SEO niche sites and blogging

The research was done by AI agents that open web pages. Some sites refuse them; where that happened we say so. The small numbers point to the source list at the end. Where a figure is our own sum or guess, it is marked “our estimate” and the basis is given.

The claim

Our collection for this scheme holds only 3 tweets¹. One comes from an account our naming rule allows us to quote (about 10,000 followers or more). So this page rests mainly on how the method is promoted generally, not on these tweets. View counts are as collected on 6 October 2026. Dates are worked out from each tweet’s ID number. The page judges the scheme, not the people who tweeted.

”📣 FREE AUDIT ON YOUR SITE - MAKE $10K+ PER MONTH WITH AI🤑 Want to know how to make $10K+ each month from your website using AI SEO? ‼️For 24 hours ONLY, we’re offering a FREE audit on your website to get you ranking #1 on Google & ChatGPT. On this call you’ll get: ✅ Free” (truncated in our copy)

@JulianGoldieSEO, 23 September 2025, 2,894 views¹

The other two tweets are from accounts with under 100 followers, so we describe them without quoting. One says its author got ChatGPT to recommend their website without paying for ads or link building, by a method it calls easy, and invites readers to message for it (64 views)¹. The other is a link to a blog article about earning from a blog (2 views)¹.

Only the first tweet gives an income figure. In the text we collected, none of the three gives the traffic, the ad rate, the commission rate, the number of articles, the time to rank, the costs or the hours the income depends on¹. We did not view the images, videos or threads attached to the tweets, which may say more. The first tweet is from September 2025 and its offer ran for 24 hours, so it is an example of the claim and not a current offer.

The first tweet is addressed to people who already own a website and offers a call with an SEO business. That overlaps with a different scheme (selling SEO services to clients). This page is about the claim itself: earning from your own site’s search traffic.

What the scheme is

A “niche site” is a website about one narrow subject: air purifiers, retro games, hiking in one region. The owner writes articles that answer what people type into Google. “SEO” (search engine optimisation) is the work of getting those articles to appear high in the results.

The money comes from two places:

• Display ads. An ad network puts adverts on the pages and pays the owner a share. The usual measure is RPM: income per 1,000 pageviews.
• Affiliate links. The article links to a product. If the reader buys, the shop pays the site a commission. Amazon’s programme, Amazon Associates, is the best known.

In the “AI SEO” version, software writes the articles, so one person can publish hundreds or thousands of pages. A newer variant promises to get a site named in the answers of AI assistants such as ChatGPT.

The mechanism is real. Ad networks and Amazon do pay site owners. The questions are how much traffic the income needs, how many sites get it, and whether it lasts.

The arithmetic

Income from ads = pageviews ÷ 1,000 × RPM. The claim gives the income and leaves out both other numbers.

Step 1: the ad rate

The ad networks do not publish an average RPM. The best figure we found is a 2026 survey of 129 bloggers by Productive Blogging, a site that sells blogging courses¹¹. Respondents came from its own mailing list, students and Facebook group, so they are people focused on earning, and the figures are probably on the high side¹¹.

All from¹¹.

Individual reports are lower. A site owner interviewed by Niche Pursuits reports about 200,000 pageviews a month earning $4,000 to $5,000 on Mediavine⁴¹. That is $20 to $25 per 1,000 (our division). Two small travel blogs on Journey report $12.69 and about $9.56 per 1,000 sessions (a session is one visit, which can include several pageviews)⁶³. The second figure is our division of the $430 she reports for a first month of about 45,000 sessions. She later moved to full Mediavine and reports a rate of $18 per 1,000 there, “which isn’t great”⁶³.

Step 2: who gets the better rate

A new site does not start on the networks that pay $40.

• Google AdSense has no traffic minimum. It requires content that is “high-quality, original, and attract an audience”¹⁷. Google says publishers “keep about 68% percent of the revenue” when the advertiser buys through Google Ads¹⁶.
• Journey by Mediavine requires “a minimum of 1,000 sessions from Tier 1 countries” in 30 days. Tier 1 means the richest advertising markets; Mediavine names the US, Canada, the UK and Australia¹².
• Mediavine requires a site to “Generate a minimum of $5,000 in annual ad revenue” and be in good standing with AdSense¹².
• Raptive requires “a minimum of 25,000 monthly pageviews”, lowered from 100,000 in October 2025, and content that is “100% original”¹³.
• Ezoic’s standard tiers state a minimum of 250,000 monthly users. Its Incubator is a “Limited self-service option for smaller publishers” that accepts about 10 to 20 applicants a month⁶⁷.

So the first stretch, up to about 1,000 sessions a month, is earned at AdSense rates. In the survey those are about one-thirteenth of the premium rate (our division: 3.26 ÷ 42.43)¹¹¹². From there Journey pays roughly $10 to $29 per 1,000 in the reports we found¹¹⁶³.

Step 3: the pageviews needed

These are our sums: income wanted ÷ rate × 1,000.

The survey’s own bands fit this. Blogs with 100,000 to 249,999 pageviews a month averaged $7,469.69, and those with 250,000 to 999,999 averaged $18,818.75¹¹.

The AdSense row is there for scale. A site with that much traffic would have qualified for a better-paying network long before¹²¹³.

So the claimed $10,000 a month needs roughly 240,000 pageviews at the best survey rate, and up to about 1 million visits at the rates small sites report, every month. The sums are before costs and tax.

Step 4: the affiliate route

Amazon’s US rate table runs up to 10%, but most everyday categories pay 1% to 4.5%: 3% for home, toys, pets and tools, 4.5% for kitchen and books, 1% for grocery and health, 4% for “All Other Categories”¹⁹. A sale counts if the reader buys, or adds the item to the cart, within 24 hours of the click. A carted item must then be ordered “no later than 89 days after their initial click-through”. The 24-hour window closes early if the reader places an order or clicks another affiliate’s Amazon link²⁰.

• At 3%, $10,000 a month needs about $333,000 of Amazon sales through your links each month (our estimate: 10,000 ÷ 0.03)¹⁹.
• The one measured payout per click we found is $0.0959. It comes from Geniuslink’s data for the first three months of 2022: an average across 17 national Amazon programmes, in a sample of about 400,000 clicks on creators’ link pages, not niche sites²³. Its figure for Amazon.com alone was $0.1514²³. At the average rate, $10,000 a month needs about 104,000 clicks through to Amazon and $1,000 needs about 10,400 (our estimate)²³.

The rate may be lower now for some. Adweek reported on 18 May 2026 that Amazon was “slashing commission rates by as much as 50%” for some publishers, in changes that reached the US around 9 March 2026. Its sources were seven unnamed publishers and partners²². The rest of the article is behind a paywall, so we could not read Amazon’s reply and it is missing here. We also could not tell whether the change touched the standard rate table or only rates agreed with individual publishers.

