Mediavine Earnings for General Sites

Page RPM by region tier

Base RPM for Mediavine multiplied by the General multiplier of 0.80x, at the reference layout.

General sites earn more as they gain focus

General sites cover a wide spread of subjects: trivia, how-to articles, trending stories, lists and broad explainers. Traffic can be large and varied, but advertisers struggle to tell who the reader is when a page about car maintenance sits next to one about celebrity birthdays. Contextual targeting has less to work with, so bids lean more on audience data, and we estimate RPMs at 80 per cent of the reference for this kind of site. Treat that as a starting point: a general site with a few strong sections can sit well above it.

The practical fix is focus. Grouping articles into clear sections, each deep enough to signal a topic, gives advertisers context to bid on and gives search engines a reason to rank you. Over time the strongest-earning sections often reveal which niche the site should lean towards. A general site also faces stricter quality checks than its traffic might suggest: networks look for original, useful content, and broad sites built on thin, rewritten articles risk rejection or low-value content warnings.

For layout, a standard arrangement of in-content units, a desktop sidebar and a sticky footer works across most topics, so you rarely need a custom approach for each section. Track RPM by category in your analytics, since some sections will pay noticeably better than others. Publishing rhythm matters more than in specialist niches, because broad sites rely heavily on topical content that fades within days, and a gap in output shows up quickly in revenue.

Estimated monthly earnings by traffic

Two pages per session, balanced region split, default format mix.

Seasonality through the year

Estimated earnings for each month at 50,000 monthly sessions, using the General seasonality curve.

The strongest month is December at about $870, and the weakest is January at about $499, a swing of 74%.

General sites track the overall advertising market closely, because they have no niche calendar of their own. Rates climb from October to a peak in late November and December, then fall sharply in January as budgets reset. Spring is moderate and summer slightly softer. Topical stories can bring traffic spikes at any time, but the price of each view still follows the wider cycle. Why ad revenue drops in January explains the reset.

Distance to the entry bar

Mediavine asks for roughly $5,000 USD a year in ad revenue. A General site reaches that at about 79,000 sessions a month on our numbers, and at that size it would earn roughly $1,011 a month on Mediavine.

How Mediavine fits this category

At the reference layout Mediavine pays about $13.60 per 1,000 Tier 1 pageviews for this niche, 70% more than the middle of the six website networks. Mediavine supports outstream video in our model, which can add up to 40% to page RPM for sites with the traffic to attract video demand. It also offers a policy-compliant interstitial, which our tables count at 15% of reference RPM when switched on.

You apply with your site and give Mediavine read access to your analytics so it can check traffic sources and content. Review can take a few weeks. After approval you sign the agreement, install the script or WordPress plugin, add the ads.txt entry and remove other display ad code. You then pick settings such as ad density and video placement in the dashboard. Check its application requirements for current criteria, or use the Mediavine RPM calculator to see what your traffic could earn.

How Mediavine ranks for this niche

All six website networks at 50,000 monthly sessions, with each network’s entry bar checked against that traffic.

Practical tips

• Group articles into a few deep sections so each page sends a clearer topic signal.
• Compare RPM by section every quarter and expand the categories that pay best.
• Prune or rewrite thin articles before applying to networks with quality reviews.

About Mediavine

Mediavine is a premium managed network for content sites, known particularly among food, lifestyle and travel bloggers. Its main programme asks for at least $5,000 in annual ad revenue, with Journey by Mediavine taking smaller sites from 1,000 Tier 1 sessions in 30 days, and in return our model gives it a reference Tier 1 RPM of about $17.00 with all five web formats.

All figures come from our benchmark tables: Android eCPMs by tier, category or niche multipliers, modelled fill and the iOS multiplier. They are estimates for planning, not quotes.