The World’s Top-Earning Blogs Are Making Serious Money Online
What are the top income-earning blogs?
It’s not an easy question to answer.
For one, most of the top paid bloggers don’t disclose how much their blogs make. If they did, this list of profitable blogs might look much different.
Another reason it’s hard to rank the highest earning blogs is because many bloggers take advantage of other income-producing opportunities that arise from their blog. So determining how much money their blog makes by itself can be a little tricky.
For this reason, the primary income source for each blog is listed on the infographic.
Each of these highly paid bloggers had a specific reason for starting a blog.
Some of them simply started the blog as an experiment or a hobby.
But each of them took action and put in the consistent work to take their site — and their income — to the next level.
Have you determined the biggest reason why you should start a blogyet?
I hope this list of income-earning blogs inspires you and proves you can make money online through blogging.
15. Making Sense of Cents
Founder – Michelle Schroeder-Gardner
Income – $146,498 per month.
Michelle Schroeder-Gardner started Making Sense of Cents to “help improve my finances, keep track of my progress and to help readers improve their finances along the way.”
Well, let’s see — how has Schroeder-Gardner done in these areas?
She’s certainly improved her finances, paying off over $38,000 in student loan debt in just 7 months while growing the site’s revenue year-over-year.
Schroeder-Gardner has transparently tracked her progress in her popular monthly income reports. She says the reports act as a journal for her and keeps her accountable, while also showing others that side income is possible.
And she’s also helping others with their finances by publishing thousands of how-to articles about earning more, saving more, and becoming financially fit.
Making Sense of Cents’ primary income comes from affiliate marketing. You can see a complete breakdown of this profitable blog’s earnings here.
#14. Smart Passive Income
Founder – Pat Flynn
Income – $152,276 per month.
Smart Passive Income (SPI) founder Pat Flynn is a beacon of light in the sometimes dark and shady internet marketing space.
Calling himself a “crash test dummy of online business,” Flynn transparently shows what’s working and what isn’t working in his business.
His site details his online business experiments and gives readers actionable blueprints to follow and outlines mistakes to avoid.
Flynn didn’t invent the online income report, but he certainly popularized them. He’s been publishing monthly income reports on the blog since 2008, detailing his income sources, revenue figures, as well as his expenses. It’s still one of the most trafficked pages on the site.
Flynn is a great example of a blogger who has successfully branched out into other areas as well.
In 2010, Flynn launched the Smart Passive Income Podcast which is routinely in iTunes top 10 Business podcasts. To date, the show has been downloaded an impressive 33 million times.
He also broadcasts Ask Pat, a Q and A online business podcast, and SPI TV for visual learners.
And while his individual success has been plentiful and hard-earned, Flynn gives back by serving on the board of the non-profit Pencils of Promise, helping to build new schools for children in underprivileged regions around the world.
SPI’s primary income comes from affiliate marketing, with other earnings from podcast sponsorship and products.
#13. Lifehacker
Founder – Gina Trapani
Income – $154,000 per month
Lifehacker was founded in 2005 by Gina Trapani as part of the Gawker Media network.
From the start, Trapani acted as the sole contributor, writing 8 articles a day. Talk about blogging like a boss!
She impressively launched the site with an exclusive sponsorship from Sony, rumored to be 3 months for $75,000. Yeah, she’s a boss.
Lifehacker eventually added other contributors and the blog continued to grow in popularity.
As its motto claims, the site’s content is about “tips, tricks and downloads for getting things done.”
Trapani moved on from the company in 2009, and Nick Denton has run it ever since.
The site still churns out 18 articles a day, all designed to make you more productive.
Lifehacker earns its most of its revenue from advertising and it’s been one of the top-earning blogs since it’s inception.
#12. Timothy Sykes
Founder – Timothy Sykes
Income – $165,000 per month
Timothy Sykes is a multimillionaire stock trader who famously earned $4 million while day trading in college.
As a high school student, Sykes took $12,415 of his bar mitzvah gift money and turned it into $1.65 million by day trading penny stocks.
Not stopping there, Sykes has created a hedge fund and starred in the television program Wall Street Warriors.
These days, Sykes documents his trades and strategy on his popular blog, TimothySykes.com. His top-earning blog offers a Millionaire Challenge and a successful subscription service where users can get real-time trading alerts and access a vast library of trading videos.
#11. Tuts+
Founder – Collis Ta’eed, Cyan Ta’eed and Jun Rung
Income – $175,000 per month
Collis Ta’eed, Cyan Ta’eed and Jun Rung founded Tut+ as a modest blog with tutorials on freelancing and Photoshop.
The site ultimately grew into a network of 15 educational blogs, helping people learn profitable online skills, from coding to videography.