Step 5: how many pages get traffic

• Ahrefs, which sells SEO tools, studied about 14 billion pages: “96.55% of all pages in our index get zero traffic from Google, and 1.94% get between one and ten monthly visits.”²⁴ The data is from 2023.
• Of 2 million new English pages with real content that Ahrefs followed, 6.11% reached the top 10 within a year. The author calls this “a more fair number to use” than the 1.74% found for 1 million new addresses of any kind. The 2017 figure was 5.7%²⁵. “On average, the #1 ranking page in Google is 5 years old”, and 72.9% of top-10 pages are over 3 years old²⁵.
• For product reviews, a 2024 study by Detailed found that 16 large media companies had a first-page result on 85% of 10,000 affiliate search phrases. The same report adds: “independent websites can and do still rank well.”⁶⁴

No source we found gives the share of site owners who reach 240,000 pageviews a month.

Step 6: a top ranking is worth fewer visits than before

Google now often shows an “AI Overview”: an AI-written answer above the results.

• Ahrefs compared the same 150,000 search phrases before and after they gained an AI Overview. The first result’s click rate was 7.3% in December 2023 and 1.6% in December 2025. Ahrefs reckons the rate would have fallen to 3.7% anyway, so it puts the AI Overview effect at 58%. Its earlier study found 34.5%. The data is for desktop searches only²⁶.
• AI Overviews do not appear on every search. Semrush’s tracking found them on 6.49% of searches in January 2025, 24.61% in July and 15.69% in November⁷⁸.
• Pew Research tracked 900 US adults in March 2025: “Users who encountered an AI summary clicked on a traditional search result link in 8% of all visits”, against 15% without one. They clicked a link inside the summary in about 1% of visits²⁸.
• SparkToro found in 2024 that only 360 of every 1,000 US Google searches sent a click to the open web²⁹.

Our estimate of what this does to the target: on searches that show an AI Overview, a first-place ranking brings about 42% of the visits it otherwise would (1 − 0.58), so the same traffic needs about 2.4 times as many searches²⁶. On searches without one, nothing changes from this cause.

An older, separate study by Backlinko put the first result’s click rate at 27.6% across all kinds of searches²⁷. It used different data and is not comparable with Ahrefs’ figures.

Step 7: the costs

Cash costs are low. From the sellers’ own price pages: shared hosting from $2.99 a month, renewing at $10.99 (Hostinger); the Koala AI writer $25 a month for 45,000 words and $49 for 100,000; Semrush from EUR 134 a month⁶⁶. Ahrefs and Surfer show different prices by country and billing period, and we could not confirm the figures we first noted, so none is given⁶⁶. Our estimate: about $60 to $70 a month for hosting, a basic AI writer and a basic SEO tool, and about $250 a month with a fuller set. We did not price a domain name; the registrar’s page refused our tools.

These bills start on day one. In the survey, the median wait for the first dollar was 12 months¹¹.

Buying a site instead of building one costs far more. Sellers price sites at a multiple of yearly profit. Flippa reports an average of 2.32 times for content sites in the first half of 2026⁵². Empire Flippers says “the average multiple for a content site is right around 24x” monthly profit in 2025, which is two years⁵⁶. The six content sites it lists today ask 1.7 to 3.6 times yearly profit (our division of asking price by yearly profit)⁵⁴. Our estimate: a site netting $10,000 a month would cost about $240,000 to $280,000 at the two brokers’ averages, and roughly $200,000 to $430,000 across today’s asking prices.

What people who tried it report

The one survey. In the Productive Blogging survey, average monthly income rises with the age of the blog¹¹:

No age band averages $10,000¹¹. These are averages, which sit above the typical blogger; the survey gives no overall median and does not say how many of the 129 respondents are in each band. Blogs with under 100 posts averaged under $40 a month¹¹. The median time to a full-time income, among those who reached one, was 48 months; 24% of them got there within two years¹¹. The author writes: “it’s clearly getting harder to ‘break in’ to blogging”¹¹. People who quit before earning are unlikely to be on a blogging teacher’s mailing list, so the survey flatters the picture.

Mass AI publishing: two first-hand write-ups.

• A developer auto-published about 2,300 AI articles over sixteen months with no human review. “Peak was September 2025 at 695 clicks in a month. The last full month, June 2026, did 69. That is a 90% drop.”⁴⁷ About 6% of the pages ever got a click, and no income is reported⁴⁷.
• A software company, TailRide, grew from 300 to over 22,000 AI-generated pages and reached about 130 clicks a day. Then: “Over the next six months, we went from 20,000+ indexed pages to 1 (the homepage).”⁴⁸ “Indexed” means included in Google’s results. It wanted software sign-ups, not ad income, so this is evidence about ranking only.

Both are bulk publishing with no human review, the worst case. A larger study points the other way for AI used as an aid. Ahrefs ran its own AI detector over 600,000 pages ranking in the top 20 for 100,000 search phrases: “86.5% of top-ranking pages contain some amount of AI-generated content”, and 4.6% were classed as pure AI. It found almost no link between the share of AI text and ranking position and concluded that “Google neither significantly rewards nor penalizes pages just because they use AI.”⁷⁷ Two cautions: Ahrefs sells an AI writing tool, and AI detectors make mistakes. So AI-assisted pages rank routinely, pure AI pages are rare among top results, and the two failures above were unreviewed bulk publishing.

We found no published income report, with proof, from a site built mainly on AI text that earned near $10,000 a month from ads and affiliate links. That is a gap in what our searches found, not proof that none exists.

Established human-written sites lost traffic too.

• The BBC reported in May 2024 that HouseFresh, an air-purifier review site that had grown to 15 full-time staff, laid off most of its team after Google’s updates of September 2023 and March 2024: “HouseFresh’s thousands of daily visitors dwindled to just hundreds.”⁴³ HouseFresh’s own post says the update “led to a 91% loss of search traffic”⁴⁴. The BBC also reports that the site Ready Steady Cut went from 20 writers and editors to four⁴³. Google told the BBC: “Our recent updates aim to connect people with content that is helpful, satisfying and original, from a diverse range of sites across the web”. It also said it launches changes only after testing confirms they help users⁴³.
• Retro Dodo, a retro-gaming site, wrote in April 2024 that Google had been “reducing our organic traffic and revenue by 85%” since September 2023 (“organic” means unpaid search visits). It says the blog took about 12 months to earn its first ad income⁴⁶.
• The owner of a home-restoration site publishing since 2011 told AdMonsters: “I was earning $7,000 to $10,000 a month from display ads. But by early 2025, that dropped to around $1,500. Traffic’s down to a fifth of what it was.”⁴²
• The site owner in the Niche Pursuits interview says her site had close to 1 million pageviews a month around 2022 and earned roughly $20,000 to $30,000 a month from Mediavine, and now has about 200,000 pageviews earning $4,000 to $5,000⁴¹. The article calls that “still a meaningful business”: she works on it full-time and is moving towards email and direct deals with brands that pay commissions “of 20% or more”⁴¹. We read the site’s article about the interview, not the interview. Both figures are the owners’ own statements.
• A long-time affiliate marketer reports one page going from an average of $47 a day to: “19 visits a day, with the affiliate commission dropping to $1.09 a day”, after a large publisher entered his subject with mostly AI-written articles⁵¹.

