Comments on Saving to Inve$t: How Much Money do Bloggers make Blogging?

Even though I just found this post (via FrugalDad)...

2009-07-08T15:08:13.656-04:00

Even though I just found this post (via FrugalDad) it is quite inspiring. Although my main reason for starting a blog wasn't money... that's always in the back of my mind.

This does work great for Loan Modifications. Grea...

2009-06-21T09:24:16.444-04:00

This does work great for Loan Modifications. Great article.

Thats Great if there is many affiliate programs av...

2009-04-03T04:38:00.000-04:00

Thats Great if there is many affiliate programs available with different payouts.

I really enjoyed this post. Well done. But what ab...

2009-03-12T18:19:00.000-04:00

I really enjoyed this post. Well done. But what about just general advertising, no affiliate based at all? That's where all my revenue comes from.

I recently came across your blog and have been rea...

2008-12-22T01:43:00.000-05:00

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Deborah

Term Life Insurance

I think blogging will continue to grow strong even...

2008-12-21T10:04:00.000-05:00

I think blogging will continue to grow strong even with the economy being poor. I have been lucky with many of my articles on ehow and this one earned me 76.00 already and I have a lot more in the 10.00 range already. 76.00 and still increasing I wrote using good keywords.and have 4400 views
http://www.ehow.com/how_4533584_lost-cell-phone.html

Andy, thanks for including my site in your analysi...

2008-12-16T20:33:00.000-05:00

Andy, thanks for including my site in your analysis. You make some excellent observations regarding online income and the relation to traffic. My site didn't average 3,000 hits per day for the entire year, but that is a nice goal for the New Year!

I believe that as the economy becomes worse in the coming year, the online advertising market will adjust. That means fewer private ads and lower payments for CPM based ads. I think AdSense and other CPC ads will remain fairly steady as those generally go directly to a store or other money making site, but they may suffer as well. On the other hand, I don't see affiliate sales suffering very much because an affiliate sale means an action has already happened - and advertisers will be directly rewarding online marketers for bringing them a customer instead of pumping money into placing their logo in as many spots as possible. As the competition for consumers' money increases, affiliate payouts should remain strong.

@ Kyle: Amazon has not done much for me on this si...

2008-11-24T09:16:00.000-05:00

@ Kyle: Amazon has not done much for me on this site. I use Commission junction and Commission soup for my affiliate programs (I pick the financial vendors mainly). Of late these are working well for me (much more than adsense revenue). I found that just putting the affiliate links/banners on your site does not work, you need to write a post on why the program is good/beneficial.

@ Pete. Your site is doing phenomenally well. 3000+ visitors a day and 600+ subscribers, in 9 months. I would call that new blog of the year type performance. Clearly this is paying off for you. See my above point re affiliate sales, I am sure you could generate some substantial revenue from the right programs. Thanks for stopping by.

Andy, thanks for including me in this roundup, its...

2008-11-23T19:08:00.000-05:00

Andy,

thanks for including me in this roundup, its interesting to see what others think is possible, and what kind of revenues a site like mine could expect.

Going into this I never expected to make a dime, but even now - when I've been blogging for 9-10 months or so, it has gotten to the point where its making me enough extra money every month that it actually makes quite a difference.

Your estimates for my site (biblemoneymatters.com) are off on some, and close on others.

CTP earnings are about where you guessed - substantially more on some days, less on slow days.

As PT said above, affiliate earnings on my site are next to nothing as well, and I haven't had the time to really invest in turning that around yet. I realize that is a big untapped source that I'll need to look into, and it will be one of my next big initiatives I think.

Other sources of income- you're not far off on that one either.

So all in all, you had it pegged pretty well - except the affiliate revenue which was way off. I know I could do better with that, but I think it takes some time, patience and hard work to get the affiliate income going, and as of yet I just haven't had the time.

For a 9 month old site though, I feel like I'm doing better than I could have imagined, and I look forward to a rosy 2009. To anyone else out there thinking of jumping in - just do it! The worst you can do is make a few bucks!

Interesting article - keep up the great work!

I haven't had much luck with affiliate sales at al...

2008-11-23T16:18:00.000-05:00

I haven't had much luck with affiliate sales at all on my finance blog outside of when I do book reviews, which I don't do often. On a few of my other sites, amazon does very, very well. What affiliate programs do you participate in here that do well?

@ FB - Thanks for providing some of your data. Alw...

2008-11-23T11:42:00.000-05:00

@ FB - Thanks for providing some of your data. Always helps to see some "real" information. Your points are spot on - hard work, promotion and good content are key.

In regards to the economic slowdown, I have actually noticed that there are more pf blogs popping up. Overall this will spread the visitor base more and I think in 6 months most bloggers will notice lower revenues (not to mention advertisers spending less as well. )

@ Finance Puzzle. Glad to have helped. However, ensure that all your blog goals are NOT financial. You have first and foremost got to enjoy writing about your topic in order to be succesful.

@ Studenomist. The Click percentage is based largely on my Google Adsense program stats plus some other estimates. Don't worry, if you write long enough and good quality stuff, the readershop will grow.

@ PT. Per my response to Kyle's comments, you site s well designed and so not surprised with the higher CPT rate. I thought you would have had much more in general affiliate sales. You are right though, you have to really promote affiliate programs to make money, but they can be much bigger money earners than contextual ad programs.

