Today I’m updating the Make Money Blogging page here on ProBlogger – a page where I give a breakdown of how I make money from blogging.
This time I’ve decided to do a snapshot of last month (April 2010). I also thought that I’d put together a bit of a video as well as updating the page – to speak to the different parts of how I make money blogging as well as writing it up.
Here’s the video (created using ScreenFlow – please forgive the slight lag between audio and video).
How I Earn Money Blogging [April 2010 Stats] from Darren Rowse on Vimeo.
For more information you might also want to check up the updated Make Money Blogging page.
PS: Thanks to Tim Jack for the motion graphics intro/outro to the video.
Daryle Dickens (May 5th, 2010 2:12 am)
I’m not sure Amazon affiliates would make that much in terms of revenue, but perhaps the book sales of the 1st and now 2nd edition of problogger would provide plenty of revenue.
what strikes me as a 6 or maybe 7 figure income is whether this is annual or in total. i may earn 50,000 in a lifetime with adsense over all my domains etc, but that won’t keep me in house and home.
Pedro – my Amazon commissions come from all kinds of products. Certainly a lot of books are in the mix but the real money comes when you recommend something more expensive. A few cameras a day and the figures mount up a lot quicker.
The 6-7 figure income is per year for me.
This is unreal!! I have not had good luck with Google Adsense… I am thinking maybe I have done something wrong with it. In almost 2 years, I have only made 20 bucks…. a long way to go to my first check. :-(
Always interesting so see income breakdowns for other blogs. Thanks for updating us.
Hey Darren,
I am glad to see that you are doing so well, thanks for sharing that video with us.
I was surprised to see such a large percentage is still Adsense.
I’m guessing that the results are company wide though and not just from the problogger site?
Cheers,
Shane
Shane – yes it’s from my 3 blogs – ProBlogger, Digital Photography School and Twitip.
Thanks for sharing this inside info about your sites. This is helping me tweak my blogs to improve them.
It’s good to know which avenues are providing the best returns, and insight into how you weigh the components.
I’ve noticed this about the book ProBlogger as well. Just got the new edition, and it’s helping me identify the pieces to evaluate to make decisions, each situation is different and things change.
Thanks!
Hi Darren, Never cud imagine somebody to have so many income streams and running all of them with success.
it is a remarkable achievement and this is what makes people like me follow you.
Thanks Darren.
Great to see diversity and not all your eggs in one basket.
Do you ever do sponsored blogging? Perhaps on DPS?
If memory serves, there was a share drop in your chikita – is that correct? I seem to recall Chiokita being a bigger part of the pie last time around.
Thanks for the info – it is a great source of encouragement for the rest of us :)
Dave
Dave Higgs – no i’ve never done a sponsored blog post. It’s just not something I’ve ever felt the need to do.
Chitika has dropped a little for me, mainly because I’ve moved other ads into their spots and focused upon other more lucrative income streams. It still does about 80% of what it was doing at its peak for me but other income streams have increased. I guess this isn’t clear when I just talk in %’s but its still a fairly significant amount per month, but other things have gone up beyond it.
Huh… definitely interesting to see where all the income comes from. I would have thought advertising and affiliate and ebook sales would have been higher than adsense! I haven’t tried using Adsense on BGB yet, because I can’t decide where to put it without it looking like crap. lol
C
Great post. I think people will definitely be encouraged by your figures.
Demonstrating that hard work and perseverance, really does pay off.
Thanks Darren for showing us how it all splits out. I have your book and thought it would be more than that thin wedge.
Thanks Darren for sharing. Your information definitely will help aspiring and new bloggers on how to monetize their blogs.
Like many others, I’m also very surprised to see Adsense is your highest income stream. I guess it also depend on the nature and purpose of the blog/site.
I doubt my blog will ever get any decent income from Adsense but as you mentioned before you took 2 years before seeing real income coming in so I’m telling myself to be very patience.
I’ll wait and see what kind of income stream I can get from it.
I would have thought that people who own or try to find digital camera tips are already blind by ads (as in, they won’t click on them). I guess I was wrong :)
Darren, you are one of the most incredibly generous bloggers! The information you share with us is priceless and so are you. Thank you for helping us see the path to making a living as a blogger.
x0x
Anita @ModelSupplies
Darren, you are one of the most incredibly generous bloggers EVER! The information you share with us is priceless and so are you. Thank you for helping us see the path to making a living as a blogger.
x0x
Anita @ModelSupplies
You are one of the famous blogger who are earning very big money from blogging. I am just learning new blogging tips from you.
I have yet to earn a single dollar from Adsense or Affiliate marketing, but I have never taken it seriously because I am not a big player in terms of blogging. However it is still a dream to make enough to be able to fun my hobby of blogging – that would be a great win (to start with).
