What are the Top 10 Most Popular Bloggers and Blogs? Target Internet has been checking in on ten of the world’s highest-earning blogs once a year since 2018. We examined some of the elements influencing each major blogger’s performance using a list based on a Forbes listing of the world’s highest-income bloggers.
Blogging has recently evolved into a variety of formats, ranging from conventional, proprietary blogs (such as the one you’re reading) to blogging on third-party platforms like Medium and LinkedIn Pulse, and micro-blogging in social media captions. The blogging sector has been further divided into bloggers and social media influencers. Many individuals who would have become bloggers are now seeking jobs as influencers.
These shifts have given independent internet content providers additional economic and artistic options. The disadvantage is that blogging has grown more difficult to identify, and hence more difficult to report on as an industry. This influence has been so strong that the name “blogging” itself seems to be losing favour. According to Google Trends, worldwide search traffic for ‘blogging’ and associated terms hit its lowest point on record in June 2019 and has been almost flat since then.
One of the consequences of these movements is that it is no longer simple to get reliable figures on bloggers’ salaries from credible sources since publications such as Forbes have refocused on trendy subjects such as Instagrammers and YouTubers. We might have taken this as a hint to cease analyzing the performance of the highest-paid bloggers. We’ve been following the lives of the bloggers on last year’s list, and we still feel there’s a lot to say about their high-earning sites. Let’s take a close look at each prominent blog’s position in 2022 and see what we can learn about the condition of blogging from it.
The earnings statistics shown for each blogger are best-available estimates of Owler’s yearly profits in US dollars.
List the Top 10 Most Popular Bloggers and Blogs:
1. HuffPost (founded by Arianna Huffington): $143.1 million
Between 2005 and 2011, when The Huffington Post was bought by AOL for $315 million, Arianna Huffington, the creator of The Huffington Post (rebranded to HuffPost in 2017), developed her company from a current affairs commentary site to a full-fledged media empire.
Huffington was Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post until 2016 when she left to become CEO of Thrive Global, a corporate wellness blog and training provider. (She also serves on the boards of other companies, including Uber and Onex.)
HuffPost’s yearly income is expected to be $500 million, putting it in the major leagues by most conventional newspaper standards, let alone in comparison to other blogs.
HuffPost’s scattergun approach to digital content generation and dissemination has been a crucial element in its success. The site has generally published 600 to 1,000 stories every day, with 10 to 100 of them becoming viral.
Blogs have always been defined by their capacity to attract readers, and HuffPost succeeded in this regard with the right approach at the right moment. It is unclear if a comparable method applied in 2022 will allow a blog to expand to the same level as HuffPost, given improvements to search engine algorithms have raised the quality of material normally required to acquire a large number of views via organic search.
2. Engadget (founded by Peter Rojas; now edited by Dana Wollman): $47.5 million
Engadget covers a wide variety of technology subjects, such as smartphone games and robots, as well as search engines and wearables. Peter Rojas, a former Gizmodo editor, created the site in 2004. Rojas quit Engadget in 2008 and has subsequently shifted his attention to venture to invest. Engadget, like the Huffington Post, was purchased by AOL in 2011 and is currently owned by Verizon Media.
With an estimated yearly income of $47.5 million, Engadget is at the top of the tech media league table.
Affiliate links included in product reviews are a popular method of monetization for Engadget. The links are put inside a static header as a CTA button labelled “Buy now.”
Take note of how prominent affiliate-revenue-generating product reviews are on Engadget’s main menu. This is a blog that has figured out what works best for it commercially and has pushed forward with that strategy. Whether your site is geared toward affiliate income or other money streams, a valuable takeaway from Engadget is that emphasizing revenue-generating components in your blog design may pay dividends.
3. Moz (founded by Rand Fishkin; now edited by Morgan McMurray): $44.9m
Moz is an SEO community and service provider, including SEO tools, conferences, and large-scale digital publishing businesses.
Moz’s material is more than simply content marketing – it’s one of the top magazines in the subject of search marketing, led by a very prominent blog.
Case studies, industry reports, and ‘Whiteboard Friday,’ an instructive vlog series formerly given by Rand Fishkin, the company’s creator, are all popular parts of Moz’s blogging. Fishkin, who still does Whiteboard Friday vlogs on occasion, went on to a new startup, SparkToro, an audience information provider, in 2018.
Moz’s main product isn’t blogging. However, we believe it is appropriate to put Moz on our list of the highest-earning bloggers since the brand’s blog is one of the most prominent and important publications in digital marketing. Furthermore, Moz’s digital publication is a crucial lead generator for the firm, contributing to its $44.9 million in yearly revenues.