A study of 100 past winners. Daniel Stanica took 100 blogs named in 2022 lists of bloggers earning six figures and compared their search traffic in April 2022 and April 2026. The median blog lost 85%. “Only 21 out of 100 blogs continued to grow.”³⁸ Three cautions. The blogs were picked at their peak, so some fall is expected. The traffic figures are a tool’s estimates of search visits only, and the author notes that “A site can lose all its search traffic and still keep a thriving newsletter”³⁸. And the author is not a bystander: his page says he founded an SEO agency and has spent 20 years “building, buying, and selling content sites”³⁸. He calls the work “a cohort study, not a representative sample”, meaning it follows one chosen group³⁸.

Across publishers. Chartbeat data reported by Press Gazette shows Google search referrals to publishers down 38% in the US in the year to November 2025³⁹. A later Chartbeat report puts the fall at 40.2% in the year to July 2026⁴⁰. Separately, Chartbeat data given to Axios in March 2026 put the two-year loss of search referrals at 60% for small publishers (1,000 to 10,000 pageviews a day), 47% for medium ones and 22% for large ones⁴⁰. We read both only in trade press. Chartbeat’s network is mostly news sites.

Recovery is rare, and not impossible. Twenty site owners were invited to a Google event in October 2024 after losing 70% to 100% of their traffic. One attendee’s notes record “no reported recoveries”⁴⁹. A trade site reported 17 months later that attendees said nothing had changed⁵⁰. The same trade site reports that HouseFresh’s search visibility (a tool’s estimate of how often a site appears in results) passed its earlier peak by October 2025, after about two years; its managing editor put it down to “Hard work and a lot of luck”⁴⁵. We read the recovery only in that report.

What the rules allow now

Allowed. Running your own site, ranking it and earning from ads and affiliate links is legal and within every platform’s rules we read. Google also allows AI as a writing aid: “Generative AI can be particularly useful when researching a topic, and to add structure to original content.”³¹

Not allowed: pages made in bulk to rank. Google’s spam policy, last updated on 28 August 2026, defines “scaled content abuse” as “when many pages are generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users”. Its first example is “Using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users”³⁰. The rule applies “whether automation, humans or a combination are involved”³². So the test is purpose and value, not AI or volume as such. Google’s AI guidance says bulk generation without added value “may violate” the policy³¹. The penalty: “Sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all.”³⁰

The same policy bans “thin affiliation” (affiliate pages that copy the shop’s description and add nothing) and buying an expired domain to rank low-value content on its old reputation³⁰.

Google introduced these rules in March 2024 and said afterwards that results had “45% less low-quality, unoriginal content”³². That is Google’s own figure.

Enforcement is frequent. Google’s status page lists four spam updates and two core updates (broad ranking changes) in 2026 so far. The latest spam update began on 24 September 2026 and ran for 13 days³³. Since April 2026 Google says it may act on spam reports sent in by anyone³⁵. A site removed by a human reviewer can ask for reconsideration after deleting the content³⁴. After a core update, Google says “there’s no guarantee that changes you make to your website will result in noticeable impact in search results”³⁴.

One count exists. Originality.ai, which sells AI detection, checked about 79,000 ad-funded sites in March 2024 and found 1,446 (1.9%) removed from Google. It tested 14 of the removed sites: all 14 had some AI-written posts and 7 had over 90%³⁷. AI detectors make mistakes, and the vendor inferred the penalty from the removal. The other 98% were not removed in that round.

“Rank in ChatGPT” tricks. Since 15 May 2026 Google’s spam policies also “apply to generative AI responses in Google Search”³⁵. Google’s guide on the subject says of the methods sold as AEO or GEO (optimising for AI answers): “many suggested ‘hacks’ aren’t effective or supported by how Google Search actually works.”³⁶ This covers Google’s AI features only. We found nothing on how ChatGPT picks its sources. On the traffic side, Pew’s 1% click rate on links inside AI summaries²⁸ and Chartbeat’s figures for AI chatbots’ share of publisher traffic suggest that being named in an AI answer sends few visitors. Chartbeat gave 0.01% in one report and “less than 1%” in another, and the trade press could not reconcile the two⁴⁰. None of these figures is about ChatGPT and small sites in particular.

The ad networks follow the same line. AdSense forbids placing ads on pages “that violate the Spam policies for Google web search”¹⁷. Mediavine’s policy: “We do not monetize low-quality, mass-produced, unedited or undisclosed AI content that is scraped from other websites.”¹² Raptive: “We do not monetize AI-generated content sites within our network.”¹⁴ Raptive says that in early 2025 “13% of applications have been rejected for AI-generated content” and that it had removed over 50 sites. It says 57% of the rejected sites “were later monetized by a well-known competitor”, which it does not name and we could not check¹⁵. If so, some mass AI sites still find an ad partner.

Account terms.

• AdSense can close an account for invalid traffic (clicks or views Google judges artificial or accidental) or policy breaches. It then holds payment for 30 days and pays only the part “that has not been identified as invalid”¹⁸.
• A new Amazon affiliate must make three qualifying sales within 180 days or the application lapses, and a rejected account cannot be reinstated²⁰. Commissions are paid about 60 days after the month ends²⁰. “Either you or we may terminate this Agreement at any time, with or without cause”²¹.

The law (United States only). The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the US consumer regulator, tells affiliates: “You should disclose your relationship to the retailer clearly and conspicuously on your site.”⁶⁸ Amazon’s contract requires the sentence “As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”²¹ The FTC’s 2024 rule bans fake reviews, including AI-generated ones, and allows civil penalties against knowing violators⁶⁹. An AI-written “I tested this” review of a product nobody tested falls in the area that rule addresses. In 2020 the operators of the comparison site LendEDU agreed to pay $350,000 to settle FTC allegations that rankings shown as objective were sold to advertisers⁷⁰. That case concerns only the company named in it and was settled, not ruled on. We found no FTC action against an individual blogger; we do not know whether one exists. Income is self-employment income; a US return is required from $400 of net earnings⁷⁵.

Pending. The European Publishers Council filed an EU complaint about AI Overviews in February 2026, alongside a Commission investigation opened in December 2025. The allegation is that Google imposes unfair terms on publishers. Google’s reply: “We design our AI features to surface great content across the web and we provide easy-to-use controls for them to manage their content.”⁷⁶ The case is pending. We read it in a republished Reuters report.

Who makes money from it

In our three tweets. One leads to a free audit call, one to a direct message, and one to a blog article¹. No tweet names a price¹. The article that the third tweet links to sells nothing we could see, and itself warns that some bloggers earn nothing for at least a year¹⁰.

