Last week I surveyed readers on their AdSense earnings for the month of November. I was hoping to run the poll for a full week but due to some problems with the plugin I was using only got around two days of data (732 respondents).
The results were quite similar to last years version of this same poll. Here’s a visual breakdown of numbers of respondents in each of the categories:
As with previous years, the largest group of bloggers using with AdSense earn under $10 a month (28% of of all who use AdSense).
Interestingly – the second largest category wasn’t the $10 – $29 category – but the $100-$499 one (21%).
The top category of over $10,000 in a month was reached by 23 bloggers (4%). 16% are earning over the magical $1000 per month mark.
Here’s a pie chart with all the percentages (note, I’ve taken out the ‘don’t use AdSense’ category).
It’s interesting results for sure. I fit in the “under $10” category but I know why I’m there (personal blog low traffic). What I’m interested in (and I’m not sure if this could be a separate poll or maybe just people mention in the comments here) is what is the number of blogs adsense is on compared to earnings.
Like I said, for me it’s currently 1 blog and under $10, I will assume that as the number of blogs increases so do the earnings (although there may be some exceptions to this for “major” blogs). It’d also be interesting to know visitor numbers, feeds vs search vs direct etc.
Okay I’m asking for too much.
! WOW !
Hi Darren & All,
I am amazed by those who earn so much. I have been at this for just over
3 weeks now and am continuing to read & learn from all of you guys.
I hope to be included in your poll next year :)
THANKS to everyone here who has offered helpful information !
Take Care,
Michael F.T.F.
November was my best month too, too bad that the dolar is on a low value against euro. I hope it changes until the end of the month otherwise i’ve earned more dolars but in the end I will receive the same amount of euros.
Anyway it’s always inspiring to see some bloggers earning more then $1000 per month and some earn over 10k!
ProBlogger: AdSense-Einnahmen im November 2006 (German)
[…] Vor wenigen Tagen hatte Darren die ProBlogger-Leser gebeten, die AdSense-Einnahmen für November 2006 in einem Poll mitzuteilen. Seit eben sind die Ergebnisse bei ProBlogger zu finden. […]
Wow, that’s very inspiring, thanks for taking the time to do this!
I hope to be able to be apart of your survey next year. Thanks for the great information.
Last year i was in the 30-99 group, well this November i moved up by one step, it’d be 3 if you surveyed December =)
Allen.H
WOW! I didn’t realise it was possible to earn so much.
Can you correlate the earnings to the type of blog?
I’d be interested to know the topics that the 23 individuals who earned > $10,000 specialise in.
Thanks for opening my eyes.
I think it would be fairly difficult to achieve the $10,000 in a month. I fit into the $100-$499 category but my latest efforts should see me into the next category soon.
Interesting pie chart.
I was in the ‘under $10’ category for November and there’s every chance it will be the same for December, but I’ve already seen a big pickup. I expect that it’s because my current blogs have only been going for about three months.
There’s still time!
I think this is interesting, considering every day I’m getting emails that I have new ads to approve, and yet when I approve them, they magically don’t show up on my site. I’m beginning to think I’m a bit … advertising retarded.
I was the $10-$29 category.
I think it would be really interesting to find out:
A) How long the blogs have been going
B) What the highest earning blogs are blogging about
C) How much traffic it takes to get over $1000 per month, as there must be a correlation between traffic and earnings
Stephen, I agree. It would be great to have that information.
@ 50 Blogs: if you were referring to my comment, then you should notice i actually said i made between i fit in the 1500-2499 group.
Allen.H
>>> C) How much traffic it takes to get over $1000 per month
This was something I wondered when I started out about a year ago. I just passed the $1000/month mark, and for me it took about 600K pageviews.
It’s taken me 4 years and 13 blogs to get to the $1,000+ mark. During the month of November, I was able to break several personal goals. The top daily earned, ever! The top daily average ever and the top monthly total ever.
Anyone who thinks that blogging is easy, think again.
The famous words around my house are: “are you going to be on that thing all night?”
It takes a lot of work and a lot of dedication to get there. And once there, you HAVE to remember, what it took to get you there, is what it’s going to take to keep you there.
That is some interesting viewing – I love how charts can really bring trends to life. Great visual aid.
The results were pretty much as I expected they would be – all except the two highest brackets. Almost 3 times the number of respondants earning $10,000+ than the number earning $5000-$9999….
(BTW Darren – a slight typo in that chart, you listed it as $5000-$999, not that it matters)
[…] O resultado foi meio desanimador e, segundo ele, igual o de anos anteriores. A maioria, 28% dos votantes, não levantou nem U$ 10,00. Curiosamente, não ficou em segundo lugar o grupo dos que votaram em entre U$ 10,00 e U$ 29,00, mas sim o dos que ganharam entre U$ 100,00 e U$ 499,00 – 21%. Bom sinal? 4% são felizardos que fizeram mais de U$ 10.000,00 no mês de novembro. […]
I agree with the charts being a totally eye-catching visual aid. What program did you use for that?
Just thought I’d share my experience, in case it helps anyone:
– I’ve been blogging since August 2005.
– I have tried many different blogs, but I only have one blog that is making me a significant amount of money – $400 per month right now.
– That blog gets about 900-1000 unique visits per day.
– I love the subject of that blog. I have started other blogs that bring in a lot more per click, but I can’t stand to write about those subjects – I have no interest in them. So I have concentrated on the fun blog and let the others lapse.