So thanks for sharing and being so open – very cool.
Hi I can understand you very diffically but in video blogging what about gulf country cevilizatoin they dont understand it . but other wise i also shocked before i read on your blog you removed adsense but now adsense paying you 23%
Most people said don’t put adSense, I guess you just proved them wrong! Great tips and information!
I am curious how much you think your income is derived from the fact that you are famous on the Internet . . . you know that old adage that the famous can do something and automatically get a large response because of who they are.
Just look at the followers Ashton Kutcher and Oprah on Twitter, whereas the little blogger out there won’t see anything remotely close to the same success in 5 years
Sometimes I think you and a few top bloggers are the only ones who make any money with Adsense – and you don’t seem to have the problems that the rest of the Internet has with them, but maybe Google is very careful with your account because of the traffic you have?
Just some thoughts from your longtime reader,
Catherine
A Week In The Life of A Redhead
8 Women Dream
Thank You Darren. Your presentation has brought me ‘down’ to “reality” and appropriately ‘adjusted’ my expectations for my own sites. You’ve provided a very real, sobering, healing and practical scenario for what anyone in the internet marketing business could, would, should expect from their own business (without the hype).
My Sincere Thanks,
Charles
Indeed, the article is very inspirational and it proves how important it is for businesses to work on their business blogs to achieve success in business nowadays. And I agree with Anita Nelson, it is very kind of you to share all this information that can help anyone working on their blogs to make profit out of them. I have started a blog a long time ago for my business and obtained some help asking other entrepreneurs at startups.com. It was helpful at that time, and I found about the importance of business blogging. It is great to read articles like this in which real and useful tips are shared for everyone’s success!!!
Well it looks as though your adsense revenue makes up a good part of your income. I’m wondering though if you are experiencing a low CTR like other adsense publishers have been publishing about?
Darren – Thanks for sharing that information. I found the % you get from adsense interesting. For my niche there isn’t a huge dollar value from the adsense ads, so instead we’ve got more of a direct promotion of our own products.
I like how you’ve got a good mix going – that says that you are not totally dependent on a single revenue stream. Diversification is a good thing to have and it’s something that we’re working towards as well.
Darren,
That was awesome! Very eye opening and great to have this information at the very beginning of my journey. I have been helping some friends with new websites and would like to get something started for myself. Do you have any suggestions on choosing a topic to blog about that would have good potential for actually making money? You mentioned blogging about something that would be sold on Amazon. I wouldn’t consider myself an expert on anything right now. I do go camping a lot with my young children and was thinking of that as a subject. But I am curious what types of subjects have the best opportunities for profit. Any tips or advice you have would be HUGELY appreciated!
Thank you so much!!!
Cathie
First of all thanks for you transparency.
Secondly, I think my biggest takeaway here is the value of diversity. You use many different blogs, many different methods. Of course the challenge for all of us in diversity, is the willingness to grow, to be educated – to be even frustrated at times. Diversity. I need to keep building. Thanks Darren
Thanks very much Daren, It is very nice of you. I think this is the best way to show an income to those who want to make money blogging like me. This graph is very helpful for me because it allows me to know what works better.
Mayann
http://ebooksmakerinfos.blogspot.com
Very inspirational income graph. I am just starting blogging on a more series level and now I have a good idea of areas to spend more time & money on. Thanks for the info!
Hello!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nice to see how the income is generated. The best part is the diversity of income.
Thanks for updating us.
Love this post! So encouraging. I’m a brand new blogger working on a personal blog and some niche blogs. Great to see this breakdown as it gives us some idea what to focus on and what not to focus on.
BTW I am involved with a 31 Days to Build a Better Blog experiment with the guys over at http://www.ourchurch.com . Been pretty interesting this first week so far as I wasn’t familiar with the book or anything until now.. Hoping we learn a ton through it.
http://www.guardraildamageahead.com
I am a fairly new blogger with what I consider a niche blog. I had come to terms with the fact that I may never make money from my blog but after seeing this I think I am going about it the wrong way. I didn’t realise how much other bloggers have actually made and how many avenues are possible out there. I am impressed and inspired. Thanks. :)
Great information here. I have been a full-time musician most of my life(38) up until about 2 years ago when I decided to get into the hospitality/entertainment business. As a giging musician I always made between $40,000-55,000 a year. I wanted to try the corporate world and landed a job in hotel sales & marketing making $40,000+ a year. After reading these posts I’m definitely keeping my day gig for now but really want to be my own boss again. I do make money playing music still but want to concentrate on other avenues to genrate income. Making money online be it blogging or selling or whatever sounds exciting, challening, and rewarding. My questions: where do I start and how do you find a good niche?? Is blogging the best way? Thanks and keep up the great work!
