12 Personal Finance Blogs Income Reports

The personal finance niche is lucrative mainly because of the high ad revenues and affiliate commissions. There are also many lucrative sub-niches within the personal finance niche including credit cards, stock trading, or insurance.

A personal finance blog can help you make an income if you have a passion for teaching others how to manage their money.

The top bloggers in this niche can earn over a million dollars a year through ad revenue, affiliate commissions, and selling products and services. This is 20 times more than what an average American earns in a year.

While these incomes are not typical, they show what is possible with hard work and dedication.

Examples of successful personal finance blogs

In this article, you will see 13 examples of personal finance bloggers who are making a full-time or part-time income from blogging. The article includes short bios of personal finance bloggers, earnings per month, blog traffic, monetization methods, profitability, and blog age.

The information comes from income reports from personal finance bloggers. The featured income reports cover a period from 2016 to 2021.

Quick insights from personal finance blogs

Here are some quick insights from the income reports:

• Personal finance bloggers on this list mostly made money from affiliate marketing and selling their own products.
• Some of the popular personal finance niches included retire-early (FIRE), investing, and personal finance for retirees.
• The highest-earning personal finance blogger on this list (Michelle Schroeder-Gardner) made $139,233 in one month.

Personal Finance Blogs Income and Traffic Reports

Let us explore the personal finance blogs traffic and earnings reports in detail.

1. Making Sense of Cents

Making Sense of Cents is a personal finance and lifestyle blog started by Michelle Schroeder-Gardner. She started her blog to keep track of her progress in clearing a $38,000 student loan debt. Making Sense of Cents is one of the better-known blogging success stories and has been featured by various mainstream media outlets such as Forbes, Business Insider, and Oprah. The success of her blog has enabled her to travel full-time with her husband.

• Monthly income: $139,233 (January 2017 income report)
• Monthly traffic: 790,000 Pageviews
• RPM: $176
• Income sources: Ad Revenue (2.4%), Affiliate Income (50.2%), Sponsorship (12.2%), Products (35.2%)
• Profitability: 94.2%
• Blog age at the time of the report: 5 years (Started in 2012)

2. Believe in a Budget

Believe in a Budget is a personal finance blog that was started by Kristin Larsen. She was able to quit her job as an interior architect and designer after only 10 months of blogging. In her third year of blogging, she made $290,000. She made most of her money in 2018 from selling courses on her blog

• Monthly income: $109,879 (April 2018 income report)
• Monthly traffic: 200,000 Pageviews
• RPM: $549
• Income sources: Ad Revenue (0.9%), Affiliate Income (7.8%), Products (91.3%)
• Profitability: 93.6%
• Blog age at the time of the report: 3.3 years (Started in 2015)

3. DollarSprout

DollarSprout was started by two Virginia Tech alumni, Jeff Proctor and Ben Huber. Before launching DollarSprout, Jeff worked in private wealth management while Ben worked as a clinical administrator for a regional hospital network. DollarSprout aims to help readers maximize their earning potential, whether that’s through finding a side hustle, moving up in their career, or building passive income streams. They made most of their income in 2018 from affiliate marketing.

• Monthly income: $104,097 (December 2018 income report)
• Monthly traffic: 742,077 Pageviews
• RPM: $140
• Income sources: Ad Revenue (1%), Affiliate Income (98.3%), Products (0.7%)
• Profitability: 81.7%
• Blog age at the time of the report: 3.7 years (Started in 2015)

4. Busy Budgeter

The Busy Budgeter was started by Rosemarie Groner. Rosemarie spent 10 years as a state trooper before quitting her job to start a home day-care business so that she could stay home with her son. She started her blog to help people budget and save money so that they could enjoy a simpler life. Most of her income in 2017 came from selling products (workbooks and cheat sheets).

• Monthly income: $86,439 (January 2017 income report)
• Monthly traffic: 505,239 Pageviews
• RPM: $171
• Income sources: Ad Revenue (5.5%), Affiliate Income (22.3%), Sponsorship (4.2%), Products (68%)
• Profitability: 76.9%
• Blog age at the time of the report: 2.3 years (Started in 2014)

5. Millennial Money Man

Millennial Money Man is a personal finance blog started by Bobby Hoyt, a former high school band director. He was inspired to start blogging about personal finance after paying off a $40,000 debt in 18 months. In 2018, he made most of his money from selling courses on Facebook ads and blogging.

• Monthly income: $53,212 (July 2018 income report)
• Monthly traffic: 178,934 Pageviews
• RPM: $279
• Income sources: Ad Revenue (1.9%), Affiliate Income (4.7%), Products (80.6%), Services (12.8%)
• Profitability: 87.1%
• Blog age at the time of the report: 3.5 years (Started in 2015)

6. The Savvy Couple

The Savvy Couple was started by Kelan and Brittany Kline in 2016. In three years, they were able to pay off $25,000 in student loans and grow The Savvy Couple into a multi-six figure online business. The blog has enabled them to quit their full-time jobs and accumulate a net worth of over $200,000 by age 29.