What the first account’s own pages offer. The tweet says “we’re offering”, and the pages we read name a company, Goldie Agency Limited³⁴. The website of the tweet’s author, Julian Goldie, offers link building, a free strategy call, coaching and memberships². Its headline claim is about client traffic: “We’ve Taken Websites from ZERO to 145,000 Visitors Per Month”².

The tweet is from September 2025 and its offer ran for 24 hours. The link in the tweet leads back to the tweet itself. We read the author’s current booking page on 10 October 2026; it may differ from what readers of the tweet were sent to⁴. That page is titled “Free AI brand visibility session” and says “100% free. No obligation.”⁴ It shows case studies of client sites and no price. One cites an “Estimated monthly traffic value of $493,000”⁴. Traffic value is an SEO tool’s estimate of what the visits would cost as ads. It is not income. A second, a dating website, cites 17,000+ monthly visitors and “Thousands generated in affiliate commissions”, with no figure or proof shown⁴. Nothing on the current page gives an income of $10,000 a month for a site owner⁴.

His services page lists backlinks at $298 to $384 each, articles at $100 per 1,000 words and a $500 one-time add-on. Monthly SEO packages have no listed price³. The home page says: “we only do pay-on-performance – meaning if we don’t deliver backlinks, you don’t pay.”² That covers delivery of links, not rankings or income.

Two paid communities are listed on Skool, a platform for paid groups. “AI Profit Boardroom” is listed with 3.3k members at $69 a month, shown as a sale price against a normal $99; its pitch is AI automation, not niche sites⁵. “The SEO Elite Circle” is listed at $149 a month with 703 members⁶. His services page gives other prices for both: $49 a month or $500 a year, and $97 a month or $997 a year³. Two free groups by the same author are listed with 93k and 2.5k members⁷. Their descriptions mention member results, such as one member who “Made $10,000 with ChatGPT” and another who grew “from €0 - €120,000 pm”⁷. These are the seller’s statements; we saw no evidence for them.

We do not know how many listed members pay, or at what price, so we give no revenue figure. The pages we read showed no income from a niche site of his own; we did not look further.

The layers that earn when a newcomer starts.

• Tools and hosting. These charge from the first month whether or not the site earns⁶⁶. They also pay well for referrals: Semrush advertises $100 to $300 per sale, up to $450 for its top partners, plus $10 per free trial⁶⁵. Bluehost says: “Commissions start at $65 for every qualified sale.”⁶⁵ One referred beginner pays more than hundreds of Amazon clicks. That helps explain why so much “start a blog” content exists.
• Blogs about blogging. BloggersPassion reports “over $220,000 in 2025, despite the massive traffic drop”, and says: “The Semrush affiliate program is one of the biggest income generators”⁵⁸. It says Semrush referrals have brought in over $650,000 of about $1.4 million over nine years, which is about 46% (our division), and that it also earns from referring readers to web hosts⁵⁸. It gives no split by income type for 2025. So one real five-figure-a-month blog earns a large part of its income by referring would-be bloggers to tools. The figures are its own and are revenue, not profit.
• Courses. Wealthy Affiliate sells memberships at $29, $49 and $99 a month and pays members for referring new members⁶². Income School’s Project 24 costs $499 for the first year and $299 a year after. Its sales page now leads with YouTube: “Monetize Within 50 Videos Guaranteed”, meaning individual help or a refund if the channel is not earning by then. Its general disclaimer says the programme “is not a guarantee of success”⁶¹. Authority Hacker’s home page was titled “Learn How to Build Authority Sites” in an archived copy from January 2024. Today it reads “No Hype AI & Automation for Established Businesses” and says: “When AI broke the old playbook, we rebuilt ours from scratch.”⁶⁰ We found no dated statement from the company about the change.
• Community platform. Skool charges group owners $9 a month plus 10% of sales, or $99 a month plus 2.9%, and pays 40% of a referred owner’s subscription for life⁸. A review site for one of the communities above states: “This post contains affiliate links.”⁹
• Ad networks and Amazon take their share of every sale, as in Step 2 and Step 4¹⁶¹⁹.
• Brokers. Empire Flippers lists only businesses with “$24,000 per year or more in net profit” and charges 15% on most sales, with a $10,000 minimum⁵⁷. Flippa charges a success fee of about 10%⁵⁷.
• Google sells the ads and also decides the rankings¹⁶³⁰.

Among the sources we happened to open, the three that publish blogging income figures each sell or sold courses, or earn from referring bloggers to tools: the survey¹¹, BloggersPassion⁵⁸ and Fat Stacks⁵⁹. Several of the accounts of decline come from site owners with no course to sell^42444647. But the largest decline study is by someone who works in the trade too³⁸. This is a pattern in our reading, not a count of the field.

Regulators. We found no court or regulator action against SEO or blogging as a method, or against any account in our tweets. The nearest US cases concern companies that sold money-making programmes:

• FTC v. Lurn (2023): online-business programmes including affiliate and email marketing. It ended in a settlement with a judgment of $14,077,121, partly suspended, and more than $2.4 million refunded to buyers⁷¹.
• The FTC’s 2024 “Operation AI Comply” cases against sellers of AI-branded online stores. In one, against Ascend Ecom, the FTC’s complaint alleged that the operation had taken at least $25 million from consumers⁷³. The FTC case page we read, last updated in September 2024, listed the case as pending; we did not check its current status⁷³. Those are online stores, not blogs.

These cases concern only the companies named in them. They are not evidence about any person or company on this page. A 2025 FTC proposal to extend its earnings-claim rules to business coaching was still a proposal on the pages we read⁷⁴.

The upside

Content sites do pay some owners, and a few very well. This section gives the best documented cases. None of it changes the base rates above: these are the sites that worked.

Sites checked by a broker

Empire Flippers, a broker of online businesses, describes its listings as “thoroughly vetted on the largest curated marketplace”⁵⁵. We downloaded its public listings data on 10 October 2026. The counts below are our own computation from that data. We counted a listing as a content site when its only income types were display ads, affiliate links or Amazon Associates.

• 1,213 content-only sites sold since 2014, out of 2,679 businesses sold⁵³.
• Median net profit: $1,720 a month⁵³. “Net” means after the costs the seller reports.
• The top tenth made about $7,200 a month or more⁵³.
• 66 of 1,206 with a figure (5.5%) made $10,000 a month or more⁵³. The largest made $60,315 a month, a science site earning since 2003⁵³.
• The typical site was listed about 2 years after its first dollar; 13% were listed within a year of it⁵³. The time from starting the site to the first dollar is not recorded.

These are sites good enough to pass a broker’s check and find a buyer. Even in that group, $10,000 a month is about 1 in 18. It is not a newcomer’s chance of getting there: sites that never reached the broker’s profit minimum are not counted at all.

