12 Simple Tactics to Grow Your Mediavine Income

So you want to grow your Mediavine income and earn more money blogging?

When you’re new to blogging, you learn more and more about how to make money with display ads.

Bloggers can earn $10k and more in their first year of blogging just from display ads.

How do they do it? Are they telling the whole truth?

Yes! Using display ads is one of the best ways for new bloggers to make money.

When I started blogging, I wasn’t a fan of display ads on my blogs to earn passive income. I thought they were disruptive and annoying. It felt like they made reading my blogs more difficult.

But over the years, I’ve launched multiple different niche blogs. This helped me learn that display ads aren’t as bad as I thought.

Using display ads in moderation, in the right place, at the right time is now a solid part of my monetization strategy.

If you are new to Mediavine and display ads, you’re in the right place. In this guide, I’ll share my best tips for growing your Mediavine income like a pro.

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Please note: This post contains affiliate links to products I use, trust, and recommend. If you choose to purchase a helpful product using these links, I may receive a small commission for referring you – at no extra cost to you. These funds help me keep this blog up and running.

What is Mediavine?

Mediavine is an ad network where advertisers can buy display ads and bloggers can place those ads on their sites to make money.

Every time a visitor sees an ad or clicks on it on a specific blog site, that blogger earns a tiny bit of income.

Thus, you will generate Mediavine income simply by placing ads on your site. All it takes is for your visitors to see them, and you’ll earn passive income.

To join Mediavine, you need at least 50,000 monthly sessions based on your Google Analytics. If your traffic is lower, Monumetric is the best Mediavine alternative requiring just 10,000 monthly pageviews.

If your blog is brand new, check out my guide with the best ad networks for low-traffic blogs.

Now, how do you grow your Mediavine income exactly?

It boils down to driving more visitors to your website and making them stick around. When more people see and click on your ads, you will earn more money.

Here are 12 easy tactics to grow your Mediavine income:

1: Write longer content

One of the best ways to grow your blog traffic and Mediavine income is to write longer blog posts.

Let’s say you want to publish a blog post with DIY ideas for urban gardening.

What do you think is a more valuable post: A post with 4 tips or a post with 30 tips?

Clearly, the blog post with more tips will provide more value and be longer.

Longer content attracts more organic traffic through Google. Since longer blog posts deliver more value, Google will rank them higher.

According to Backlinko, the average word count of a Google top 10 result is 1,447 words.

Longer content results in:

• Higher rankings on Google
• More organic traffic
• More backlinks to your content
• Higher Mediavine ad income

On this blog, all of my top 10 posts are over 2,000 words. That’s the minimum for covering a topic in enough detail to deliver comprehensive solutions and answers to my readers.

Hence, start writing longer blog posts and make sure to cover everything you know about the topic. Also, go back to your older blog posts and make them longer.

2: Add more white space to your articles

Since you will earn Mediavine income based on the number of ad impressions, you want people to see more ad units.

Hence, you want people to spend more time on your blog. That way, they will see more ad units and your ad impressions will increase.

The best way to make people stick around is to have a good user experience on your blog.

One of the easiest ways to improve the user experience is to add more white space to your blog posts. This makes your blog posts easy to read and navigate.

Mediavine will place an ad unit between every 3–5 paragraphs.

To improve the user experience, your paragraphs should be 1 to 3 sentences long. Short paragraphs are super easy to read, especially on smaller screens.

3: Increase your font size

Most of your readers are probably visiting your blog on mobile devices.

On a small screen, it’s harder to read your posts if your font size is small.

If people can’t read your blog posts, they will leave your site. That’s like leaving money on the table!

Make sure that your font size is at least 16px. To improve readability even further, see how 18px looks.

Increasing your font size is a surefire way to make people stay on your blog longer. This means they will see more ad units and your Mediavine income will grow, too.

Most WordPress themes make it easy to adjust your font size. I use the Astra theme, for example. Here’s how you can increase your font size in Astra:

In your WordPress dashboard, head over to Appearance > Customize:

This will take you to the theme customizer where you can adjust any aspect of your blog’s appearance.

Navigate to Global > Typography > Body Font > Font Size:

When you’re done, remember to save your changes by clicking Publish.

4: Increase your line height

Adjusting your line height is another easy way to improve the readability of your blog posts.

Line height is the spacing between the individual lines within your blog post body.

If your line height is too small, it’s difficult to read your blog posts. Hence, increasing your line height makes your blog posts easier to read. That will keep readers on your blog longer.

And remember: keeping your visitors engaged is your ultimate goal when it comes to growing your Mediavine income.

Most often, a line height between 1.5em and 1.8em works well.

