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Mediavine Requirements (Updated 2024 Guide)

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  By Forrest McCall | Last Updated:  March 2, 2022

Are you a blogger looking for a top-tier ad network to grow your income?

Mediavine is certainly one to be on the lookout for. They offer industry-leading reporting, strong RPMs, and site speed benefits to help your site grow.

Unfortunately, it isn't available to everyone. Only serious bloggers can be accepted into Mediavine's ad network. So what makes you a serious blogger?

In this post, I'll explore the Mediavine requirements needed to get accepted and join Mediavine, some Mediavine alternatives to help you make money blogging, and much more. Let's get started!

Mediavine Requirements

What is Mediavine?

Mediavine is an ad network that allows bloggers and other online publishers to display advertisements on their sites to make money online.

Mediavine sites can make a significant income. In fact, while my site was running with Mediavine, I was able to make over $9,000 per month just from Mediavine!

Most bloggers strive to reach Mediavine levels and if you put in the effort, you're sure to get there.

Mediavine has been around since 2004 and started managing ads in 2013. They have over 10,000 publishers, making them a trusted platform to make money from your blog or website.

Blogging Resources:

How Does Mediavine Work?

Mediavine is a programmatic display ad platform that uses AI along with other tools to maximize earnings for your blog.

Because they have direct relationships with thousands of advertisers they can offer the best rates available.

Mediavine uses a variety of display ad slots like sticky bar ads, sidebar ads, video ads, and in-content ads to help you optimize your earnings.

Mediavine Application Requirements

What Are Mediavine's Requirements?

Mediavine recently changed its requirements for new websites to be accepted into the network.

Traffic Requirement

Now, you'll need to have 50,000 monthly sessions to join Mediavine. Mediavine claims that the 50,000 sessions should equal around 60,000 monthly pageviews. But it's important to note that they are looking at unique sessions, not pageviews for the minimum traffic requirement.

But there are some other Mediavine requirements you'll need to pass to be accepted into the platform.

Website Quality

One of the main requirements is website quality. Creating quality content is essential to become a successful blogger most of the time anyway, but if you do somehow manage to gain a significant amount of blog traffic without high-quality content, there's a chance you might not meet the Mediavine requirements.

While they do not state exactly what high-quality sites are, it can be inferred that your content is original, unique, and engaging. This might also mean the blog traffic coming in must be from quality sources.

Good Standing with Google

In order to meet the Mediavine requirements, your site must be in good standing with Google. This means that you don't have any issues with Google. Because Mediavine uses Google ad partners – in order to display ads with Mediavine you must be in good standing with Google.

Long-Form Content

Another aspect of qualifying for Mediavine is having long-form content.

Long-form content is not only a good way to drive traffic to your blog, but it's also required to qualify for Mediavine.

This means that your content is not short pieces with few paragraphs and headings. Long-form content is usually over 1,000 words.

This doesn't mean that you can't have shorter blog posts, but it's important to have some posts that are longer.

When Does Mediavine Pay?

One of the downsides to Mediavine is its payment schedule.

Mediavine pays on a Net 65 schedule. This means you'll get paid 65 days after the earnings occur.

When compared to other ad networks, this is much longer. For example, Ezoic pays on a Net 30 basis and Adthrive pays on a net 45 basis.

With Mediavine, you'll have to wait longer to get your money than other platforms.

How to Apply to Mediavine

Applying to Mediavine is quite simple. You'll just need to follow these steps:

  1. Visit Mediavine.com
  2. Click “Apply”
  3. Fill out the Google Form with your information
  4. Click “Submit
  5. Wait!

How Long Does it Take to Get Approved with Mediavine?

The approval process with Mediavine is pretty fast. You'll need to provide them with a Google Analytics report to prove your traffic coming in.

Once the team reviews your site and proves your monthly 50,000 sessions, they will reach out to you about preparing your website to launch the ads.

The Mediavine approval process takes around 1 to 2 weeks and it can take over 1 month before your ads will go live.

If your website is using WordPress, you can grant the team access by creating a user for them.

Before going live, the team will remove any other ads on your site because you're only permitted to display Mediavine ads on your site once signing the contract.

The team will give you a “Go Live Date” indicating what day your Mediavine ads will be live on your site. They complete this on Tuesday through Thursday in case anything goes wrong during the setup.

You will immediately gain instant access to your Mediavine dashboard that details your earnings, page views (according to Google Analytics), and more.

Related: Make Money with Digital Real Estate

Can You Leave Mediavine After Being Approved?

Once you've been approved for MEdiavine and your ads are showing, you'll need to give them a 60-day notice before removing their ads from your site.

Failure to do this could result in a loss in ad revenue.

Mediavine Alternatives

If you're looking to make more money from your blog, there are plenty of ad networks to help grow your ad revenue.

Adthrive Ad Management

Adthrive

Adthrive is one of the most popular ad networks for large bloggers looking to boost their ad revenue.

Unfortunately, the requirements for Adthrive are even higher than Mediavine.

To qualify for Adthrive, you'll need 100,000 sessions.

In addition to the traffic requirements, you'll need to have Google Analytics installed on your site, your site must be secure (HTTPS), your content must be original, and you cannot have any problems with previous ad providers.

Adthrive promises higher RPMs than Mediavine but you'll need more traffic to get accepted.

After switching from Mediavine to Adthrive, my RPMs increased around 5% to 10% although this seemed to be because Adthrive displays more ads.

In my experience, the reporting and dashboard for Adthrive are less visually appealing and you'll have to wait until 10am ET to discover the previous day's performance.

Ezoic Ad Management

Ezoic

Ezoic is another solid option when it comes to making money from your blog.