Nice presentation. I’ve learned something from this -work hard and diversify. Thanks
I love seeing other people’s monthly earnings reports. It puts a reality behind the dreams. I am surprised to learn that your Adsense earnings are higher than everything else.
Hi Darren,
I know how you can increase the direct sales! :) Kudos & thank you for your transparency.
Gabrielle
The Internet has done so many positive things in the life of countless individuals. It has made a number of people into multi-millionaires, and it made the lives of everyone a lot more convenient. We now conduct a lot of our affairs through the World Wide Web and it seems that it’s hard to go through life without it. What’s great is that there are a lot of opportunities available on the net, and you can even set up your own Internet money making business.
Hi,
it’s very interesting to see how many different incomes a blog platform can give.
It’s very unpleasant for me to explain how much pain it costed me, in these last 2 years to find a decent internet income.
I have tried many of the different kinds of businesses, how affiliate marketing, selling my own information products, memberships sites, but I didn’t succeed yet.
But look at your results it’s very inspiring, so I won’t abandon my big dream to earn with internet, and achieve my new lifestyle helping others.
Now I have redesigned my project, and i hope it will be really successful.
I have understood that for obtain what I want, first I must help others succeed!
Thank for inspiring me.
My hand on my heart,
Alberto Facchielli
I salute what you have done, very transparent display your work. This is very powerful and could probably be done to others.
I love hearing success stories. I also really enjoy your blog and wanted you to know it’s really helped me come far in the world of internet blogging.
Congrats and thank you for sharing your success story, I look forward to reading about your April earnings.
Hey Darren
That is some workload to be doing content and testing for this amount of sites.
Adsense and affiliate commission is nearly half of your breakdown.
If you hadn’t got the rest you would be leaving money on the table.
Glyn
That was a really inspiring video Darren!
I find it interesting to learn that adsense doesn’t perform well on Problogger…
Does that mainly have to do with the advertisers or the readership?
Well done Darren. I enjoy what you did with the editing for the video, very creative. Its amazing what you have been able to create.
Thanks for the info for newbies. It seems that your income is from more than just the blog, which gives food for thought.
Thanks also for the e-book! I am learning alot, but it’s going to take my longer than 31 days when I read the links here to supplement the information.
I sincerely appreciate that your e-book and this website is filled with real information that can be used. There are so many people out there selling info that is basic knowledge even to me as a newbie. (I bought a book on affiliate marketing only to find that the majority of the book was info on how to fill in the forms to sign up with affiliates. Who needs that? They didn’t offer any real information on how to make money which was a disappointment.)
I find your honesty and integrity refreshing and I am grateful to find your website.
Hi im a newbie blogger, i just got approved in adsense and im wondrin how you guys are doin it makin so much traffic in your site? any help will be appreciated. Thank you much.. :(
ooopppss sorry, my bad, i didnt realize there’s a video. Lols, im gonna watch this, thank you so muchhh for the tips.. :)
Thanks Darren for the great information! I too am also surprised that you do make the majority of your money from Adsense as I always thought they pay you so minimal it would be hard to earn a lot but of course with your readership and following I’m pretty sure it adds up quickly.
If I can only get a fraction of your traffic that would be awesome! I know it takes time and persistence so I’m keeping at it and staying focused.
Anna
I have a blog and I have now learned that i have being doing it all wrong. The video presentation was timely for me.
Thanks Darren for disclosing your earnings for last month. It just confirms the fact that if anyone continues to do the right things on their websites, they can also build massive income online like you do.
I’m not surprised that adsense is responsible for a huge chunk of your income for April because it’s equally my biggest earner so far, although not in the range of yours yet.
From the result I’m getting, I’m sure if I can pull larger traffic to my sites, my adsense earning would soar – its principally a matter of traffic, profitable niche, and good content – and I know I will get to the five, and even six figures soon.
Thanks again, this video has inspired me to continue working harder.
Darren.
I picked up a copy of 31dbb and am now imlementing that in my business.
The thing is, is that I’m not a blogger as such, I just use my blog as my voice to the people. I do have a little monetization on there but I mainly use my blog to have conversations with my market.
What I find fasicinating about the video is the amount of income streams that go in to making your overall income.
It must take a lot of pulling figures together to please the accountant.
“Many streams make a river”
Thanks for putting the video together and I can’t wait to reach the end to see the improvements in the blogging part of my business.
Reach new heights.
Nathan
I stick to the GPT quick money, but i love the post and will someday make things effective.
http://www.cashcrate.com/1947708