Published by Jeremy. Last Updated on November 2, 2026.
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Welcome to the 140th entry into our monthly income and traffic report!
In this monthly update we share our traffic, earning, and spending figures for our blogs from the previous month so you can get a glimpse inside the business of blogging. In addition to sharing these for your use, by publishing our information we are also able to stay on track with our own goals for our business.
Prior to reading, it is worth noting that we feature two travel blogs in this report (one global and one local) and our income is based on the combined total of the two. We break down the traffic for each in this report for additional information.
October 2026 Travel Blog Traffic Report
Our traffic on Living the Dream for the month of October was roughly 24,300 page views. This was a decrease of 13% on a per day basis from September and an increase of 160% from October 2025.
Q4 is always the time of year where our travel blog starts to pull back in traffic ever-so-slightly, and this year is no different.
The reason we attribute to this has little to do with algorithm updates and more to do with general trends in travel such as Q4 being a generally slower travel season and folks not planning trips for next year in earnest until January (where we almost always see a jump in traffic).
That said, we’ve added more winter-focused destinations on our site in recent years, so this drop is becoming slightly less pronounced. But now we just have to buckle up and wait until Q1 to see if the bounce continues.
On the Discover the Burgh front, our traffic in October was approximately 125,000 page views. This was a decrease of 2% on a per day basis from September and an increase of 8% from October 2025.
Our local blog’s traffic, on the other hand, remained flat from September to October and is normally not plagued by a decrease in traffic in Q4. In fact, as the holidays approach, our traffic actually rises to its maximum through Christmas!
Generally we don’t see this kind of movement until mid-November, but holding steady with our traffic has been on par for past Septembers/Octobers so we’re okay with a bit of normality all things considered.
October 2026 Travel Blog Income Report
Our booked income for October was approximately $6,608, down approximately 30% per day basis from September and an decrease of 6% from October 2025. This income was approximately 90% from our local blog and 10% from our travel blog.
The breakdown includes the approximate following:
*CPM Ads: $3,373
*Sponsored Ads: $1,070
*Affiliates: $1,650
*Book Sales: $300
*Social Bonus: $215
October was a fairly strong month all around despite a notable decrease in affiliate revenue (likely stemming from most summer travel has now ended and 2027 planning has not begun for many).
still, we’re pretty pleased with where we are sitting so far for the year as we are on track to have a record year in sponsored income, book sales, and affiliate sales, as well as a turnaround in our display ad income (a three year high) primarily thanks to switching our ad network to Raptive last October.
It’s been a lot of work turning this ship around but it is entirely possible we could end 2026 in best year ever territory; however, it’ll be close!
Note: We run more websites in addition to these two travel blogs. This income and expense report only includes income from these two sites. These additional sites were started well after we started this income tracking series, and we have decided not to add those income streams in to keep this one focused on our travel blogs only.
October 2026 Expenses
Our dedicated blog expenses* for the month of October were roughly $316 with the following breakdown:
*Programs: $250
*Domains: $50
*Instagram Certification: $16
I was serious when I said I was done giving Meta advertising money, and I mean it. All our ads were turned off after they decided to fleece business pages for money, and I don’t intend on paying them until things change. (Yes, I know, the Instagram Certification is still there for the time being.)
Ironically, I don’t think much of our business performance has changed despite this, so it really has shown us that paying Meta didn’t have that great of a return on investment after all.
So, for now, our spending will be on the low side on average; however, as November approaches we have some big subscription renewals so we expect next month’s spending to be quite high.
*We do not share our travel/local expenses in this report. This can be anywhere from $100-$3,000+ per month extra, but your mileage may vary as the costs to generate content can vary wildly from blog to blog. We strive to only share true blog operating expenses here.
November 2026 Goals
November is going to be a rough month if only because we will be traveling for a great deal of it. So I suppose the goal for November will be getting more content ideas for our travel and wine blogs!
But apart from that, I am working on some back-end work like pitches and updating old articles on Discover the Burgh, and I think a good chunk of our home time will be to that effect whenever I can swing it in, as well as publishing new content to continue the Q4 push.
Will we move the needle much in November? Probably not, but that is quite fine. We need a break anyway.
Looking For Past Reports?
Unlike other websites that host an article series on this topic, we only have one article for our travel blog income and traffic reports.
We do this for a number of reasons, but it is mostly because we do not want dozens upon dozens of posts on our site on this one specific topic. Over time, the monthly details become irrelevant and trends are the only thing that matters.
To compensate for this, we update this article every month based on our current data and publish a graphical summary of previous months as well. If you have any questions about data from a specific month we are happy to share more details via email if you contact us.
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Hi! How long have you been planning a switch to Raptive? I’m also contemplating switching to Raptive from Mediavine. I have no qualms with Mediavine but have found their RPMs to consistently decline over the years. I’ve received countless emails from Raptive promising higher RPMs but a bit hesitant to change up my whole setup!
So I have had two blogs on Raptive since October 2025 and just got this one (Living the Dream) accepted last month and will be changing over from Journey to Raptive here in about two weeks.
I have some of my full thoughts at https://thisweekinblogging.com/mediavine-vs-raptive/ with my RPM breakdown for my local blog. In Q4 and Q1, my local Pittsburgh blog had excellent YoY increases with Raptive (+50-70%), but so far from April to now I’ve been down about 5-9% YoY. It’s hard for me to compare exactly considering the market at large, so I’m not sure if, for example, Mediavine RPMs have changed much on their own- so your mileage may vary there. I am trying to have my ad setup be virtually identical, for what it is worth.
I am enjoying Raptive and I do think I’m likely making more money overall than when I was on Mediavine, but I was also getting frustrated with other things beyond just the RPMs dropping that made me switch.
On the bright side, you had an increase of 25 percent income from last year. I read your updates with the stats and different information. I have been keeping up with your reports over the last year.
Very true. It’s sometimes hard to see the positives through everything, but you’re absolutely right. Thank you so much for following along too!
Do you think sponsorships or content creation packages for local businesses could be a primary source of income? Either companies paying you to promote their events / service / products on your socials/blog, or creating photo and video content for them to use in their own marketing? I’ve been thinking about how I could do something similar in my city without depending on ad revenue.
It definitely is an option and one I’m exploring more of now that ad income is down. I know many content creators who make way more money than me on sponsored social media posts with brands. But they’re also (mostly) shilling trash and I can’t bring myself to do that. The real struggle is dealing with the fact that local businesses tend to not have a high marketing budget (if any), so the vast majority of inquiries are for coverage for food or a gift card. I’m rolling out some new options that could work, but I haven’t really found something that checks all the boxes just yet.