I've been looking at stocks with high dividend yields lately and came across something pretty interesting. Most people chase growth stocks, but the data actually shows dividend growth stocks have crushed it over the long haul when you factor in both income and price appreciation.

There are a couple names that keep showing up when I dig into this space. Realty Income is the obvious one - they've been raising their dividend for 31 straight years. That's not a marketing claim, that's 113 consecutive quarters of increases. They're currently yielding around 4.8%, which is wild compared to the S&P 500's 1.1%. If you threw $1,000 at them, you'd be looking at roughly $48 a year in dividend income just sitting there. The company's planning to drop $8 billion into their real estate portfolio this year too, so the cash flow per share should tick up another 3% or so.

The other one that caught my attention is Main Street Capital. This is a BDC that invests in smaller private companies, and they've got this dual dividend structure that's pretty clever. They pay a base monthly dividend that they've grown 136% since their 2007 IPO, then add supplemental quarterly payments on top. Current yield is sitting at 5.4% from the monthly alone, but if you include the quarterly bonuses, you're looking at 7.4%. That's the kind of stocks with high dividend yields that actually backs up the numbers with a track record.

What really stands out is that neither of these companies has a history of cutting dividends. They've only gone up. Main Street Capital is covering their monthly payment 1.4 times over, so there's room to keep growing. Realty Income has a $14 trillion market opportunity in front of them. These aren't one-hit wonders.

The thing people miss is that dividend income is only part of the equation. Both of these have delivered solid total returns - Realty Income since 1994 and Main Street Capital averaging over 17% annualized since going public. That's how you turn a thousand bucks into something meaningful over time.

If you're sitting on some cash and looking at stocks with high dividend yields that actually have the fundamentals to keep growing, these two are worth putting on your radar. The monthly income is nice, but the consistency of the growth is what really matters.