Most of these sales are old. Only 39 of the 1,213 were first listed in 2024 or later, and 6 of those 39 netted $10,000 a month or more⁵³. Of the 66 sites at that level, 25 were listed within two years of their first dollar, 22 of them before 2024⁵³.

The market has shrunk. Counting sold content sites by the year they were first listed: 153 in 2020, 138 in 2021, 124 in 2022, 68 in 2023, 20 in 2024, 15 in 2025 and 4 so far in 2026⁵³. Recent years may still rise a little. The broker’s total sales did not fall in the same way: all sold listings by listing year were 159, 163 and 164 for 2023 to 2025. So content sites went from about half of its sales in 2020 and 43% in 2023 to 12% in 2024 and 9% in 2025⁵³. We did not check whether its minimum profit bar also rose.

The broker’s own count is higher than ours but shows the same direction: “In 2023, we sold right around 70 content websites. In 2024, we sold just about 50”, and roughly 30 by late May 2025⁵⁶. Our counts are by the year of listing and use a stricter definition. It also says the average sale price rose, from about $175,000 in 2023 to about $325,000 in 2025, while the multiple fell⁵⁶. Fewer, larger sites are selling. Flippa reports the same direction: “sales of content businesses fell 39% this half, the sharpest decline of any model we track”, and the sites that sold averaged more than ten years old⁵².

For sale today. Of 176 businesses listed, 6 are content sites under the same rule as above. Their net profit runs from $3,138 to $106,196 a month, and 3 of the 6 show falling profit over the past 9 to 12 months⁵⁴.

Two show the ceiling:

• A technology and deals site earning since January 2020 lists $810,009 a year in net profit and asks $2,916,028. It is run by “a website manager, two internal employees, and several freelancers” who review products hands-on⁵⁴⁵⁵.
• An affiliate site launched in 2023, about AI tools for adults, lists an average of $106,196 a month net. It has two full-time staff (a writer and a link builder, who gets other sites to link to it) and publishes “2–3 new articles” a day, mostly found through search⁵⁴.

Both are unsold asking-price listings. We did not see the records behind them.

Young sites: search-led before 2024, other traffic since. Nine content listings, sold or for sale, first earned in 2023 or later. Six drew mainly on social media, Pinterest, Reddit or newsletters and three mainly on search (our count)⁵³⁵⁴.

The three search-led ones:

• A site of design templates, created in December 2021 and earning from May 2023, netted $11,813 a month and sold. “Traffic comes primarily from organic search (95.22%)”. It was listed in February 2024, a month before Google’s March 2024 update⁵³.
• The unsold $106,196 listing above⁵⁴.
• An exam-preparation site launched in April 2024 reached about $2,700 a month with about 59% of visits from search engines⁵³.

A slightly older case shows the risk. A UK finance affiliate site earning since July 2022 netted $11,988 a month and sold. Its listing, from May 2024, says it “receives 89% of its traffic from organic search - and has been impacted by the most recent Google update”⁵³.

Among those that drew on other traffic:

• A travel site that first earned in November 2024 averaged $10,227 a month net and sold. Its listing says “over 90% of traffic comes from social media”⁵³.
• Five deal sites earning since April 2024 netted $9,138 a month and sold. “Traffic is generated exclusively through five newsletters” with over 230,000 subscribers⁵³.
• A smart-home Amazon site launched in April 2025 averages $5,516 a month, with Reddit as its traffic source and almost no search visits. Its monthly profit fell from $14,024 in December 2025 to $1,895 in September 2026. The listing warns that some of the Amazon income “may be associated with other projects the seller owns”⁵⁴.
• A hairstyle blog started in 2023 made about $2,100 a month with 87% of visits from Pinterest, using ChatGPT for one or two posts a week⁵³.

So among young sites listed since mid-2024, those with checked income of more than about $2,700 a month drew on social media, Reddit or newsletters, apart from the one unsold listing.

People’s own statements

None of these was checked by a third party.

• Fat Stacks, a public income report by an owner of several niche sites, reported revenue of $116,434 and profit of $89,396 for May 2023, with traffic from search, Facebook and Pinterest. In October 2023 it reported: “Lowest ad revenue in years.”⁵⁹ The reports then stopped. The owner writes that he “doubled down on my niche site”, added other traffic sources and is “actually doing MORE traffic than I was with Google alone”; he no longer publishes figures, so this cannot be checked⁵⁹. He adds: “Now I mostly focus on building a Newsletter and drive traffic to my site.”⁵⁹ His blogging course is retired; his site still lists courses on Pinterest and newsletters⁵⁹.
• BloggersPassion reports revenue of over $220,000 for 2025. It says Semrush referrals are “one of the biggest income generators” and gives no 2025 split⁵⁸.
• The site with $20,000 to $30,000 a month from ads at about 1 million pageviews in 2022, which lost about 80% of its traffic and still earns $4,000 to $5,000 a month⁴¹. The home-restoration site went from $7,000 to $10,000 a month to about $1,500⁴².

The top of the ad networks. Raptive says more than 100 of its creators have earned $1 million or more in ad revenue in a year, a group it calls Luminary⁷⁹. The six added in 2025 were all food creators with recipe sites who use social media to bring visitors⁷⁹. Raptive says its network has more than 6,500 sites and has paid out $4 billion in total¹⁴⁸⁰. Our estimate: that is roughly 1 site in 65, among sites that had already met Raptive’s traffic minimum. These are the company’s statements, not checked by anyone else, and the figures are ad revenue before the creators’ costs. Mediavine’s home page says it is “Trusted by 20,000+ publishers” and gives no such breakdown¹².

A realistic good result (our estimate)

• Year one: close to nothing. The survey average for blogs under a year old is $4.44 a month¹¹.
• After one to three years of steady work: around $100 a month on the survey average ($100.35)¹¹. A few hundred for those whose traffic reaches about 15,000 to 45,000 sessions. One travel blogger reports $104, $185 and $428 in his first three months of ads, after “more than a year without making money”; another reports $430 in her first ad month on about 45,000 sessions⁶³.
• After three to five years: several hundred dollars a month. The survey average for that band is $746.73¹¹.
• After five years or more, or for a site good enough to sell: perhaps $1,000 to $3,000 a month. The survey average at 5 to 10 years is $2,325.62¹¹. The median broker-sold site made $1,720⁵³.
• $10,000 a month: about 1 in 18 of the sites that passed a broker’s check⁵³.

All of these are figures for people who kept going. Those who stopped are not in them.

