Honestly, three income streams. Eighteen months. One very organized Notion database. Let me walk you through exactly what happened when I ran display ads, chased sponsorships, and built an affiliate portfolio on my tech content side by side — and which one actually moved the needle on my real hourly rate.

The Setup: Why I Started Tracking Everything

I work a 9-to-5 as a backend engineer. My side hustle started as a small blog reviewing developer tools, then grew into a YouTube channel once I got comfortable on camera. Like most people grinding out content in their off-hours, I wanted to know whether the time I was putting in was actually worth anything — or whether I was just typing into the void.
So I built a tracker. Every sponsorship payment. Every ad payout. Every affiliate commission, override, and refund. I logged hours spent on each activity. I computed per-hour rates. I sorted it by month, by source, by campaign. I'm a developer — if it's not in the spreadsheet, it didn't happen.
After eighteen months of consistent tracking, I have some opinions. And I have receipts.

Stream

1: Display Ads — The Set-It-and-Forget-It Illusion

When I first monetized my blog, I went with Mediavine. Got accepted around the 50,000 monthly sessions mark. The YouTube Partner Program kicked in once I crossed 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours.
Here's the thing nobody tells you upfront: ads are passive in the sense that you don't have to sell anything, but they're not actually that profitable in raw dollar terms.
My blog pulls roughly 50,000 pageviews a month. The display ad revenue swings between $200 and $400 depending on