My Blog Hit $5,000/Month — Exact Traffic and Revenue Breakdown (Month 18)

After 18 months of consistent publishing, my niche personal finance blog crossed $5K/month. Real numbers only:

Traffic: 47,000 monthly organic visitors (Google Search)

Revenue:

Mediavine display ads: $2,100 (RPM ~$44)

Affiliate commissions: $1,850 (Wise, NordVPN, Bluehost)

Digital product: $1,050 (spreadsheet template at $27)

What actually worked:

Programmatic SEO targeting long-tail comparison keywords. I rank for 200+ "X vs Y" articles in personal finance and SaaS tools.

Month 1: $0. Month 6: $180. Month 12: $1,900. Month 18: $5,000.

The growth accelerated when I stopped random articles and started topic clustering. Happy to answer anything.