What it takes to compete

What the sites that pay have

1. Years. The median is 12 months to the first dollar and 48 months to a full-time income¹¹. Content sites sold on Flippa in 2026 averaged over ten years old⁵². The average first-place page on Google is 5 years old²⁵.
2. Something software cannot supply. The 21 blogs in 100 that kept growing had first-hand content such as tested recipes and patterns, their own audience, and a name people search for³⁸. The largest listed site reviews products hands-on⁵⁴. Mass AI text is what Google’s policy and the ad networks’ rules exclude¹²¹⁴³⁰.
3. Traffic that does not depend on Google alone. Most of the young sites with checked income drew on Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit or newsletters⁵³⁵⁴. Fat Stacks moved to a newsletter⁵⁹. Raptive’s newest million-dollar creators use social media for visitors⁷⁹. HouseFresh’s editor credits a YouTube channel as part of its recovery⁴⁵.
4. A subject large publishers leave alone. Big media companies were on the first page for 85% of affiliate search phrases; small sites work in the other 15% and in narrow subjects⁶⁴. The young six-figure site is in a subject big publishers avoid⁵⁴.
5. At the top, a team. The two largest listings have staff, daily publishing and paid link building⁵⁴.
6. Income beyond ads. In the survey, bloggers selling their own digital products earned $535.90 per 1,000 pageviews, against $33.16 for ads¹¹.
7. Room to absorb a sudden loss. Established sites lost 80% to 90% of their traffic in months⁴²⁴⁴⁴⁶. The one documented recovery took about two years⁴⁵. Buyers price this in: sites sell for about two years of profit⁵²⁵⁶.

AI as a drafting aid, by someone who knows the subject, is within the rules and common among pages that rank³¹⁷⁷. AI as the whole product, in bulk and unreviewed, is what the policy targets³⁰.

What it costs

• Cash: our estimate is $60 to $250 a month for hosting and tools⁶⁶. Low cost is one reason the field is crowded.
• Time: years of unpaid work. We found no sourced figure for hours a week for a new site. Owners of sold sites reported a median of 2 hours a week overall, and 4 hours for the 107 sites listed since 2023 (our count), but those sites were already running⁵³.
• To skip the wait: roughly $200,000 to $430,000 to buy a site netting $10,000 a month (our estimate, from Step 7), with the risk that one update removes the traffic⁵²⁵⁴⁵⁶.
• Help: on the price list of the service in the first tweet, an article costs $100 per 1,000 words and a backlink $298 or more³.

How to tell early which side you are on

These checks are our judgement, built from the figures above.

• Do you have first-hand material? Do you test the products, do the trade or live in the place? If the plan is for AI to supply the knowledge, it is the version the rules exclude³⁰.
• Do new pages rank at all? Of the pages that reached the top 10 in Ahrefs’ study, 40.82% did so within a month²⁵. If nothing you publish gets search visits after several months, more of the same is unlikely to change that.
• Can you reach 1,000 sessions a month, then 25,000 pageviews? Those are the entry bars for Journey and Raptive¹²¹³. At the Journey rates in Step 3, $1,000 a month needs roughly 35,000 to 105,000 visits¹¹⁶³.
• Is any traffic coming from outside Google? The recent winners had it⁵⁴.
• Does the plan need you to buy something first? The arithmetic above is free to check. No seller we found publishes what share of its customers reach any income level.

What we did not verify

• How many people who try this succeed. No source gives a median income, the share earning nothing, or the share above $1,000 or $10,000 a month. The survey has 129 self-selected respondents and reports averages only¹¹. Widely repeated figures such as “33% of bloggers make nothing” could not be traced and are not used.
• The tweets. We did not open them on X or view their images, videos or threads. We followed the third tweet’s link and checked where the first tweet’s link leads, but not the second tweet’s link. The first tweet’s text is cut off in our copy. It is from September 2025; the booking page we read is the current one and may not be the page the tweet led to. We did not find what the audit call leads to or what the monthly packages cost.
• Ad rates. Mediavine and Raptive publish no official average; the rates come from one survey and a few owners’ reports. We did not find their revenue shares. Raptive’s rule on visitors’ countries was seen only second-hand; its help page refused our tools.
• Amazon. Amazon’s reply to the Adweek report was not read; the article is paywalled after its opening paragraphs. The rate table is undated. The per-click payout is from 2022, averages 17 countries’ programmes and comes from creators’ link pages. We did not find what share of site visitors click an affiliate link.
• The broker data. The counts, medians and classifications are our own computation from Empire Flippers’ public data. The broker’s own count of content sites sold is higher than ours for 2024 and 2025. The vetting is the broker’s own process; we saw no records. Asking prices are not sale prices. We have no data on sites that were rejected or did not sell.
• Self-reported income. Every income figure from an individual site is the owner’s own statement. Screenshots on those pages were not viewed.
• AI sites that succeed. We found no proof-backed income report from a mainly AI-written site near $10,000 a month, and no verified income from “ranking in ChatGPT”. We checked nothing about how ChatGPT or other non-Google assistants choose sources.
• Secondary sources. The Chartbeat figures for 2026, the follow-up on the Google event, HouseFresh’s recovery, the Niche Pursuits interview and the EU complaint were read in reports about them, not at the original. HouseFresh’s and Retro Dodo’s present income were not checked.
• The 100-blog study is one author’s work using a tool’s traffic estimates of a group chosen at its peak, and its page shows inconsistent dates³⁸.
• Authority Hacker. We saw its current home page and one archived copy. We did not find when or why its focus changed, and the company was not asked.
• Member counts and prices on Skool. Prices for the same community differed between pages on the same day. We do not know how many listed members pay. The member results mentioned in the free groups’ descriptions were not checked.
• Raptive’s top tier. The count of creators earning $1 million a year in ads is Raptive’s own statement, read in two trade reports. We did not see a list of all of them or what they keep after costs.
• AI Overviews. The click-rate study is desktop-only and by a tool vendor. The share of searches showing an AI Overview comes from another vendor and ends in November 2025.
• Tool prices. Ahrefs and Surfer prices could not be confirmed and are left out.
• Regulator cases. The current status of the Ascend Ecom case was not checked. A 2012 FTC complaint about a seller of ready-made affiliate websites was removed from this page because we did not find its outcome.
• Exact quotes. Many pages were read through a tool that extracts or summarises text. Quotes from the survey’s tables, Amazon’s rate table, the vendors’ price pages and the FTC pages were not checked word for word against the page. Ahrefs, Surfer and Semrush prices were shown in euros.
• Refused pages. Search Engine Land, Axios, Reddit, Namecheap, parts of Niche Pursuits and Raptive’s help centre refused our tools. The r.jina.ai reader was rate-limited for nearly every attempt; most pages were fetched directly. No forum threads from people who tried were read, which is the largest gap in the accounts.
• Law outside the US. UK and EU disclosure rules, cookie-consent duties and non-US tax were not checked. Nor was copyright risk from AI text and images. The penalty amount under the FTC’s fake-reviews rule was not read.
• Other networks. Affiliate networks other than Amazon and most smaller ad networks were not checked.
• Whether the people named have seen this page. The people and companies named here were not contacted before publication.

Sources

“Read at source” means we opened the page itself on 10 October 2026. “Secondary” means we read an article or summary about the source, not the source itself. “Estimate” means our own sum.

