Kit is definitely a leader in email marketing for bloggers and business owners. And as much as all of us, including me, my clients and colleagues, are absolutely unhappy about pricing tiers….at some point, we add our card details.

Masha is a former Chief Marketing Officer in a group of wellness companies, former owner of a boutique Ads Agency, and currently a blogger and blogging VA. She works in digital marketing since 2016.

For myself, I did it when I had just 2000 subscribers, as I wanted to test monetization tools Kit offers on a small email list, as it is always discouraging and sort of irrelevant to read success stories of someone with 50,000+ subscribers on their list, right?

We need real numbers for real people.

We have also started testing ads for one of the clients, where I will only provide ranges and overall verdict.

What Are Ways To Make Money With Kit?

• Leading traffic back to your site, where you have ads (Ezoic, Mediavine, Raptive). Email clicks have quite good RPMs on Mediavine.
• Kit Ads. There are two types: Programmatic Ads (applications closed), Performance Ads (open beta). Kit’s cut will be 23.5%.
• Tips. Simple tip jar.
• Products. The minimal price for your product can’t be lower than 5 USD, and, of course, you will pay Kit a commission (23.5%) plus any transaction fees
• Paid Recommendations (through Spark Loop, where you can join with ANY email provider, not just Kit). I use that on my tiny email list, and it collects a couple of dollars here and there, which isn’t bad.
• Kit affiliate. They have very good commissions, but not good with attributing yours. So you really need to follow up and make sure you get paid for all referrals.

To get paid for anything on Kit, you will need Stripe Express.

Who is eligible for Kits Ads?

Well, anyone on a paid plan (any Creator Plan) and in the US (or any other country where Kit Commerce is available).

If you are already, simply fill out this form and then either text them through support chat or email to nate@kit.com.

Performance Ads vs Programmatic Ads

Programmatic Ads in emails are similar to Mediavine or Raptive ads on our blogs – they are automatically placed in all emails with an added Ad placement.

So you earn passively.

You only select brands/niches you are OK with advertising in your emails, but you won’t see nor being able to approve/reject each and every ad Kit will place in your email.

So it can be something horrible. But they promise they only work with high-quality publishers.

You can have programatic ads in every email.

With Performance ads, you get an offer, which has a timeframe and a maximum number of ads you can run, and you can accept or reject it.

But with this type of ad, there is absolutely no guarantee you will get any relevant offers, or there can be weeks with no offers at all.

My Experience with Kit Performance Ads

Setting it up and getting approved is very fast; within a day, you can get it done.

Then, if there are any offers available, they will be immediately sent to your email (connected to your Kit account) and will be displayed in your Earn – Ads – Offers tab.

I was told it is about 3 offers within 3 weeks. Not much.

And that’s right, we got exactly 3 offers when we signed up: Hubspot, 1440 News site, and AI Superhuman.

As you can see, all three offers are somewhat general, and to be honest, were completely irrelevant to me or my client’s niche!

How Much You Can Earn?

I tried to get ANY range of $$ from Kit reps, and I got nothing. They kept repeating that it depends on many factors, like:

• What % of your audience is in the US
• How often do you send emails
• How high is your click rate?

Now, you can estimate it roughly by looking at your stats at Kit – you have an average click rate, and you can calculate average clicks based on your recent emails.

However, let’s face it – “commercial” emails, even when you promote something free, get fewer clicks and more unsubscribers, so make sure your estimate is not overly optimistic.

Ex., your average clicks per email are about 100. You can see the campaigns offer about 1 USD per verified click. Say, only 30% will qualify – you earned 30 USD. Minus 23.5% of Kit’s commission, and you get 22.95 USD for that one email.

Real Numbers

We’ve run tests from mid November till the present moment. And I will always update this post with fresh numbers and updates.

None of the topics by the end of November matched my primary blog audience (crafts and painting), but I wanted to test the most neutral one to just have an idea of how it looks and what earnings one can expect even if the ads are not relevant to your niche.

I scheduled an email, added an Ad placement, accepted an offer, and sent out an email. It looked like this:

My usual clicks are around 4 to 6%. This email had other links, too (to my content), and the ad specifically promised $1.07 per click.

How many clicks it got? ONE.

Since then, there were NO other offers:

• November 17 to Nov 25 there were 3 offers: Hubspot AI, 1440 News, Superhuman AI. Each has 1 ad slot available to schedule. I ran 1440 on the very last day, so I only got 1 usd.
• November 25 to 30th – same offers. I didn’t take on any of them.
• From 30th till January 2026 – no offers.

I was surprised there was nothing for Black Friday or Christmas at all.

So as of today, I was paid 1.07 USD. To get paid, you don’t have to wait 65 days like with Mediavine; you get paid once a month.

Have you run Kit Ads? What is your experience?