At the center of it all remains Tuts+. In 2014, the group combined all 16 blogs into one central hub called Envato Tuts+.
Envato Tuts+ Premium, a subscription-based membership area offering video courses and ebooks, is the primary source of the site’s income.
You can still find plenty of free content to learn creative skills and yes, they still have tutorials on freelancing and Photoshop.
Tuts+ is one of my favorite blogs and it’s inspiring to know it started as a hobby and developed naturally and organically into one of the highest-earning blogs online.
#10. Smashing Magazine
Founder – Sven Lennartz and Vitaly Friedman
Income – $215,000 per month
Smashing Magazine is the superb creation of Sven Lennartz and Vitaly Friedman.
The blog debuted in 2006 with the goal of helping people with web design and web development interests.
Today, Smashing Magazine is a go-to site for anyone looking to acquire these lucrative skills, with an enormous amount of informative and actionable content.
Not surprisingly, the blog receives 5 million page views a month.
The site now hosts frequent web development conferences and full-day workshops all over the world, to help both professionals and amateurs improve their craft.
This top earning blog’s main income comes from their membership area, where users can learn from an impressive number of tutorials covering everything from coding, web design, mobile app development, UX design, graphics and WordPress.
#9. EOFire
Founder – John Lee Dumas
Income – $223,000 per month
I’m convinced John Lee Dumas never sleeps.
He operates EOFire.com, short for Entrepreneurs on Fire, delivers a daily business podcast, and in recent years has published two best-selling journals — The Freedom Journal and The Mastery Journal.
But his bread and butter is the EOFire podcast, which is fantastic. In 2012, he noticed none of his favorite podcasts were podcasting daily, leaving him wanting more. So he launched his daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs, and the rest, as they say, is history.
JLD, as he’s affectionately known, has now interviewed over 1600 entrepreneurs, including Tim Ferriss, Barbara Corcoran, Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk.
In 2013, EOFire was named Best of iTunes.
His journals wrote the book (no pun intended) on how to run a successful crowdsourcing campaign. And through a partnership with Pencils of Promise, Dumas is parlaying the success of his journals into the creation of schools in underprivileged countries. You can see one of the schools Dumas made possible here.
EOFire earned a gross income of $595,936 in one month. That’s an incredible feat for one month and well-deserved for JLD.
It’s always good to see good people doing good work and succeeding.
#8. Gizmodo
Founder – Peter Rojas
Income – $325,000 per month
Peter Rojas is so awesome he’s on this list twice.
Rojas created Gizmodo to cover technology, entertainment, politics, science and science fiction.
Gizmodo launched in 2002 as part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton with Rojas as Editor in Chief. The blog quickly grew in popularity by partnering with a variety of international firms to deliver translated versions of its content in Europe.
When you visit the site’s home page, one of the first things you notice is an above-the-fold banner that is larger than most. As you scroll down, you’ll find Gizmodo does a great job of showing a lot of content with only a couple of display ads along the side, with one of them being the same advertiser found at the top of the page. When you finally scroll past all the content (there’s a lot!) and reach the bottom of the page, you’ll find another large banner just above the footer, and yes, the advertiser is the same as in the other two spots.
Gizmodo’s home page has a great balance of being heavily content-focused but still being able to make a tidy profit with ads. The ads are unobtrusive but still get noticed, and because of the repetition, the advertiser gets noticed too. It’s a win-win advertising model for other sites to emulate.
#7. Perez Hilton
Founder – Perez Hilton
Income – $575,000 per month
Perez Hilton is a great example of a successful blogger who capitalized on other opportunities outside of blogging. He’s also a television personality, nationally syndicated host of Radio Perez, and author of a children’s book.
But what he’s most famous for is his celebrity gossip blog PerezHilton.com. Millions visit his site every day to revel in his brand of snarky gossip entertainment.
Hilton, born Mario Armondo Lavandeira Jr, started his blog as a hobby and decided to focus on Hollywood “because it was something I was inherently curious about, and fascinated with. And, let’s face it, celebrities — a lot of them — are crazy.”
This profitable blog earns its revenue from advertising banners on the site.
#6. Copyblogger
Founder – Brian Clark
Income – $1,000,000 per month
With Copyblogger, Brian Clark created an audience-focused content marketing machine. 
In fact, Forbes recently called it “the most influential content marketing blog in the world.”
Copyblogger has been helping people write better, sell more, and get more traffic since 2006.
The site’s original tagline was “Internet Marketing For Smart People.” In other words, they’re not selling snake oil and get rich quick schemes.
Now the tagline is “Words That Work” and boy, do they ever. Clark and his team are outstanding at writing copy.
