I have been blogging for more than six months now, and it has been fun and educational. One thing that is clear to me is that it is very hard to actually make a living by blogging. Perhaps I am not trying very hard, but here is a summary of the things I am doing to make money by blogging and my results.
Google AdSense - This is the first thing I put onto this blog. I think most of the clicks come from people who find this site through Google. Basically, the random visitors give me my clicks. My regular visitors read this site with a feed and don’t see much of these ads. So far, Google AdSense makes up about 40% to 50% of my blog income.
BlogHerAds - These ads appear at the top of my page and on the right side. They are banner ads and I am paid for the ads from commercial companies. The ads you see for Kiva or Habitat for Humanity are free ads for charity. BlogHerAds takes 50% of the ad revenue so I have been getting $25 to $70 from them each month depending on how many visits I receive. Once again, feed readers don’t see these ads.
Kontera - I started to put Kontera links on this site since September. These are inline context links that aren’t on the feed. The payout is very small and I’m considering removing it all together, but they aren’t extremely annoying so they are still here. Once again, feed readers do not see these.
AdBrite - I took the ads off because they were clearly not recording the visits my site received. So now my account has $2.00 in it which I can’t withdraw. I don’t recommend AdBrite unless they fixed their system to accurately record visits.
Direct sales - So far I made one direct sale to Prosper.com. They contacted me and asked me if I would be interested in adding a referral button, and I said sure and they gave me a flat fee of $50.
Wise Bread - This is a relatively new venture and I just started blogging for them three weeks ago. Wise Bread is a FairBlog(tm), which means that they share 100% of the ad revenues an article receives with the article’s writer. This means that the Google adblocks on my articles have my AdSense code. So far, blogging for Wise Bread has been rewarding in that my articles are viewed by thousands of people a day sometimes and my Google AdSense revenues definitely went up. I’m not sure how much I would be paid from Wise Bread yet, but it is fun just to write for them.
Associated Content - I just started to submit some old blog posts to Associated Content for upfront payment. So far Associated Content has been paying about $4.00 per article. This is not much at all, but the articles are non-exclusive since they’ve already been published here. I don’t lose anything by submitting the articles. One annoying thing about Associated Content is that it doesn’t seem to update my content page very promptly. Even though I have four articles published it still says 2 items published, and it has been like that for days.
Amazon Associates - I have had the account for a very long time and I have had success with it in the past, but right now it’s more like a list of the games I own and doesn’t really generate revenue.
So what am I earning now? The grand total for January 2008 is $161. This is pretty laughable considering how much time I spend on blogging and works out to an hourly wage of about $1.50. However, this is a great improvement from July 2007, when I had absolutely nothing. My goal is really to just have enough blog income to cover rent, and hopefully I can achieve the goal this year. I know there are many things I can improve on this blog to monetize better, and I will just have to research all of my options. I will still have to continue writing quality articles that attract readers, and that is the most important thing.
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19 comments ↓
Great post! I always like to hear how other bloggers earn a little extra cash. My most successful thing has been posting ING referral links on my blog. I’ve made $100 in referral bonuses since last fall. I’ve also dabbled with PayPerPost and made about $30 off of them. I think I’ll take a look at Wise Bread and Associated Content. Thanks!
but they aren’t extremely annoying
Actually they are extremely annoying which is why most blogs don’t have them.
Mike
Congratulations–I think $161 is a lot! Did ING bring back the referral program? I didn’t know that. I made $50 a few years back just by telling some people about it face to face. I’m going to look into doing that on my blog.
Well, I don’t really have an ING account and I don’t plan to sign up, but I would do referrals for some other places I do use.
Wow, I was wondering how much you make from blogging… it is amazing that ppl make a living from it then. I just happen to come across the Arcadia Beard Papa’s story today also… http://beardpapas.livejournal.com/
I was amazed to find out that the owners are my age!
$161/month isn’t too bad considering your blog has only been around for 6 months….