1. Does It Pay collection of 3 tweets on this scheme, collected 2026-10-06; the quoted tweet is linked above. Read from our collected copy on 2026-10-10, not from the live tweets.
2. Julian Goldie, home page. https://juliangoldie.com/ . Undated page. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
3. Julian Goldie, services and prices. https://juliangoldie.com/services/ . Undated page. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
4. Julian Goldie, strategy session booking page. https://go.juliangoldie.com/strategy-session?utm=julian . Undated page. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
5. Skool, “AI Profit Boardroom” listing. https://www.skool.com/ai-profit-lab-7462/about . Live listing. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
6. Skool, “The SEO Elite Circle” listing. https://www.skool.com/seo-mastermind-2356/about . Live listing. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
7. Skool, free groups. https://www.skool.com/ai-seo-with-julian-goldie-1553/about/ and https://www.skool.com/ai-seo-mastermind-group-3510/about . Live listings. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
8. Skool, pricing and affiliate programme. https://www.skool.com/pricing and https://www.skool.com/affiliate-program . Live pages. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
9. AI Funnel Insider, review of AI Profit Boardroom. https://aifunnelinsider.com/ai-profit-boardroom-review-2026/ . 2026-04-01, updated 2026-09-01. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
10. A personal blog article linked from the third tweet; not named or linked because the account is small. Undated page. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
11. Productive Blogging, Blogging Income Survey 2026. https://productiveblogging.com/how-much-do-bloggers-earn/ . 2026-05-20, updated 2026-05-28; responses gathered 2 January to 29 April 2026. Read at source on 2026-10-10. Pageviews needed are our estimate.
12. Mediavine, requirements. https://www.mediavine.com/mediavine-requirements/ . Undated page. Read at source on 2026-10-10. AI content policy: https://www.mediavine.com/?p=70240 , 2024-03-07. Publisher count: https://www.mediavine.com/ .
13. Raptive, “Opening the door to more creators”. https://raptive.com/blog/opening-the-door-to-more-creators-who-meet-raptive-quality-standards/ . Updated 2025-10-16. Read at source on 2026-10-10. Also https://raptive.com/creators/ .
14. Raptive, about page. https://raptive.com/about/ . Undated page. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
15. Raptive, “Enforcing and maintaining Raptive’s quality standards”. https://raptive.com/blog/enforcing-and-maintaining-raptives-quality-standards/ . Updated 2025-03-25. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
16. Google AdSense Help, revenue share. https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en . Undated page. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
17. Google AdSense Help, eligibility and publisher policies. https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/9724?hl=en and https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/10502938?hl=en . Undated pages. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
18. Google AdSense Help, account closure and payments. https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/57153?hl=en and https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/1709871 . Undated pages. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
19. Amazon Associates, standard commission rates. https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/node/topic/GRXPHT8U84RAYDXZ . Undated table. Read at source on 2026-10-10. Sales needed are our estimate.
20. Amazon Associates, application rules and operating policies. https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/node/topic/G7MJTPEP9NC3YKMG and https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/operating/policies . Policies dated 2026-04-14. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
21. Amazon Associates, Operating Agreement. https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/operating/agreement . Updated 2025-10-15. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
22. Adweek, Amazon Associates rate cuts. https://www.adweek.com/media/amazon-associates-affiliate-rate-cuts-publishers/ . 2026-05-18. Read at source on 2026-10-10: opening paragraphs only, the rest is behind a paywall, so without Amazon’s statement.
23. Geniuslink, payout per click and conversion rates. https://geniuslink.com/blog/under-or-over-performing-epc-conversion-rates/ . Published 2023-10-13, page modified 2026-05-18; data January to March 2022. Read at source on 2026-10-10. Clicks needed are our estimate.
24. Ahrefs, search traffic study. https://ahrefs.com/blog/search-traffic-study/ . 2023-12-01. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
25. Ahrefs, how long it takes to rank. https://ahrefs.com/blog/how-long-does-it-take-to-rank-in-google-and-how-old-are-top-ranking-pages/ . 2025-05-15. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
26. Ahrefs, AI Overviews and clicks, update. https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-reduce-clicks-update/ . 2026-02-04. Read at source on 2026-10-10. The 2.4 times figure is our estimate.
27. Backlinko, Google click-through rates. https://backlinko.com/google-ctr-stats . Updated 2025-04-16. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
28. Pew Research Center, clicks when an AI summary appears. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/ . 2025-07-22. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
29. SparkToro, 2024 zero-click search study. https://sparktoro.com/blog/2024-zero-click-search-study-for-every-1000-us-google-searches-only-374-clicks-go-to-the-open-web-in-the-eu-its-360/ . 2024-07-02. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
30. Google Search Central, spam policies. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies . Updated 2026-08-28. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
31. Google Search Central, guidance on generative AI content. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/using-gen-ai-content . Updated 2026-10-01. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
32. Google, March 2024 search update. https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-update-march-2024/ . 2024-03-05, updated 2024-04-26. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
33. Google Search Status Dashboard. https://status.search.google.com/summary . Read at source on 2026-10-10.
34. Google, manual actions report and core updates. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9044175?hl=en (undated) and https://developers.google.com/search/updates/core-updates (updated 2025-12-10). Read at source on 2026-10-10.
35. Google Search Central, documentation updates. https://developers.google.com/search/updates . Entries dated 2026-04-14 and 2026-05-15. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
36. Google Search Central, guide to optimising for generative AI search. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide . Updated 2026-07-10. Read at source on 2026-10-10 from a fetched copy; the exact address was not confirmed.
37. Originality.ai, sites removed in March 2024. https://originality.ai/blog/google-march-2024-manual-action-ai-update-list . March 2024. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
38. Daniel Stanica, “The Great Blogging Collapse”. https://danielstanica.com/posts/Great-Blogging-Collapse . 2026-08-26. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
39. Press Gazette, Google traffic trends from Chartbeat data. https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-audience-and-business-data/google-traffic-down-2025-trends-report-2026/ . 2026-01-12. Read at source on 2026-10-10; secondary for Chartbeat’s data.
40. Search Engine Journal and PPC Land on Chartbeat data. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-search-decline-publishers-chartbeat/590681/ (2026-09-24) and https://ppc.land/small-publishers-lost-60-of-search-traffic-as-ai-reshapes-the-web/ (2026-04-18, reporting an Axios story of 2026-03-17). Both read on 2026-10-10; secondary for Chartbeat’s data.
41. Niche Pursuits, article about its interview with a site owner. https://www.nichepursuits.com/carrie-forrest-rebuilt/ . 2026-05-06. Article read on 2026-10-10; secondary for the interview.