– Blogging is hard work, and not a way to get rich quick!
– You do have to promote your blog.
– Write in a unique voice. Create a blog that *you* would want to read.
[…] Darren has released the results his November survey that asked his readers to anonymously talk about how much money they made in Adsense. There were 732 respondents. […]
I am slowly and steadily coming to understand how adsense works but have been doing some experimenting too with what is my optimal position. I only started putting adsense recently am in the below $10 section, I am puzzled at the irregularity of my traffic & clicks vs. amount earned. I noticed that 2 days ago I had about 5 hits with hundreds of traffic earning less than a dollar. Yet yesterday I had 23 clicks with a little less traffic and I didn’t earn anything. What is wrong here?
I didn’t give the exact traffic and earning amounts because I am not sure whether I can truly disclose that. Darren: maybe you can reply to me personally here about explaining what is going on – hope it is not asking too much. OR maybe someone else can explain to me because as the math doesn’t add up. There must some other algorithm to calculate earnings that I don’t know about.
[…] Problogger.net recently took a survey from readers to find out what they were really earning from using Adsense to generate revenue from their sites. I think you’ll find the numbers surprising.read more | digg story […]
It would be interesting to see if there is any shift in people reading from last year to this year. In other words, is it under $10/day because of a lot of new readers. Also, are people shifting up and out.
Great post! It keeps me inspired. But it also makes me wonder…what would a similar graph of Traffic vs Adsense revenue look like? (a straight line up I imagine). However, I want to know what kind of traffic do you have to have to get to $10,000 a month? How about $1000 or even $500?
I think It is interesting as well. Adsense is complicated!! What is interesting to me is the amount of people who do not use Adsense. The poll is about Adsense revenue but +100 people took the time to respond to the poll. Do they know something that we do not know? What are they using instead of adsense, or do they not care about generating revenue…. Just a thought.
@Left Brain,
Exactly, I’m going to figure out how to do this!
[…] En problogger (uno de los pocos que sí debe ganar mucho dinero con Adsense), se reproduce una encuesta de cuanto dinero ganan los bloggers poniendo publicidad de Adsense en sus sitios web. De las más de 700 respuestas (anónimas) se obtienen los siguientes resultados: […]
Any chance you could write about who those 16% of >1000/mon so that the rest of us can learn by example and see what they are all about? It would be appreciated.
It is a nice topic and surprisingly many people fall either earn about under$10 per month, or $100-499 per month.
Thanks for the information. :)
Hi Darren, with the statistic you show , can you explain further on the average CTR for the monthly earn below $10, and monthly earn $100-$499 ? so that we can learn is there any differences for this 2 groups.
thanks in advance
[…] Darren Rowse from Problogger ran a survey asking his readers how much they made from Google Adsense in November 2006. At first the results surprised me by how low the average was, as I was expecting to be envious of the amounts that full-time Probloggers like Darren make. […]
As a new blogger, I too was curious about the apparent jump in earners at the $500-$999 range but then I realized why it was.
That category is the first one that has a “big boy” spread – 400 dollars. At that point Darren effectively (and probably unintentionally) re-calibrated the graph.
0-$9 = a range of 9 dollars
$10-$29 = a range of 20 dollars
$30-$99 = a range of 60 dollars
And then comes that 400 dollar range. That more than a 600% increase over the previous category.
If the graph was divided into 0-$100, $100-$200, $200-$300, etc., then the curve would be just what we’d all expect: A huge number of bloggers in the lowest earning bracket, dwindling to tiny number of money-makers at the other end.
As a side note, In November I was just starting my blog, EmptyEasel.com, so I didn’t participate in the survey. I’ll be in the $10-$29 category for January 2007, however.
**Sorry** That first line should read “. . . jump in earners at the $100-$499 range. . . “
[…] זה היה בספטמבר 2005. לקרת סוף שנת 2006 הוא ערך סקר על הכנסות הבלוגרים המבקרים אצלו בבלוג מהשרות של גוגל אדסנס. להלן התוצאות: […]
[…] O primeiro a por a enquete em prática foi Darren Rowse no proBlog.net (em inglês), o blogajuda comentou o resultado e “classificou” como desanimador esta também foi a classificação dada por outros blogueiros. […]
These are very interesting numbers indeed. I’m also in the “below $10” category, but I’m only just starting out. I believe from what I’ve seen and read so far that maybe we will see the “blog market” mature after the initial explosion. What is your opinion? What is sustainable for the blogging industry? Are there enough readers to support 60 million blogs?
I guess one must focus on quality quality and then quantity (speaking of content). The shining star of blogging entrepreneurs must be Steve Pavlina. He now makes $40k per month from his blog, of which $9k Ad Sense.
Interesting Poll results…
In my opinion, blogs have become a thing of the past. *ducks* Not that one can’t make money writing a blog; I just don’t think there are enough readers around for all the bloggers anymore.
Once you hit a certain goal, the earnings really start to pile on top of each other. I think your blog is the perfect case study of this phenomenon.
I would love to hit my goal of $100/day by August. It’s my biggest wish, and posts like these keep hope alive!
Hi Darren, can you update this post ? what are the new statistic for year 2007 ?
Great info. Maybe it should done once every while.
i search “adsense earning” in google and come accross your post. It is interesting. Do you have the latest data for the year 2008 ?
I was looking for a way to earn money from website that can help me atlease for hosting expenses.
With this post, I am confident that I can achieve it by using google adsense. Definetly I will need to increase the web traffice for my website.