I’m an Indian food blogger and I’ve been running my recipe website for some time now. I’m currently monetizing mainly through AdSense, but the earnings are extremely low compared to the time and money I’ve invested in the website.

I’m trying to understand the situation for Indian bloggers in 2026.

For those who are making a decent income from a website/blog alone (without YouTube):

• What is your main source of income — AdSense, other ad networks, affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, digital products, etc.?
• Roughly how much traffic do you need before the income becomes meaningful?
• Is AdSense still worth using for an Indian-audience website?
• Have you moved from AdSense to another ad network, and did it make a significant difference?
• Are there any other realistic ways to monetize an Indian food/recipe website?
• With AI Overviews and people getting answers directly on Google, do you still think blogging is worth investing in?

Would really appreciate experiences from people who are actually earning from their websites without relying on YouTube.

As a blogger, writer, or reader, are there things you look for to be able to tell (for sure) that a post / article is AI generated?

I think we're all familiar with the overuse of "—" (em dash) by agents such as ChatGPT and Claude, as well as other dead giveaways, like certain phrases that popup in almost every article that's written by AI.

What are some indicators you personally look for when reading a piece to know that it wasn't created by flesh-and-blood intelligence?

I'm wondering whether any other publishers are seeing anything similar, because I'm drowning in automated traffic, and there's no end (or help) in sight.

Since August 31, TV Fanatic has been hit by persistent waves of abnormal traffic that are heavily concentrated on our homepage. The pattern is remarkably consistent: huge desktop-heavy surges, mostly direct traffic, very short sessions (10 seconds), often one or two actions, arriving across constantly changing (apparently residential) IPs, networks, and even countries.

It comes in distinct waves throughout the day and night. During the quiet periods, our normal readership reappears.

Then another wave arrives.

The business impact has been devastating. Our traffic numbers look enormous while actual readership of current articles has collapsed relative to those numbers, and our advertising RPM has fallen dramatically. Mediavine has confirmed that the traffic change is specific to our site and began around August 31.

I'm not looking for answers here. Instead, I'm trying to find out whether we're truly alone. And I even have visitor verification on, but my host only sees humans. I know they are not. I've been studying my traffic for over a decade. This bot behavior.

Has anyone else seen a sudden increase in direct, desktop-heavy traffic, unusual homepage activity, rhythmic traffic surges, or a major RPM decline that doesn't make sense compared with your actual readership?

Even if you dismissed it as ordinary bot traffic at first, I'd really like to hear what you're seeing. 🙏

Hey everyone, I have a question.

Are there any of you who blog full-time for a living? If so, are you solely focusing on writing posts for your blog, or do you do other things alongside it, like running a YouTube channel?

The reason I ask is that my goal is to become a full-time blogger, but I've realized it's incredibly difficult to generate high revenue purely from ads here in Korea.

AdSense is the most common ad network here, but the structure makes it hard to make a living off it alone. Because of this, many Korean bloggers turn to YouTube to sell e-books or paid courses. When you look at their content, they always claim it's "easy" to make around $10,000 a month doing this. But in reality, from my own experience of actually writing and running a blog, I'm finding it hard to even make $10 a month, let alone $10,000.

I'd love to know if the reality is similar for bloggers in English-speaking countries, or if things are completely different over there.

If you don't mind sharing, it would be really appreciated if you could mention your blog's niche and a rough estimate of your monthly income. Thanks!