@ Bruce. I am going to check out your article now (can't believe I missed it). Seem my comment above re affiliate sales. But you clearly have a strong non-revenue goal for your blog which is great. Getting a new client will make you much more money than a few online ads. Also if you want to promote affiliate programs (eg Turbo Tax), then write a post about it to convince users how it can help them.

Kyle. my initial CPC estimate was 3.5%, but when I...

2008-11-23T11:32:00.000-05:00

Kyle. my initial CPC estimate was 3.5%, but when I ran the calcs for some of the more trafficed blogs the revenue estimates were huge. Your blog layout is optimized for adsense (left and top location) so I am not surprised it has a higher CPC rate - which also explains your $100 Adsense day recently. Your eCPM estimates are also good and could be some worthwhile analysis for the next potential FBN project (see my response to Curt's comment). Strangely my adsense rev has dropped from an eCPM basis, but my affiliate sales have shot up.

Great Post Andy.In fact it put my article to shame...

2008-11-23T08:59:00.000-05:00

Great Post Andy.

In fact it put my article to shame on the same subject. Even though mine was more covering the tax issues of the income made.

I thought the CTR figures were right on. Although it most definitely is going to depend on ones content of the blog then having ads that are desired by those reading.

In my case, my CTR at CJ is 2.4% and my traffic daily is 500+ a day when I post about/almost 300 a day when I don't. My income from all this? $0.00.

If I was trying to make money from the blog then I surely have failed.
I am not looking at it that way luckily. I am getting my message out and I have helped a lot of people from contact at the blog. That is my goal. Helping with tax issues. To me to find out if it is all worth it will be when tax season comes around and new clients inform me they found me via my blog.

Interesting read, Andy. Thanks for including me i...

2008-11-23T02:37:00.000-05:00

Interesting read, Andy. Thanks for including me in the study.

My traffic largely comes from G and my site is optimized for that, so my CPT rate is double what you estimated.

Affiliate is nothing, unless I have a specific program to support. I need to install some aff. go codes and maybe things will improve there. Now that I'm approaching 500 subs they'll likely be more effective. For a time I'd written them off.

The last category is a bit higher for me as well. Although I feel like I'm tempting fate by playing that game much longer.

Fun post!

I have been hitting 200 hits a day and I can't ima...

2008-11-23T02:14:00.000-05:00

I have been hitting 200 hits a day and I can't imagine how it would feel to have 1500 readers. Where did you obtain the click percentage from? I find that it varies but I guess it depends on the size of the blog.

Great post...I was wondering if there are some qui...

2008-11-22T20:03:00.000-05:00

Great post...I was wondering if there are some quick metrics out there to establish a reference of how much you can make per visit...

This was very helpful for the future of my blog and the goals I setup in 2009

Curt,I actually reach $1,000 a month after 2 years...

2008-11-22T16:16:00.000-05:00

Curt,
I actually reach $1,000 a month after 2 years of blogging. However, when I started, I didn't know anything about blogging, SEO or monetization.

I believe you can actually build a $1,000 month blog within a year if you are dedicated to it (1 post per day, promotion, comments on other blog, carnival submission, etc.).

I actually started two other blogs and their income increased much faster than my main blog (they are far from the $1,000 mark though).

In the end, I didn't really feel the economic slow down on my blogging income.

I think your estimates are a bit conservative for ...

2008-11-22T15:32:00.000-05:00

I think your estimates are a bit conservative for CPC services like adsense and too high for affiliates, but I think overall it probably evens out. A better way might be to try to find the average total ecpm over all advertising categories and multiply that by pageviews in thousands. The average ecpm of my sites averages from around $10 to over $40, so it's difficult to generalize. In the personal finance realm, $10-20 seems reasonable for most blogs.

One thing I have noticed the past few months is a severe downturn in my amazon affiliate earnings. People just aren't buying like they used to. Adsense doesn't seem to be too adversely affected, though, at least not on my blog.

I think a $1000 per month blog could be built in less than a year if you work hard at it, but a better approach would probably be to start 3 or 4 different blogs on different topics since you could publish 3-4 times more content per day without having to worry about annoying your regular readers with too much content.

Thanks Curt. There are various ways to measure rev...

2008-11-22T14:48:00.000-05:00

Thanks Curt. There are various ways to measure revenue and no "right" way since every blog is unique. I enjoyed writing this post and the related analysis.

Your questions are good ones. Perhaps this could be the basis for our next FBN group project - "How to make money blogging, tips and trade secrets.."

Answer's to your Q's:

I have noticed a drop in eCPM (per a previous post) and I am sure google has taken a hit from the economy. That is why I am trying to branch out to non-adsense sources of revenue.

Content is king, so WB an other group blogs have an advantage there. Generally I would think group blogs do better.

I think if you get about 1500 visitors a day you will be on your way to a before tax revenue equivalent to $1000/month. But maintaing that is hard.

eBooks etc could be huge money earners and is one of the reason why I think my estimates are conservative. Also most estabished bloggers have mutliple sites/communities generating revenue. So the posssibilities are endless.

Excellent article. Your calculations seem to be mu...

2008-11-22T09:11:00.000-05:00

Excellent article. Your calculations seem to be much more accurate then mine article about this, where I estimated each article is worth $45 dollars.

The questions I have for the future of blogging are:

- How will the slowing economy effect blogging incomes?
- Do multi-person blogs, like wisebread, do better then single-person blogs?
- How many years does it take to build a $1000/month income?
- What about ebooks, Books, speaking, affiliate programs and other sources of income?

The more I think about blogging income, the more question I have.