Moz has shown how a company may sell goods and services by including blogging in its offering. Rather than slapping a blog onto its website and infrequently uploading things there, this brand has built one of the top blogs in its business. Moz has become a destination and focal point for the SEO community, owing primarily to its blogging.
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4. PerezHilton (Perez Hilton): $41.3m
Perez Hilton (born Mario Armando Lavandeira, Jr.) is a media personality and celebrity blogger. Perez Hilton, Hilton’s gossip site, is one of the most well-known names in entertainment journalism.
Since 2005, Perez Hilton has published tales on celebrities such as Lady Gaga, Johnny Depp, and Miley Cyrus, while also immersing himself in celebrity society. The Perez Hilton blog’s most popular sections are gossip pieces, picture galleries, and quizzes. Overall, the material of the blog is comparable to that of a standard celebrity/gossip magazine, such as Closer or Heat.
One of the Perez Hilton blog’s most powerful assets is its successful use of celebrities to increase interaction with the blog’s content. Renowned names and famous faces are highlighted via unique celeb category titles and extensive usage of paparazzi and red-carpet photographs. This demonstrates a strong awareness of what makes the blog fascinating – something that every blogger should find out about their site.
5. Copyblogger (founded by Brian Clark; now edited by Stefanie Flaxman): $35.1m
Copyblogger is a blogging blog (and other forms of content writing). It has been called “the world’s most influential content marketing blog.” The blog’s main features include writing suggestions, analysis of current developments in content marketing, and podcast episodes.
Given that Copyblogger is a copywriting site, it is under intense pressure to do what it teaches and generate effective content. Its articles generally achieve that standard, with a highly clear structure and intriguing, conversational writing.
6. Mashable: $30m (founded by Pete Cashmore; now edited by Jessica Coen)
Mashable is a media and technology blog founded in 2005 by Pete Cashmore, a 19-year-old web consultant from Aberdeen.
Mashable’s content spans a wide variety of themes, including technology, science, and social good. Amplify, a content series “devoted to raising awareness, emphasizing concerns, and taking action” on racial equality issues, is one of the blog’s main features.
Mashable Bargains, a part of the blog that contains deals, reviews, product roundups, and other commercially oriented content, is another intriguing innovation – this time from a monetization aspect.
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7. TechCrunch (created by Michael Arrington & Keith Tears; now edited by Matthew Panzarino): $22.5m
TechCrunch is well-known for providing in-depth coverage of startup news and sophisticated technology subjects. The blog’s material is largely focused on the transactions of tech titans such as Alphabet, Amazon, Uber, and the usual suspects.
Between 2007 and 2015, TechCrunch hosted the prominent startup database Crunchbase, which is currently maintained by a different company.
8. Envato Tuts+ (founded by Collis Ta’eed): $10m
Envato Tuts+ is a massive tutorial, course, guide, and eBook library delivered in blog format. It includes topics such as coding and web design, business, photography, music, and graphic design. Some Envato Tuts+ material is accessible for free, while others need a membership.
Collis Ta’eed started Envato, the business behind Tuts+, in 2006. The company’s headquarters are in Melbourne, Australia.
9. Smashing Magazine (founded by Sven Lennartz and Vitaly Friedman): $5.2m
We’re willing to wager that if you’re a web developer or designer, you’ve read a piece published by Smashing Magazine. This blog, which was founded in 2006, has evolved to become one of the major sources of instruction and criticism on all things online, from information architecture to website aesthetics.
Smashing Magazine‘s success is largely due to its membership program, which invites readers to pay between $3 and $7 per month for premium content. Interestingly, the site features a live member counter on its homepage, which we think is a brilliant approach for readers to evaluate the worth of their monetary contribution to the blog.
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10. Gizmodo: $4.8m (founded by Peter Rojas; now edited by Kelly Bourdet)
Gizmodo, the second site on our list started by Peter Rojas, is a design, technology, science, and sci-fi blog with multiple editions servicing various regions of the globe, including Brazil, Japan, and the United Kingdom. It’s an excellent history of geek culture, covering everything from the newest Huawei smartphone designs to fan theories on the original Star Wars trilogy. The ‘Giz Ask’ content series, which goes to great efforts to solve scientific teasers like “Could teleporting ever work?” and “Do animals practice revenge?” is a particularly prominent element of Gizmodo US. Shortcode.
