Published by Jeremy. Last Updated on February 2, 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 131st 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 blogs in this report (one global travel and one local travel) 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.
Note: In July 2023, Google switched from Universal Analytics to GA4 reporting. We use custom templates to ensure we are still reporting on page views as our traffic metric; however, it is possible this figure is different slightly from the past.
January 2026 Travel Blog Traffic Report
Our traffic on Living the Dream for the month of January was roughly 13,840 page views. This was an increase of 12% per day basis from December and an increase of 122% from January 2025.
Living the Dream has been on a nice little path towards increased traffic since June, and we are here for it. Although we normally see a bump in traffic in January when folks are starting to plan trips again, we are excited to see the YoY numbers most of all as we are having some vast improvement all around.
In fact, as I was getting a little delayed in writing this update, the first day of February was my best traffic day in nearly a year which is an encouraging sign all around. So, while still down significantly from pre-COVID numbers, it feels like we’re finally on the right track once again.
On the Discover the Burgh front, our traffic in January was approximately 83,930 page views. This was an decrease of 40% on a per day basis from December and a decrease of 10% from January 2025.
On the surface, Discover the Burgh looks like it was hit pretty bad in January; however, there is an explanation for that. The big snowstorm in the USA had everyone in Pittsburgh locked up for well over a week, and our traffic was significantly impacted by this.
Judging from the normalized traffic both before and after the storm, we likely lost upwards of 20,000 page views that we otherwise would’ve likely received. Had the storm not come through, we likely would’ve been down from December (as we always are), but otherwise likely would’ve been up about 10% YoY- so we’ll take some solace in that all the same.
February will be a must better judge of where things are, if we are honest.
January 2026 Travel Blog Income Report
Our booked income for January was approximately $4,161 a decrease of 50% on a per-day basis from December and a decrease of 8% from January 2025. This income was approximately 85% from our local blog and 15% from our travel blog.
The breakdown includes the approximate following:
*CPM Ads: $2,000
*Sponsored Content: $50
*Affiliates: $1,550
*Book Sales: $250
*Social Bonus: $311
All told, January had some good and some bad to it when it came to income.
On the bad side, the loss of traffic on our Pittsburgh site during the snowstorm likely reduced our income by at least $1,000 for the month, if not much, much more.
On the good side, we’re seeing vast improvements in income, particularly both in display ad revenue (thanks to higher RPMs from switching to Raptive) as well as in affiliate income. Throw on some book sales and a solid social bonus month, and we earned a decent amount for the traffic that we had.
Suffice it to say, January is always bad, but if this is a sign of where things are heading for the year, the rest of 2026 is looking up.
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.
January 2026 Expenses
Our dedicated blog expenses* for the month of January were roughly $712 with the following breakdown:
*Programs: $550
*Advertising: $146
*Instagram Certification: $16
January held our spending from December somewhat consistently as we had a few major programs renew. I cut some expenses by getting rid of ChatGPT and knocking back our Facebook advertising, but all around was a pretty standard month for us as we try and keep spending low.
2026 will be a year where I will be cutting even more services that were not necessary and dropping some domains, so I hope to keep my spending as minimal as possible moving forward.
*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.
February 2026 Goals
February will be making a big push to get traffic to grow at all costs on our travel blog, as we’re seeing great momentum there. We hope to be able to build to hit the 25k page view mark soon in order to apply for Raptive, which could add another spark of income there.
Beyond that, we’re going to be working a lot behind the scenes on the local blog, including building out our business directory that we launched in 2025 but then put on the backburner for the book launch, plus trying to get the book in more stores.
It feels like things are mostly moving in the right direction right now, so we’re going to keep the wind in our sails and ride it while we can!
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.