44 Blogging Statistics for 2026

ByShane Tran Updated on

Every year someone declares blogging dead. Meanwhile bloggers keep publishing, and a growing share of them get paid for it. What changed is how readers arrive and how the money flows.

Here are 44 blogging statistics that show where things stand in 2026.

Top Blogging Statistics

  • There are approximately 600 million blogs on the internet, according to a widely cited WebTribunal estimate based on 2022 platform data (WebTribunal).
  • The average blog post is 1,333 words long, according to Orbit Media’s 2025 survey of 808 bloggers (Orbit Media, 2025 Blogger Survey).
  • Only 21% of the 808 bloggers Orbit Media surveyed in 2025 say their content delivers “strong marketing results,” while 60% report “some results” (Orbit Media, 2025 Blogger Survey).
  • Substack crossed 5 million paid subscriptions in March 2025, less than four months after passing 4 million (Substack, 5 Million Paid Subscriptions).
  • Food bloggers earned a median of $9,169 per month, the highest of any niche, followed by personal finance ($9,100), lifestyle/mommy ($5,174), and travel blogs ($5,000), in RankIQ’s 2022 study of 803 monetized blogs (RankIQ).
  • The share of bloggers who don’t use AI at all fell from 65% to just 5% in the 24 months leading up to Orbit Media’s August 2025 survey (Orbit Media, 2025 Blogger Survey).
  • By December 2025, the presence of a Google AI Overview correlated with a 58% lower average clickthrough rate for the top-ranking page, up from 34.5% in Ahrefs’ March 2025 study (Ahrefs).

How Many Blogs Are There?

No registry counts every blog, so the honest answer is an estimate. The one below comes with a clear vintage.

1. There are approximately 600 million blogs on the internet, according to a widely cited WebTribunal estimate based on 2022 platform data (WebTribunal).

2. Bloggers publish over 6 million blog posts every day, per the same WebTribunal estimate (WebTribunal).

Blogging Platform Statistics

Platform numbers come straight from the platforms themselves, each measuring its own slice of the blogging world.

3. WordPress runs 40.7% of all websites on the internet, per W3Techs’ September 2026 survey (W3Techs).

4. Over 409 million people view more than 20 billion pages on WordPress.com-hosted blogs each month (WordPress.com).

5. Ghost, the non-profit open-source publishing platform, runs at an $11.1 million annual run rate with 30,579 active paying customers, per its public live metrics in September 2026 (Ghost).

6. beehiiv publishers sent 28 billion emails and reached more than 255 million unique readers in 2025 (beehiiv).

Blogging Content and Publishing Statistics

Orbit Media has surveyed bloggers every year since 2014. Its 2025 wave covers what bloggers publish and how long it takes them.

7. The average blog post is 1,333 words long, according to Orbit Media’s 2025 survey of 808 bloggers (Orbit Media, 2025 Blogger Survey).

8. Bloggers spend an average of 3 hours 25 minutes writing a typical post in 2025, down from a peak of 4 hours 10 minutes in 2022 (Orbit Media, 2025 Blogger Survey).

9. About half of the bloggers Orbit Media surveyed publish two to four times per month in 2025 (Orbit Media, 2025 Blogger Survey).

10. 88% of bloggers include images in their posts, while 60% use statistics, 45% contributor quotes, 26% video, and just 7% audio (Orbit Media, 2025 Blogger Survey).

Source: Orbit Media, 2025 Blogger Survey — share of 808 bloggers surveyed, August 2025.

11. 49% of content marketers published original research in 2025, up from 25% in 2018 (Orbit Media, 2025 Blogger Survey).

What Works in Blogging?

Orbit Media asks every respondent whether their content delivers results, then cross-tabulates the answers against practices. The pattern is consistent: the less common the practice, the better it correlates.

12. 39% of bloggers who publish 2,000+ word articles report strong results, versus the 21% survey-wide benchmark (Orbit Media, 2025 Blogger Survey).

13. Only 21% of the 808 bloggers Orbit Media surveyed in 2025 say their content delivers “strong marketing results,” while 60% report “some results” (Orbit Media, 2025 Blogger Survey).

14. 37% of bloggers who publish multiple times per week report strong results, the highest of any publishing frequency in Orbit Media’s 2025 survey (Orbit Media, 2025 Blogger Survey).

15. 50% of bloggers who use seven or more visuals per post report strong results, yet only 4% of bloggers publish that many (Orbit Media, 2025 Blogger Survey).

16. 30% of bloggers who write guest posts report strong results, compared with 15% of those who don’t (Orbit Media, 2025 Blogger Survey).

17. Only 9% of bloggers usually or always collaborate with influencers, and 37% of that group reports strong results (Orbit Media, 2025 Blogger Survey).

18. 77% of bloggers define success as traffic and visibility, while only 7% measure it by ad revenue (Orbit Media, 2025 Blogger Survey).

That gap between chasing traffic and earning from it is where the next two sections go.