While the RPMs aren't quite as good as Mediavine or Adtrhive, they're much stronger than other ad networks like Google Adsense. You can expect to earn around half of what you would earn on Mediavine or Adthrive, but double what you would earn with Google Adsense.

The requirements for Ezoic are much less than Mediavine or Adthrive. Previously, you needed at least 10,000 monthly sessions to get accepted into Ezoic. Now, there are no minimum amount of page views needed.

You'll need to have Google Analytics installed on your site and your content must be original. You'll also need to be in good standing with Google Ad Manager.

Ezoic works by letting AI help to guide where to place ads on your site to maximize earnings.

The setup for Ezoic can be much more cumbersome than other ad providers. With Ezoic, you'll have to create placements and tell the platform where to place them. They do have some AI placements but I've found they can be placed in unappealing locations.

Google Adsense Ad Management

Google Adsense

Google Adsense is one of the original ad networks that many bloggers used to make money from their traffic.

If you're just getting started creating content, using Google Adsense might be your best option.

The RPMs for Google Adsense tend to be low, but depending on how many page views you get, it can be a sizable income.

This ad provider is a solid option for new bloggers looking to make a little money from their digital side hustle.

Get Accepted into Mediavine

How to Qualify For Mediavine within 2 Years

Most new bloggers strive to qualify for Mediavine at some point in their blogging career. Below are some ways you can expedite the process.

Master SEO

Getting organic traffic to your site is one of the best ways to reach the traffic numbers needed to get accepted into Mediavine.

This means you'll need to focus on low competition keyword research to find opportunities you can easily rank on the first page of Google for. By using SEO tools you can find these low competition keywords that are in your niche.

For example, when using a tool like Ahrefs, you can look at what pages your competitors are ranking for and see if you can write a stronger, more comprehensive post about the same topic.

You'll also need to work on link building to build authority for your site in the eyes of search engines. Gaining links to a blog post can be difficult and take a significant amount of work, however this can have a profound impact on your rankings.

Growing organic traffic can take some time, but it's a great traffic source for food bloggers, finance bloggers, and those in the lifestyle niche.

Not all traffic is the same. Organic traffic can be among the best because if you match the searcher's intent, you can keep them reading your content and growing your page views.

Utilize Social Media

Another method to grow your traffic is utilizing social media platforms like Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram Stories, and Facebook.

While Pinterest traffic has become more difficult to grow, it can still be valuable for smaller publishers. Creating pins can take less than a few minutes by using a tool like Canva. This design software is very affordable and a great way to create pins and featured images for your blog post.

For example, if you run a food blog, creating a pin for each recipe can be a great way to drive quality traffic to your blog.

By using other social media platforms you further grow your traffic and expedite your journey to Mediavine.

Related: How to Become a Pinterest Manager

Write Frequently

Creating engaging content is essential for every blogger – whether you're a lifestyle publisher or food blogger.

The amount of content you can produce will have a large impact on how fast you can get approved for Mediavine and reach the Mediavine requirements.

Every time you publish a new post it has a chance to rank on search engines and gain traffic to your blog.

For new bloggers, it's common to publish a new blog post once per week. While this is a good cadence, if you could boost this number to 2 or 3 times per week, you can reach the Mediavine requirements much quicker.

Update Old Blog Posts

Updating posts is a great way to bring new traffic to some of your older pieces of content.

If you have a ton of old posts from the past year, updating these with fresh content can be an excellent way to reach the 50,000 sessions needed to reach Mediavine requirements.

This can take some time to complete but it's well worth it. If your content is already ranking on the bottom of page 1 or on page 2 of Google, adding some additional valuable content and updating the published date can do wonders to your rankings.

Some of my posts have gone from the bottom of page 1 to the first position in Google just by updating the post!

Use Email Marketing to Grow Traffic

By utilizing email marketing software you can easily create marketing emails to send to your readers to grow your traffic.

If there's a specific blog post that's doing well, consider linking to it in your emails to further increase your traffic.

By creating a nurture sequence, you can keep your readers coming back to your site.

It's important to note that you'll need some method to acquire an email list. For example, my site uses a free printable to gain subscribers.

Keep Site Speed in Mind

Site speed is extremely important for your organic traffic and increasing your page views.

In fact, Google now uses how fast your site loads as a ranking factor. If you're having difficulty with your posts ranking – you could have an issue with your blog's loading time.

Site speed is the result of numerous factors, including your site's theme, hosting, and the content within your blog post. If you're having trouble finding a fast theme, you might consider using your own WordPress theme that removes a lot of the bloat from your sites.

Check with your hosting provider to see if they have better plans to increase your site speed.

Connect with Other Bloggers

Joining Facebook groups and connecting with other bloggers is a great way to grow your traffic and reach a larger audience.

By making these valuable connections, you can build links, partner on social media, or utilize email marketing to gain traffic to a blog post.

Blogging is much more social than you might think! Be sure to connect with fellow bloggers as much as possible to reach your goals.

Final Thoughts on Mediavine Requirements

Mediavine is an excellent ad management platform that many bloggers can use to increase their website revenue.

The requirements are quite stringent to be accepted.

You'll need 50,000 sessions each month according to your Google Analytics account in addition to being in good standing with Google's Ad Manager and having unique, valuable content.

If you're on a journey to reach the Mediavine requirements, be patient. It can take some time to grow your traffic enough to get accepted. It took my blog two years before reaching these levels!

If you stick with it, Mediavine can have a profound impact on the revenues for your online business – so don't give up!

Forrest is a personal finance, entrepreneurship, and investing expert dedicated to helping others obtain life long wealth. He has a Bachelor's degree in business and has been featured in many popular publications including Forbes, Business Insider, Bankrate, CNET Money, and many others. To learn more about Forrest, visit the About Us Page for more info.
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