Your WordPress theme should make customizing your line height easy. Here’s how you can adjust your line height in the Astra theme customizer:

Head over to Global > Typography > Body Font and enter your line height in the corresponding field:

Again, remember to click Publish to save your changes.

5: Use less images in your content

When you use Mediavine, you will see ad units throughout your blog posts. Most ads contain images and colors.

If your blog posts also contain images and screenshots, it can be difficult to follow your article. With ads and photos cluttering your content, your readers may leave your blog altogether.

That said, use less images within your content. But be mindful of which images you remove. When writing how-to tutorials, for example, you should include relevant screenshots to help you readers follow your guide.

In fact, Mediavine recommends using a minimum of 4-6 images for long-form content. But for shorter articles or about 1,000 words, only use 1-2 relevant images.

6: Increase the number of ads per page

Every time a visitor sees an ad on your site, you will earn passive income with Mediavine.

Therefore, one of the easiest way to grow your earnings is to increase the number of ad units per page.

This strategy is controversial, though. You don’t want to overdo it. Blasting your visitors with dozens of ads on a single page will harm their reading experience. This can quickly turn against you as people will leave your site.

Be mindful when adjusting the number of ads per page. Your article should remain easy to read and navigate. You don’t want to disrupt the user experience with too many ads.

7: Make your blog sticky

A “sticky” website means people will spend more time perusing your content. Thus, they’ll stick around longer.

Many Mediavine ad units refresh every 30 seconds when they are in view. Since each refresh is an impression, increasing the time people spend on your site will grow your Mediavine earnings.

Here’s how you can make your site sticky:

• Make it easy to navigate
• Write longer articles
• Interlink your articles
• Create multiple freebies (with links to your best content)

8: Take advantage of seasonalities

Ad income in general is seasonal because businesses amp up their marketing budgets before and during holiday seasons.

Important holidays include:

• Christmas
• Easter
• Thanksgiving

Since there are more businesses advertising their products, you will see higher RPMs and your Mediavine income will grow on autopilot.

In most niches, gift guides perform well as seasonal content. Use affiliate links to the products you recommend. It’s a double whammy: you’ll earn affiliate income from purchases through your links as well as ad revenue for the traffic your content generates.

Depending on your blog niche, you should look into other seasonalities, too. Be mindful of what your readers are searching for throughout the year.

For many niches, it makes sense to create specific content for summer, fall, winter, and spring. People spend more time outdoors during the warmer months, so publishing content about outdoor activities for spring and summer should be on your to-do list if relevant to your niche.

9: Learn SEO

Hands down the best way to get more readers to your blog is to optimize your blog posts for search engines like Google.

Learning and implementing SEO (search engine optimization) is a long-term strategy that will drive free, organic traffic to your blog for years.

First, you must be mindful of what your target audience is searching for on Google.

What are they struggling with? What’s their biggest problem right now?

Your content should solve that problem and answer all their questions. That’s how you deliver real value to your readers.

Start by figuring out what your audience needs from you. Your blog posts must be helpful, valuable, and easy to follow.

You can start by finding and using low-competition keywords with KWFinder.

Make sure your keyword or search phrase has a good monthly search volume. Anything between 200-500 monthly searches is good when you’re new to blogging.

Look at the top results for that keyword. If all of them are huge industry brands, that keyword will be difficult to rank for.

But if most top search results are small websites, you can rank for this keyword more easily.

For example, I want to write an article about earning passive income with affiliate marketing. According to KWFinder, a good keyword is “affiliate marketing passive income” with 790 monthly searches:

On the right, the keyword difficulty score (KD) is 22, meaning this keyword is “still easy” to rank for:

Once you find a suitable keyword, write an in-depth blog post around it.

Put yourself in your reader’s shoes:

• When they search for this keyword, what do they want to find?
• What type of content are they searching for? A how-to guide, a list post, or something else?
• What questions are they asking about this topic?
• What related sub-topics and questions should you discuss?

For example, for my affiliate marketing passive income blog post, I know my readers want to know more about how passive income works. Thus, I’d cover the basics of what passive income is.

Also, I’d include a list of the best affiliate networks and programs for passive income.

Furthermore, I’m sure my readers would love a few quick tips on other ways to earn passive income apart from affiliate marketing. Therefore, I’d also explain how they can earn passive income through display ad networks and selling their own products, for example.

As long as your blog post solves their biggest struggle, your Google rankings will improve over time, you will see more organic traffic to your website, and your Mediavine income will grow, too.

10: Leverage Pinterest

Pinterest is often overlooked by bloggers as a traffic source. But if you are serious about growing your Mediavine income, you should get on Pinterest asap, trust me.