Blog Monetization Statistics

The platforms where writers get paid publish their own numbers. These figures come from company announcements and company data.

19. Substack crossed 5 million paid subscriptions in March 2025, less than four months after passing 4 million (Substack, 5 Million Paid Subscriptions).

20. Substack raised $100 million in Series C funding in July 2025, led by BOND and The Chernin Group (Substack, Series C Announcement).

21. More than 50 publishers earn over $1 million a year on Substack, according to company data shared with The Hollywood Reporter in May 2026 (The Hollywood Reporter).

22. Paid subscriptions to U.K.-based publishers and creators on Substack surpassed half a million as of May 2026, the platform’s second-largest market after the U.S. (The Hollywood Reporter).

23. Medium had its first profitable month ever in August 2024, after previously losing $2.6 million per month, according to a Fast Company interview with CEO Tony Stubblebine (Fast Company).

24. Medium has grown to more than 1 million paid subscribers, per a September 2025 Fast Company profile of CEO Tony Stubblebine (Fast Company).

25. Paid subscriptions on beehiiv generated $19 million for creators in 2025, up 138% from $8 million in 2024 (beehiiv).

26. For newsletters launched on beehiiv in 2025, the median time to earning a first dollar was 66 days (beehiiv).

How Much Do Bloggers Make?

Blogger income data is thinner than platform data. The figures below come from a niche study, ad network requirements, and creator surveys, each with its year and sample stated.

27. Food bloggers earned a median of $9,169 per month, the highest of any niche, followed by personal finance ($9,100), lifestyle/mommy ($5,174), and travel blogs ($5,000), in RankIQ’s 2022 study of 803 monetized blogs (RankIQ).

Source: RankIQ — top 4 of 14 niches, 803 monetized blogs, 2022 study.

28. Bloggers earning $7,500–$25,000 per month made 42.2% of their income from affiliate marketing and 33.3% from ads, per RankIQ’s 2022 study (RankIQ).

29. 72% of bloggers earning at least $2,000 per month used either Mediavine or AdThrive (now Raptive), according to RankIQ’s 2022 study (RankIQ).

30. To join Mediavine’s full ad network in 2026, a site must generate at least $5,000 in annual ad revenue (Mediavine).

31. Raptive accepts sites with at least 25,000 monthly pageviews in 2026 (Raptive).

32. 24% of creators had yet to make their first dollar from their creator business, and another 30% earned less than $10,000 in 2023, per Kit’s State of the Creator Economy survey of 1,008 creators (Kit).

33. 55% of full-time creators started making money from their creator business within their first year, per Kit’s 2024 State of the Creator Economy report (Kit).

34. Goldman Sachs Research projected the creator economy’s total addressable market could roughly double from $250 billion in 2023 to $480 billion by 2027 (Goldman Sachs).

35. Only about 4% of the world’s roughly 50 million creators earn more than $100,000 a year, according to Goldman Sachs Research in 2023 (Goldman Sachs).

AI and Blogging Statistics

AI moved from experiment to default in two years. The survey data separates how bloggers use it from what it does for them.

36. The share of bloggers who don’t use AI at all fell from 65% to just 5% in the 24 months leading up to Orbit Media’s August 2025 survey (Orbit Media, 2025 Blogger Survey).

37. Only about one in ten bloggers uses AI to write complete articles, per Orbit Media’s 2025 survey (Orbit Media, 2025 Blogger Survey).

38. 89% of B2B marketers who use AI apply it to content creation tools for generating or optimizing written content, per the Content Marketing Institute’s 2026 trends survey (Content Marketing Institute).

39. Among marketers using AI for content creation, 87% say productivity improved but only 39% say content performance did, per CMI’s 2026 survey (Content Marketing Institute).

AI writes faster. It does not, on this evidence, write better.

Blog Traffic and AI Search Statistics

Bloggers name search traffic as their top challenge, and click studies help explain why.

40. 63% of bloggers say attracting visitors from search is their top challenge in 2025, with reader engagement close behind at 56% (Orbit Media, 2025 Blogger Survey).

41. Roughly 18% of Google searches produced an AI summary in March 2025, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of 68,879 real user searches (Pew Research Center).

42. Google users clicked a traditional search result on just 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, versus 15% without one, per Pew Research Center tracking data from March 2025 (Pew Research Center).

43. Only 1% of visits to Google search pages with an AI summary ended with a click on a source link inside the summary itself (Pew Research Center).

44. By December 2025, the presence of a Google AI Overview correlated with a 58% lower average clickthrough rate for the top-ranking page, up from 34.5% in Ahrefs’ March 2025 study (Ahrefs).

Conclusion

Blogging in 2026 comes down to two questions: where readers come from, and who pays. Search clicks are harder to earn than they were, and the bloggers who earn a living tend to treat their blog as a business, with a clear niche, an owned audience, and more than one income stream. We’ll update this page as new data comes out.