavine does suggest 4-6 images per post, but for me, I find that that only works if my content is long form. For some blog posts of under 1,000 words, I just put my feature image and maybe one subheading image or none at all.
This was hard for me to change to, but now that I’ve been using Mediavine on my other blogs, it’s becoming second nature.
And now – I limit images in general and have to make it a point to add images. 🙂
6. Have a Sidebar and Make it Minimal
Do you have a sidebar on your blog?
You should! It’s another way for Mediavine to display your ads.
Instead of displaying an optin form to grow your email list, pretty graphics for your affiliates or popular blog post links – remove all of that.
Have a photo of you and a blurb of who you are, and a search bar and that’s it. Save that space for advertisers.
7. Leverage Pinterest
The only reason why I was able to display ads on my blogs was because of Pinterest.
For many lifestyle blog niches and business blog niches, you can leverage Pinterest to bring you massive website traffic.
But, how do you do that?
Here are my best Pinterest tips:
- Consider using stock photos for your pin graphics – I mostly use stock photos for my Mediavine blogs
- Work on your Pin titles – try using some copywriting techniques to up the curiosity of pinners
- Use Tailwind – hands down the best tactic to grow your Pinterest profile and blog traffic
- Use Pinterest SEO – work on adding relevant keywords and hashtags to your pin descriptions and board titles
8. Leverage Google
The best Mediavine blog post is one that is gaining clicks from Pinterest and Google.
To start leveraging Google, you need to realize that this is a long-term strategy. Pinterest is your short-term strategy, and Google is for down the road.
You can get started with using easier keywords to rank for, but also keep in mind user intent – what does your audience want to read about on your blog?
So, start writing for your audience first and then later begin adding some keywords to your top performing blog posts.
You can use a free SEO tool like Ubersuggest.
When figuring the right keyword to use make sure you have a keyword with a good monthly search result.
For new bloggers that can be around 500 searches a month.
Also look at the top blogs ranking for that keyword. Are they all industry brands like Parents.com or Walmart?
If so, that keyword will be difficult to rank for. But, if you notice some mom blogs or other types of blogs ranking for the first page, then you know it can be possible to rank for.
Another free keyword tool to use is Keywords Everywhere. It’s a Chrome extension.
Make Traffic Building Your Ultimate Goal
To make display ads profitable for you, your ultimate goal needs to be growing your blog traffic.
To help you out, make sure to check out these blog posts:
- How to Increase Blog Traffic Without Social Media
- How to Accelerate Your Blog Traffic Strategy for Your New Blog
- How to Reach Your First 25k Pageviews as a New Blogger
When trying to grow your blog traffic, remember that you are writing for your audience.
It’s easy to create blog posts for yourself, but if they aren’t helping your intended audience, then no one will visit your blog or share it.
Instead, flip your ideas around and think about your audience.
They are thinking –
What’s in it for me?
This is the WIIFM factor and is a powerful tactic when thinking about your blog post idea.
There ya go!
Over to you –
Do you have any tactics to boost your Mediavine income? Share in the comments!
Please remember to pin me!
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