If you’re advertising for Prosper, you should also consider Lending Club ($25/referral).
I agree with Four Pillars on the Kontera comment.
I used to have kontera, but like you stated it doesn’t pay very much and has a high payout minimum. I got rid of it because I would rather have the faster loading times then the few extra cents.
Love your tagline
Interesting breakdown, but I’m curious as to how you establish frequent visitors and bring in more hits to your website - as that’s one of the biggest problems with any web startup. I’ve had sites for over 5 years, and I did little to no advertising, thus the popularity of them are solely dependent on word-of-mouth.
very informative. i am sure your blog income will go up. i’ve just read two articles (safeway shopping and this one) and your bio. so you are frugal, but financially sufficient obviously because you and your husband both work in the IT field in Silicon Valley… are you still renting and don’t own a house yet? i am just curious because i also come from the same generation and have debts, and used to live in the Bay for many years. if you have double income, and live frugal, you should be very well off in my opinion.
Hey Kbelle. Yes we’re still renting. Owning even a crappy house here would take up 50% of our take home income and I think it is way too much. Right now we’re using about 1/6 to 1/7 of our take home for rent. It is a big difference and we are investing the money we save. We do live pretty comfortably and it is not bad at all.
you must be renting so you live cheap & save more, not because you can’t afford to purchase a home. it’s good that only 1/6 goes to housing, unlike some of us that are stuck with high mortgages. cheers!
We left Los Angeles five years ago for affordable housing in the beautiful resort town of Sedona, Arizona. (Here’s our house: www.thekivahouse.com ) Of course, people here don’t think the housing is “affordable” — unless they also came from California!
As co-author of Let your Mortgage Make You Rich, I hear from a lot of people about their finances. That, plus my own common sense, applauds you for renting. There are so many unacknowledged costs to home ownership.
Back to your initial topic…have you seen dooce.com? It’s a personal blog that fully supports a family of three (plus a dog). I just met someone who did her master’s on blogging who shared that.
I, too, think earning over $150 a month from ads is a great beginning. (My own blogs sell product, so I put no ads on them.)
i am gonna show this to my friend, man
This is very nice of you to be so open about this. Most bloggers are very close-mouthed about how much they’re earning.
Speaking of Dooce, I read one article that estimated that she earns $40K per month from ad revenue on her site.
My blog has been around for a while (2.5 years) and I’ve gotten very lazy about it, but I don’t earn much more than you do. I have never made much money from pay-per-click ads like Adsense, so I gave that up and now just sell ads directly or thru Linkworth.
Much of my blog revenue comes from referral fees for survey sites, etc. If you do sign up for Linkworth, there’s a referral link in the sidebar of my blog.
My income from my blog does fluctuate a lot. On a slow month it’s only about $50, but is sometimes as much as $300-400. Definitely not enough to cover rent in the Silicon Valley, but as I said, I’m pretty lazy about it and don’t treat it like a business venture.
I used to do a lot of paid site reviews (where somebody paid me to review their site), but I only write paid content if I disclose that I’m being paid to do it, and lately a lot of people have been wanting to me to write reviews where I pretend I’m not being paid. No thank you!
Good luck with your blog. I’ll come back and read more in the future.
Great post.
I’ve been using Blogads and Chitika. I was invited into the BlogHerAds network. I was provided login information, talked a lot with Jenny, but its been over a month and they still haven’t provided me with an ad code. Jenny keeps on saying that she’ll provide it on a certain date, but than never does. I’ve lost about a months a revenue, because I took down my Blogads code, because I thought she was going to provide me with an ad code. I’m still waiting to do this.
[…] things, and both of us are realistic of what may result from our choices. We’ve discussed context links and both thought they’d just annoy readers (which is the last thing we want to do). We […]
[…] little over a year ago I wrote this post detailing how much I am earning by blogging, and the grand total for January 2008 was $161. I am happy to report […]
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