• Monthly income: $43,547 (May 2019 income report)
• Monthly traffic: 250,000 Pageviews
• RPM: $174
• Income sources: Ad Revenue (11.6%), Affiliate Income (8.6%), Sponsorship (77.5%), Products (2.3%)
• Profitability: 91.1%
• Blog age at the time of the report: 2.8 years (Started in 2016)

7. Caroline Vencil

Caroline Vencil is a personal finance blog started by Caroline Vencil in 2015 to share strategies she and her husband used to enable them to live on a $17,000 a year income for four years. In just three years of blogging, she was able to make more in one month than they used to make a year.

• Monthly income: $25,871 (November 2018 income report)
• Monthly traffic: n/a
• RPM: n/a
• Income sources: Ad Revenue (7.3%), Affiliate Income (37.8%), Products (54.9%)
• Profitability: 88.6%
• Blog age at the time of the report: 3.3 years (Started in 2015)

8. Finsavvy Panda

Finsavvy Panda was started by Ling Tran from Toronto, Canada, to document her financial journey as well as make some extra money. After her first year of blogging, she was consistently earning $10,000 a month. In 2020, she was making over $20,000 a month after only 3 years of blogging.

• Monthly income: $22,343 (November 2020 income report)
• Monthly traffic: n/a
• RPM: n/a
• Income sources: Ad Revenue (22.7%), Affiliate Income (68%), Products (9.3%)
• Profitability: 93.2%
• Blog age at the time of the report: 3.3 years (Started in 2017)

9. The Money Ninja

The Money Ninja was started by John Pham from Boston, MA (US). A son of Vietnamese immigrants, John has made over a million dollars outside of his real job. He uses his blog to show readers how to make more money, save it better, and spend it more wisely. The Money Ninja made over 99% of its income in 2020 from affiliate marketing, which explains the exceptionally high RPM.

• Monthly income: $10,385 (Jan-March 2020 income average)[ 3-month total $31,040.48]
• Monthly traffic: 47,594 Pageviews [3-month traffic]
• RPM: $655
• Income sources: Ad Revenue (0.5%), Affiliate Income (99.5%)
• Profitability: n/a
• Blog age at the time of the report: 4.2 years (Started in 2015)

10. Stock Millionaires

Stock Millionaires is a niche blog that was started by Russell and Maleah Barbour to review stock trading and investing educational products. Within 3 years of blogging, the blog was making over $7k with only 10,000 Pageviews.

• Monthly income: $7,233 (February 2018 income report)
• Monthly traffic: 10,000 Pageviews
• RPM: $723
• Income sources: Affiliate Income (100%)
• Profitability: n/a
• Blog age at the time of the report: 3.2 years (Started in 2015)

11. Freedom in a Budget

Freedom in a Budget is a personal finance and lifestyle blog started by Kelly Anne Smith from South Florida (US) as a side hustle. Kelly and her husband used the income from their blog to pay off debt, pay for their wedding, buy a new car and save for a down payment for their first home.

• Monthly income: $5,046 (May 2021 income report)
• Monthly traffic: n/a   
• RPM: n/a
• Income sources: Ad Revenue (34.5%), Affiliate Income (54.4%), Products (8.4%), Services [Coaching] (1.8%), Other [Donations] (0.9%)
• Profitability: n/a
• Blog age at the time of the report: 4.7 years (Started in 2016)

12. The Practical Saver

The Practical Saver was started by Allan Liwanag, a Maryland (US) based analyst to share ideas on paying off debts, budgeting, and making money. He managed to earn over $5k a month in just 8 months of blogging, with the majority of his income coming from affiliate marketing and sponsorships.

• Monthly income: $5,243 (September 2016 income report)
• Monthly traffic: 174,882 Pageviews
• RPM: $30
• Income sources: Ad Revenue (15%), Affiliate Income (52.8%), Sponsorship (32.2%)
• Profitability: n/a
• Blog age at the time of the report: 8 months (Started in 2016)

13. The Money Habit

The Money Habit was started by J.P. Livingston, an anonymous personal finance blogger who retired at the age of 28 with 2.25 million dollars. In 2017, J.P was able to make $62,326 blogging only 5 hours a week. In 2017, she made over 96% of her income from affiliate marketing.

• Monthly income: $5,139 (Average for 2017)
• Monthly traffic: 100,000 Pageviews (Average for 2017)
• RPM: $52
• Income sources: Ad Revenue (3.5%), Affiliate Income (96.5%)
• Profitability: n/a
• Blog age at the time of the report: 1.4 years (Started in 2016)

Final Thoughts

The personal finance niche is highly lucrative as can be seen from the high RPMs. However, it is also quite competitive and you will be going against big sites in this space.

If you are passionate about personal finance, you can start a blog in this niche. To reduce your competition, choose a less competitive sub-niche or focus on a particular audience (for example, personal finance for retirees).

With a bit of strategic planning, you can make good money blogging about personal finance.

You can easily start a blog these days even if you lack the technical skills. If you intend to make money from your blog, you need to set it up correctly from the start.

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