Pinterest is the biggest visual search engine worldwide with over 522 million monthly users, including your target audience.

For many business and lifestyle bloggers, Pinterest can drive massive website traffic much faster than Google SEO.

Here’s why:

• Pinterest users are actively searching for ideas and inspiration. Your Pinterest posts can easily go viral.
• All Pinterest traffic is 100% free. You don’t have to invest a dime in paid ads.
• Pinterest traffic ramps up over time. Your Pinterest marketing efforts will pay off in the long run.

So how do you leverage Pinterest for blog traffic?

Here are my best Pinterest tips:

• Use Pinterest SEO — learn how to use relevant keywords in your Pinterest boards and pins.
• Publish new pins consistently — Pinterest loves consistent pinning, so stay active on the platform.
• Use templates to save time — designing pins takes time, but using beautiful Pinterest templates makes it a breeze.
• Make your pins click-worthy — your pin titles and text overlays MUST make people curious to visit your website.
• Use Tailwind — schedule and plan your Pinterest pins with their free plan.

To get started with Pinterest, grab your free Pinterest marketing quick guide here:

11: Improve your best posts

Chances are that 20% of your posts bring in 80% of your blog traffic.

Since the majority of your pageviews and ad revenue come from those top-performing posts, you should improve them continuously.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself when improving old blog posts:

• Is your post 100% up-to-date?
• Is it easy to navigate? Have you included a table of contents?
• Does it cover the topic thoroughly enough? Will your visitor find all the details they need or will they head back to Google’s search results to find another, more thorough article?
• Have you included your own unique insights and findings? Are you bringing something new to the table?
• Does your post include helpful images and screenshots?

I’ve seen the best results from continuously improving my best blog posts bit by bit over the years. Making small adjustments and additions over time gives Google the signal that you’re maintaining your content to help readers find what they’re looking for.

However, be careful when editing your best posts. If your make fundamental changes in one go, you might see a dip in search engine traffic. But as long as you’re adding valuable, helpful content to them, your rankings will improve quickly.

12: Improve your site loading times and page speed

If your site is sluggish, your visitors will leave your page altogether. In fact, people are 32% more likely to leave your site when the page load times goes from 1 second to 3 seconds.

Conversion rates are almost 3x higher for ecommerce sites that load in 1 second compared to sites that load in 5 seconds. When your site speed increases from 1 second to 5 seconds, your conversion rate will drop by 64.5%.

Hence, the faster your site loads, the longer your visitors stick around and convert into subscribers and customers. Also, the more ad impressions you will generate and your Mediavine income will grow.

How do you improve your page speed?

Here are 9 easy tips to optimize WordPress performance:

1. Choose a fast web host: A blazing-fast web host is your website’s bedrock. Bluehost offers great value for your money, while Kinsta delivers top-notch performance at a higher price point.
2. Lighten your WordPress theme: My favorite light-weight themes are Astra and Hello for Elementor.
3. Reduce image size: Optimize your images for seamless loading and top-notch visual appeal. Resize them using ReduceImages and compress with TinyJPG.
4. Use a caching plugin: Caching improves your site speed within minutes. I’ve seen the best results with WP Rocket, but a free plugin like WP Fastest Cache is a fantastic alternative.
5. Reduce the number of plugins: Disable and delete any plugins you don’t need.
6. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN): Deploy a CDN for lightning-fast global access.
7. Clean up your database: Optimize your database with a free plugin like WP Sweep. Make sure to backup your entire site beforehand.
8. Keep WordPress, plugins, and themes updated: Regularly update your WordPress version, plugins, and themes to stay secure and swift.
9. Upgrade to a recent PHP version: Check your current PHP version and switch to a newer one if possible by contacting your hosting provider.

Site speed is a ranking factor for Google SEO, too. The faster your site loads, the more readers you will get and the higher your Mediavine income will be.

Summing it up: How to grow your Mediavine income

Growing your Mediavine income boils down to two main goals:

1. Growing your blog traffic.
2. Making readers spend more time on your blog.

Both techniques increase your Mediavine ad impressions and clicks, helping you boost your revenue with this ad network.

When you’re growing your blog traffic, remember that you are blogging and writing for your target audience.

Your blog posts must help them solve problems, overcome struggles, and answer questions. If your content isn’t helping your audience, then no one will visit your blog or share your posts.

So before you start writing your next blog post, ask yourself:

1. What do my readers really want?
2. How can I make their lives easier with this blog post?
3. What’s in it for them?

To help you get more blog traffic, make sure to check out these guides:

• How to Grow Your Blog Faster: 7 Powerful Blog Traffic Tools
• What To Do When Your Blog Traffic Is Low? 13 Quick Traffic Hacks

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