When I read they’re sales copy, I’m always compelled to buy. In fact, this site operates on their Genesis Framework and a StudioPress blog theme.
Based on their audience research and communication, they’ve strategically added tools and platforms to help content marketers and digital entrepreneurs grow their businesses.
#5. Mashable
Founder – Pete Cashmore
Income – $2,000,000 per month
Mashable was started in 2005 by Pete Cashmore, a 19-year-old who still lived at home with his parents in Scotland.
He began by documenting the latest news about social media and emerging Internet technologies.
His work resonated with lots of folks and Mashable became an immediate success, attracting 2 million readers within the first 18 months.
Mashable has come a long way since those early days. It’s no longer just Cashmore contributing Mashable’s content (they’re hiring!), and they are now headquartered in New York City.
Mashable is positioned to be one of the top-earning blogs online for some time.
The blog is still growing with over 45 million readers a month and the content has expanded to cover business, entertainment and lifestyle and now offers 5 international editions.
Mashable’s income primarily comes from advertisements on the site.
#4. TechCrunch
Founder – Michael Arrington and Keith Teare
Income – $2,500,000 per month
Michael Arrington and Keith Teare started TechCrunch in 2005 to cover technology industry news.
The blog has grown immensely and now features big-name columnists in the startup and venture capital industries.
AOL bought TechCrunch in 2005 for a rumored $25 to $40 million..
TechCrunch earns revenue from display advertising on the blog Specifically, they charge between $19.25 and $36.50 per CPM (Cost Per Thousand views).
According to the site, they receive 12 million visitors per month and 35 million page views per month. With such a high CPM, you can see how this top-earning blog makes its considerable income.
#3. Moz
Founder – Rand Fishkin and Gillian Muessig
Income – $3,300,000 per month
Moz is the go-to place for all things SEO. Search engine optimization pros check out Moz daily to see what’s happening in the space.
They also come to use their tools and resources to help them rank their sites and extend their visibility.
Rand Fishkin co-founded the site with Gillian Muessig, who happens to be his mother. The two initially operated a web design shop and Rand had to learn SEO to promote the business. He shared what he learned in SEO forums and quickly became known as an authority in the field.
Frustrated by the secretive world of SEO, they started SEOMoz in 2004 as a way to openly share the knowledge. In fact, the Moz part of their name is a direct nod to the open-source sharing philosophy made famous by the Mozilla Foundation and Dmoz Web directory project.
These days the profitable blog and community simply go by Moz, and Fishkin jokingly refers to his title as “Wizard of Moz.”
Moz earns over $42 million annually, primarily from its paid membership area, which offers valuable tools and services for the avid search engine marketers. Fishkin stepped away from his duties of CEO of Moz in 2018 to start his new technology platform, SparkToro.
True to the name, Moz still offers numerous tools for free and even the membership area comes with a 30-day free trial.
#2. Engadget
Founder – Peter Rojas
Income – $5,500,000 per month
We last saw Peter Rojas at #8 with Gizmodo and while that blog focuses on many topics, with Engadget, it’s all about tech.
Rojas created Engadget to give sound advice and detailed reviews on technology and consumer electronics. From the beginning, the site has employed numerous writers and editors to contribute to its content machine.
Engadget is now run by AOL, who acquired the blog in 2005.
The lesson here is if you ever want to sell your blog, it’s best if it is a brand on its own and not a personal brand.
The company earns massive revenue from advertising on the site.
#1. HuffPost
Founder – Arianna Huffington
Income – $14,000,000 per month
In 2005, Arianna Huffington launched the Huffington Post with the goal of becoming a political counterpart to the popular Drudge Report. The blog provided a liberal view of politics and lifestyle and quickly gained a strong following.
The site has grown year after year and in 2011, Huffington sold the blog to AOL for $315,000.
Huffington received $21 million-plus stock options in the company as part of the sale and stayed on as Editor-in-Chief. She resigned from that post in 2016, and now devotes her time to a new startup Thrive Global, a health and wellness site.
The site has rebranded and is now known simply as HuffPost.
It is the #1 most popular political blog according to a study by eBizMBA. Alexa Global, Compete and Quantcast.
The top-earning blog is an enormous success, estimated to be worth $1 billion currently.
Sponsored advertising revenue provides the majority of HuffPost’s income. The site provides banners and other ads across it’s variety of channels.
What do you think?
I hope this list shows you what is possible and inspires you to follow your own path to the top.
As always I would love to hear your thoughts. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think
15 Top Earning Blogs Making Money Online Infographic
As always I would love to hear your thoughts. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think
As always I would love to hear your thoughts. Please leave a comment below. What did you think?