42. AdMonsters, zero-click search and niche publishing. https://admonsters.com/zero-click-search-is-quietly-dismantling-the-economics-of-niche-publishing/ . 2025-04-16. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
43. BBC Future, Google’s algorithm and independent sites. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240524-how-googles-new-algorithm-will-shape-your-internet . 2024-05-25. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
44. HouseFresh, “How Google decimated HouseFresh”. https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/ . 2024-05-01. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
45. PPC Land, HouseFresh recovery. https://ppc.land/housefresh-achieves-notable-traffic-recovery-after-google-algorithm-impacts-2/ . 2025-10-11. Secondary.
46. Retro Dodo, “Google is killing Retro Dodo”. https://retrododo.com/google-is-killing-retro-dodo/ . 2024-04-03. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
47. DEV Community, “I auto-published 2,300 AI articles”. https://dev.to/martinschenk/i-auto-published-2300-ai-articles-google-buried-90-of-my-traffic-424o . 2026-07-16. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
48. TailRide, 22,000 AI pages. https://tailride.so/blog/google-penalty-22000-ai-pages . 2025-07-30. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
49. Going Awesome Places, attendee’s account of Google’s Web Creator event. https://goingawesomeplaces.com/google-web-creator-conversation-event-2024-retrospective/ . 2024-11-01. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
50. PPC Land on the Web Creator event and its follow-up. https://ppc.land/google-hosts-first-web-creator-event-as-publishers-report-70-100-traffic-losses-2/ (2024-11-04) and https://ppc.land/googles-broken-promise-to-publishers-the-ghosting-of-20-web-creators/ (2026-04-06). Secondary.
51. Dan Raine, Substack post. https://danraine.substack.com/p/the-enshitification-of-google-and . 2024-11-15. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
52. Flippa, Digital M&A Insights, first half of 2026. https://flippa.com/blog/digital-ma-insights-h1-2026/ . 2026-07-15. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
53. Empire Flippers, public listings data, sold listings. https://api.empireflippers.com/api/v1/listings/list?listing_status=Sold&limit=200 . Live data. Read at source on 2026-10-10. Counts, medians and shares are our estimate from the data.
54. Empire Flippers, public listings data, listings for sale, and listing pages. https://api.empireflippers.com/api/v1/listings/list?limit=200&listing_status=For%20Sale , https://empireflippers.com/listing/97326/ and https://empireflippers.com/listing/85988/ . Live data. Read at source on 2026-10-10. Counts and price multiples are our estimate.
55. Empire Flippers, marketplace page. https://empireflippers.com/marketplace/ . Live page. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
56. Empire Flippers, content-site sale multiples. https://empireflippers.com/you-can-sell-your-business-for-life-changing-money-in-2025-heres-the-secret/ . Updated 2025-07-11. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
57. Empire Flippers and Flippa, seller fees. https://empireflippers.com/sell-your-website/ and https://flippa.com/pricing . Live pages. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
58. BloggersPassion, income report. https://bloggerspassion.com/bloggers-passion-income-report/ . 2026-01-03. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
59. Fat Stacks, income reports. https://fatstacksblog.com/niche-site-income-report/ and https://fatstacksblog.com/income-reports/ . Reports to October 2023. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
60. Authority Hacker, home page. https://www.authorityhacker.com/ . Undated page. Read at source on 2026-10-10. Earlier version: archived copy of 2024-01-04, https://web.archive.org/web/20240104161218/https://www.authorityhacker.com/ , read on 2026-10-10.
61. Income School, Project 24. https://incomeschool.com/project24/ . Live page. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
62. Wealthy Affiliate, pricing and affiliate pages. https://www.wealthyaffiliate.com/pricing and https://www.wealthyaffiliate.com/affiliates . Live pages. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
63. Two travel bloggers’ first months on Journey by Mediavine. https://danny-cph.com/mediavine-journey-first-3-months/ (2026-01-05) and https://www.sunshineseeker.com/blogging/travel-blog-mediavine/ (updated 2025-12-04). Read at source on 2026-10-10.
64. Detailed, which companies rank for affiliate searches. https://detailed.com/google-control/ . Updated 2025-09-20; data from January 2024. Read at source on 2026-10-10 (first part of the page only).
65. Semrush and Bluehost affiliate programmes. https://www.semrush.com/lp/affiliate-program/en/ and https://www.bluehost.com/affiliates . Live pages. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
66. Tool and hosting prices. https://www.hostinger.com/pricing , https://ahrefs.com/pricing , https://koala.sh/pricing , https://surferseo.com/pricing/ and https://www.semrush.com/pricing/ . Live pages. Read at source on 2026-10-10. Ahrefs and Surfer prices could not be confirmed and are not quoted. Monthly totals are our estimate.
67. Ezoic, pricing. https://www.ezoic.com/pricing/ . Live page. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
68. FTC, Endorsement Guides: what people are asking. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking . Undated page. Read at source on 2026-10-10 through a summarising tool.
69. FTC, final rule on fake reviews and testimonials. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-rule-banning-fake-reviews-testimonials . 2024-08-14. Read at source on 2026-10-10 through a summarising tool.
70. FTC, LendEDU settlement. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2020/02/operators-comparison-shopping-website-agree-settle-ftc-charges-alleging-deceptive-rankings-financial . 2020-02-03. Read at source on 2026-10-10 through a summarising tool.
71. FTC, Lurn. https://www.ftc.gov/node/81724 (2023-09-28) and https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings/lurn (updated 2024-06-06). Read at source on 2026-10-10.
72. FTC, North America Marketing and Associates. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2012/05/ftc-action-halts-allegedly-deceptive-own-your-own-website-business-opportunity . 2012-05-14. Read at source on 2026-10-10. No longer cited in the text: the outcome of the case was not found.
73. FTC, Operation AI Comply. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/09/ftc-announces-crackdown-deceptive-ai-claims-schemes . 2024-09-25. Case page: https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings/ascend-ecom , last updated 2024-09-25. Both read on 2026-10-10 in archived copies at web.archive.org; ftc.gov refused our tools.
74. FTC, proposal on earnings claims for money-making opportunities. https://www.ftc.gov/node/87152 . 2025-01-13. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
75. IRS, Self-Employed Individuals Tax Center. https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/self-employed-individuals-tax-center . Read at source on 2026-10-10.
76. Reuters, republished by The Star, on the European publishers’ complaint. https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2026/02/10/google-hit-by-european-publishers039-complaint-to-eu-over-its-ai-overviews . 2026-02-10. Secondary.
77. Ahrefs, AI content and rankings, 600,000 pages. https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-generated-content-does-not-hurt-your-google-rankings/ . 2025-07-07. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
78. Semrush, AI Overviews study. https://www.semrush.com/blog/semrush-ai-overviews-study/ . Data for January to November 2025. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
79. TheWrap, Raptive’s Luminary tier. https://www.thewrap.com/raptive-adds-6-creators-1-million-ad-revenue/ . 2025-08-08. Read on 2026-10-10; secondary for Raptive’s statement.
80. Net Influencer, Raptive payouts and network size. https://www.netinfluencer.com/digital-media-company-raptive-crosses-4b-in-publisher-payouts/ . 2026-02-25. Read on 2026-10-10; secondary for Raptive’s statement.

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