Are bloggers making money? Your thoughts?
MFerrier
By Michael Estrin
imediaconnection.com
Half of all bloggers run ads, and of that group, 70 percent use self-
service contextual ad platforms such as Google's AdSense, according to
Technorati's "State of the Blogosphere" report.
The report, which Technorati has compiled since 2004, also found that
23 percent of bloggers use three or more ad platforms.
But whether this means blogging has moved from a hobby to a profession
isn't quite clear. While the leading blogs are making money, U.S.
bloggers made an average revenue of $5,600 last year, and the median
income was $200 for a blogger. That may not seem like much, but it is
evidence of a growing class of professional bloggers, especially when
one considers the fact that many professional bloggers run multiple
blogs.
Tracy Record, WSB Editor
--- On Tue, 10/7/08, MFerrier <mich...@michelleferrier.com> wrote:
Aldon Hynes
$200/yr incurres a median expense of $100/year. So the median net profit is
$100/yr. Most bloggers are trying to cover the cost of their hosting
agreements and maybe pick up a few bucks on the side.
The statistics are further broken down into three categories of bloggers,
personal, corporate and professional. Personal bloggers net $20/year,
corporate bloggers net $50/year and professional bloggers net $150/year. I
would assume that corporate and professional bloggers may also get salaries
for their blogging as well.
So, if bloggers are making money, there is very little money coming from
advertising, except for the very large blogs. If anything, I suspect more
bloggers are making money by selling their services in helping others tell
their stories on line.
My two cents, which is about how much I've made from advertisements on my
blog.
Aldon
http://www.orient-lodge.com
-----Original Message-----
From: jtm...@googlegroups.com [mailto:jtm...@googlegroups.com]On
Behalf Of MFerrier
Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2008 9:59 AM
To: Journalism That Matters
Subject: {JTM} Are bloggers making money? Your thoughts?
Tish Grier
Hey Michelle, could you provide the direct link next time? I wasn't able to find it because iMedia Connection updated and buried the story...
be that as it may, I'd like to bring up the idea of who we're talking about when we say "bloggers." There are lots of high level folk who claim the mantle of "blogger" and have made serious money doing it.(Ana Marie Cox, Perez Hilton, Michael Arrington, to name a few)
So, yes, some bloggers make money. HUGE money. But that's not the majority of bloggers.
Like Aldon mentioned, lots of bloggers make money by selling related services. Some bloggers are also like freelance writers (and some freelance writers are bloggers) and they can make up to $20 grand a year (that was a stat that came out of BlogWorld Expo)
And corporate bloggers--some of whom are p.r. or marketing folks--are making amazing salaries for their "blogging" and other social media stuff.
Some other bloggers are running hyperlocal sites, and their income varies widely because their communities are different. Baristanet makes pretty good money, but H2oTown doesn't make huge money (probably enough to pay hosting.) Some of that has to do with local merchants--how many there are, as well as their ability to understand how online advertising can help them.
That's an issue we have out here, where net savvyness is at a low. Even the local TV affiliates do poorly with online advertising, and not that there's a lack of small to medium sized businesses that could benefit. They have a tough time comprehending the benefit...
So, yes...the really huge, and Silicon Valley, Wash D.C. or New York based "bloggers," and corporate "bloggers" make very good money. Other bloggers make money different ways. But anyone who still thinks they can make money only from blogging, well, they're just not thinking that one through...
Best,
Tish
--- On Tue, 10/7/08, Aldon Hynes <Aldon...@Orient-Lodge.com> wrote:
> From: Aldon Hynes <Aldon...@Orient-Lodge.com>
> Subject: {JTM} Re: Are bloggers making money? Your thoughts?
> To: "Journalism That Matters" <jtm...@googlegroups.com>
Tracy Record, WSB Editor
> From: Tish Grier <tish...@yahoo.com>
> Some other bloggers are running hyperlocal sites, and their
> income varies widely because their communities are
> different. Baristanet makes pretty good money, but H2oTown
> doesn't make huge money (probably enough to pay
> hosting.) Some of that has to do with local merchants--how
> many there are, as well as their ability to understand how
> online advertising can help them.
=====
"Some of that" would be the key phrase here.
You have to get out and sell IF you really want to make a business out of this. It doesn't just come to you - not immediately, anyway. My husband works full-time as our business-development director, which involves not just running around making sales pitches (we don't make many cold calls any more) but also a lot of community relations. He also does some newsgathering when needed - mostly photography and breaking news (he goes to check out the emergency call, and phones details in to me, that type of thing; he has a journalism background as well as sales-marketing experience and we both have official local press credentials on behalf of our site, as does one of our contributing photojournalists who does a lot of breaking-news work for us), but certainly spends 40-plus hours a work working with clients first and foremost.
