Published by Jeremy. Last Updated on June 1, 2026.
Disclaimers: Our site uses demographic data, email opt-ins, display advertising, and affiliate links. Please check out our Terms and Conditions for more information. Listed prices and attraction details may have changed since our visit and initial publication.
Welcome to the 135th 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.
May 2026 Travel Blog Traffic Report
Our traffic on Living the Dream for the month of May was roughly 21,990 page views. This was an increase of 32% per day basis from April and an increase of 367% from May 2025.
Well I’ll be, our first month over 20,000 pageviews since March 2024!
In the last month or so I’ve been on a kick of updating old content by changing titles, updating for relevancy, and adding quick summary style boxes in a hundred or so posts (so far) and it seems like these are sending the right signals back to help with better rankings/AI citations and, naturally, traffic!
My goal has always been to try and hit the 25,000 pageview per month threshold to apply for the premium ad network, Raptive, and it seems like it is finally (finally) within our grasp. Could we hit this next month? If we had another 32% MoM increase, we absolutely will, but we also know how these things go and the final 3,000 pageviews could be just out of reach for a while.
Still, we continue on with our updates in hopes of hitting that coveted benchmark.
On the Discover the Burgh front, our traffic in May was approximately 122,250 page views. This was an increase of 4% on a per day basis from April and an increase of 21% from May 2025.
Discover the Burgh’s traffic also increased in May, but was a much more nominal, and seasonally accurate, jump. As May is generally a month of pleasant weather and a ton of local events, we often see a nice increase in traffic holding us through to the end of the year when things dive once Christmas ends.
This is also our third month in a row back over 100,000 monthly pageviews, which historically has been a good sign for the months to come. So while we are happy with this nominal increase, we are more excited for what the future holds because it prime local season!
May 2026 Travel Blog Income Report
Our booked income for May was approximately $8,500 an increase of 50% on a per-day basis from April and an increase of 35% from May 2025. This income was approximately 85% from our local blog and 15% from our travel blog.
The breakdown includes the approximate following:
*CPM Ads: $3,500
*Sponsored Ads: $2,545
*Affiliates: $2,000
*Book Sales: $213
*Social Bonus: $283
May was a wild month for income as we had an increase in many categories across the board- notably the trifecta of CPM ads, sponsored ads, and affiliates that we are striving to get into an equilibrium of a 33% split.
Still, we’ll take this one with CPM ads being a little top heavy, and we’re working next on expanding our other revenue streams plus a few we are circling back to after laying low for a while.
But if we could get the travel blog into Raptive? Well, buckle up. Just a few more pageviews and we may see a decent jump on CPM revenue rather quickly, too!
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.
May 2026 Expenses
Our dedicated blog expenses* for the month of May were roughly $790 with the following breakdown:
*Programs: $258
*Advertising: $150
*Instagram Certification: $16
*PO Box: $216
*Domains: $150
We had some extra spending this month with some programs and domains renewing, plus our PO Box renewal hitting as well. Still, we’re keeping our spending down to the baselines as we work on recovering; however, it does feel like if things keep moving we may be able to start focusing back on re-investing into new things.
*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.
June 2026 Goals
As with every month, I have more goals than I’m likely ever going to get through.
First, we’re still making a big push to update old articles on Living the Dream as well as publish new ones, and we hope to have our next set of updates more or less finished by the end of the month. The obvious outcome of this is hopefully increasing our traffic to apply to (and get accepted) in Raptive, but we’ll see there!
Second, I recently renewed my real estate license in PA and am reviving some of my marketing for leads there. I had set this one up a couple years ago to hopefully build up a new income stream, but things died out as I moved on to other projects. But now that the book is out and some major updates are winding down, it is time to revisit this one and we hope to get some new content out in the month.
Third, I’ll be heading out on a short vacation and speaking at TBEX Richmond, so this month will be truncated as that eats into my working time. If you’re heading to TBEX, please say hello and join my talk where I’ll be sharing lessons learned from publishing my guidebook!
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.
Have an existing blog that is in need of an upgrade? Check out the following services we personally use!
- BigScoots - Premium managed hosting with plans as low as $35/month.
- GeneratePress - A customizable theme designed for site speed.
- AdInserter - A widget logic plugin that is quite powerful.
- WP Rocket - An image and caching optimization plug-in.
- Mailerlite - Cost effective newsletter service.
- Keysearch - Keyword research tool for SEO.
Need SEO help? Check out our consulting services!
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.