Also, no small thing, you have to create the content that brings people to your site because they find value in it. Day in, day out, night in, night out. And don't just launch something and expect to start selling ads from day 1 because you SAY you're going to do whatever you hope to do - you have to prove you can and will do it, consistently, and with quality. We were a blog for a year, then an increasingly news-oriented site for the second year, before taking out that business license and asking businesses to consider us as an advertising vehicle.
TR in WS
MFerrier
On Oct 7, 11:48 am, Tish Grier <tishgr...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hey Michelle, could you provide the direct link next time? I wasn't able to find it because iMedia Connection updated and buried the story...
>
> be that as it may, I'd like to bring up the idea of who we're talking about when we say "bloggers." There are lots of high level folk who claim the mantle of "blogger" and have made serious money doing it.(Ana Marie Cox, Perez Hilton, Michael Arrington, to name a few)
>
> So, yes, some bloggers make money. HUGE money. But that's not the majority of bloggers.
>
> Like Aldon mentioned, lots of bloggers make money by selling related services. Some bloggers are also like freelance writers (and some freelance writers are bloggers) and they can make up to $20 grand a year (that was a stat that came out of BlogWorld Expo)
>
> And corporate bloggers--some of whom are p.r. or marketing folks--are making amazing salaries for their "blogging" and other social media stuff.
>
> Some other bloggers are running hyperlocal sites, and their income varies widely because their communities are different. Baristanet makes pretty good money, but H2oTown doesn't make huge money (probably enough to pay hosting.) Some of that has to do with local merchants--how many there are, as well as their ability to understand how online advertising can help them.
>
> That's an issue we have out here, where net savvyness is at a low. Even the local TV affiliates do poorly with online advertising, and not that there's a lack of small to medium sized businesses that could benefit. They have a tough time comprehending the benefit...
>
> So, yes...the really huge, and Silicon Valley, Wash D.C. or New York based "bloggers," and corporate "bloggers" make very good money. Other bloggers make money different ways. But anyone who still thinks they can make money only from blogging, well, they're just not thinking that one through...
>
> Best,
> Tish
>
>
> - Show quoted text -
G. Patton Hughes
to work for it.
Last year (2007) my enterprise grossed a bit over $70M ... but a good
part of that was the a $20M sale of a domain name.
Still, subscriptions to support the site, which range from a monthly
$4.99 to a $99.95 business or commerce membership (license to
spamalittle ) have netted me over $50,000 in the last three years I've
been offering them. Most of that revenue has come in this calendar year
as well.
Oh, and I don't do google adsense. I've got roughly 70 active monthly
accounts and all totalled, we're grossing at/over $6 grand a month from
advertising/memberships.
I do think that Tracy is right that folks need to bring some or build
some credibility before they try to go out and sell advertising. I had
been a writer and editor of the (at the time) leading weekly from
1989-97 so I was generally well known amongst those in leadership. (I
left there to work for Time-Mirror's auctionuniverse.com in the Internet
boom)... and learned a lot more about the Internet.
Still, when I lauched paulding.com in 2003, it wasn't until Sept. 2004
that I tried to sell any advertising at all and by then, I had a few
folks clamoring for it. It still was a bit premature but then Paulding
County Georgia was not as 'in tune' with new media in 2004 as is, say
Silicon Alley ... and they've had a time selling ads for hyperlocal
media there too :)
That said, I've been making a payroll of sorts since late last year ...
and I've got a new rate card (rate increase) that hopefully will let me
make a real payroll ... for a staff of four or five. I'm on pins and
needles as I've done enough business research to know that growth at
this stage is a very dangerous time for a small business ... but we're
just getting more and more work and I expect more even as other
publications serving the community pull back and/or close because of the
economy.
Oh, and my prices are exceptionally competitive. My CPM on a leaderboard
ad share works out to about $0.66/M ... (sixty-six cents per thousand)
... which is cheap. But what do you do when you generate at
two-banners/page, over 5.5 million banner views a month.
(Don't believe me, check out Paulding.com on www.compete.com)
Still, even at that and especially the greater economy, things could go
south very fast.
GP Pat Hughes
PS: And you wonder why I'm not conversing more here or blogging on PBS ?