Below you’ll find my latest update on how I make money blogging (this is something I post about every few months – although it’s been a over six months since I last did it ).
Also note – I go into a lot of detail on how I make money blogging in ProBlogger the Book.
How Much Money Do I Make from Blogging?
I get asked how much money my blogging makes me on a regular basis. These days I don’t go into specifics about it – all I will say is that it continues to be well over six figures per year (but less than seven figures). What you’ll find below are my top income streams – ranked from highest earnings to lowest.
Keep in mind that this is a summary of all of my blogs (not just ProBlogger). It does not include any income that I earn from b5media where I’m paid a salary as VP Training.
I hope you find it useful to see the mix and variety of ways that I earn a living from blogging.
1. AdSense
Despite not using it here at ProBlogger any more I continue to use AdSense with real effect on my other blogs. While I do use AdSense Referrals and their search feature it is their normal ads that work best for me. I have them all set to show image and text based ads and find that 250×300 pixel ads work best (usually with a blended design).
2. Chitika
Last time I did this sort of summary Chitika ranked #1. This time around it has been overtaken by AdSense – not because Chitika slipped in how much it earned but because AdSense went up and because I also replaced a few Chitika ad units with WidgetBucks ones. Chitika offers a range of ad units that I experiment with. I find their eMiniMalls work best and that Related Product Units are also good. Their Shoplincs product isn’t performing as well as it once did for me – mainly because I’ve been promoting it less and have driven less traffic to it. Over the time I’ve been using Chitika they’ve now earned me over a quarter of a million dollars!
3. Amazon Associates
This has been one of my big movers in the last 12 months. I used to make a few odd dollars from it – however in recent times it has become a significant earner for me (as I’ve shared previously). This quarter it overtook TLA as my third biggest earner – largely on the back of me directing traffic to Amazon from my product related sites – mainly digital cameras. While the commission on cameras is only 4% this adds up when those that you refer buy higher ticket items.
4. Private Ad Sales/Sponsorships
This includes ad sales of the 125 x 125 ads here at ProBlogger as well as a couple of private ad deals that I did with sponsors on my camera blog (including sponsorships with Canon, Kodak and Adobe). This area has jumped up since last time also as a result of the new design here at ProBlogger and our expanded sales team at b5 who now sell ProBlogger’s ads for me.
5. Text Link Ads
The income from TLA has dipped slightly over the last few months simply because I took the decision to stop selling them here at ProBlogger and most of my other blogs. This was because I wanted to focus more upon selling the 125 pixel ads instead and felt that the ads I was attracting were not as relevant to this site as they could have been. As it turns out this might have been a good move because it seems Google has been penalizing blogs that run them lately.
6. ProBlogger Job Boards
The job boards here at ProBlogger continue to grow each month in the number of advertisements that are being bought. This enabled me to invest most of the money that they’d earned a while back into getting a new back end for the boards and to redesign them. It hit me today that the boards are now bringing in around $1000 a month in revenue which is pretty nice considering that they are now so low maintenance to run! I’ve just given a development team a new brief to expand the job boards in the coming month so stay tuned for some new features coming soon which could see this revenue increase and more importantly for it to become an even more useful resource to readers.
7. Miscellaneous Affiliate Programs
I run a variety of affiliate programs on my blogs – most of which bring in smaller amounts of money that don’t really justify a category of their own. These include – – Digital Photography Secrets (a camera technique series), Pro Photo Secrets (a great photoshop product) , Yaro’s Blog Mastermind Mentoring Program, SEO Book (Aaron’s legendary resource). This area is set to continue to grow in the current quarter with me having had reasonable conversions from the promotion of the excellent Teaching Sells course.
8. Miscellaneous Advertising Programs
I also play with a number of other ad networks. Some I run as tests to see if I should review them here – and some are just advertising that run in the background on some of my smaller blogs. These include AuctionAds, Feedburner RSS ads, Vizu (a poll advertising system), Kontera and Bidvertiser. Together these don’t add up to major earnings for me – not because they are not good, but because I don’t use them heavily (a blog can only run so many ads on it).
I think that that covers most of it. Since last quarter I’ve also been experimenting with WidgetBucks as well as one other ad system that is still in a closed beta test. I’m certain that WidgetBucks will feature in next quarter’s list because I am getting good returns on that so far. In fact at it’s current earnings it’ll debut at at least number 4 on the list and perhaps even at number 3.
How Much do I Spend?
As mentioned last time – I don’t spend a lot of money in order to bring in my income. I do have some basic blogging costs (hosting etc) and play around with a limited amount of advertising (AdWords and StumbleUpon) but rely more heavily upon word of mouth and organic ways of drawing income into my blogs. I also have some costs in paying writers on a couple of blogs – but these don’t make up a massive part of the overall earnings each quarter.
Want to Learn More about How to Make Money Blogging?
Check out these resources that have been written specifically for bloggers wanting to make money blogging.
- ProBlogger the Book – where I and Chris Garrett sum up all of our basic tips about starting up a profitable blog.
- Blog Mastermind Blog Mentoring Program – one of the best coaching and training course going around on blogging.
- Blog Profits Blueprint – a free report on how to build profitable blogs.
Would be interesting if the recent Google AdSense Changes (“AdSense Make Ad Units Less Clickable”) will affect this order and your earning.
That’s quite interesting, Darren.
It’s nice to see Adsense still has potential when used properly. It tends to get a lot of negative press, so it’s always good for those of us who still use it when we see somebody who is making his fair share. :)
I’m curious to see how AdSense will rank on your list after the update reducing its hit area.
I wondered how come you never wrote anything about TNX :) at least if you get referrals you can make a lot of money and also buy thousends of links rated by PR :)
I make quite of money now with TNX but i spend all on advertising.
Thank you for the list, it is nice to see where our problogger is generating income.
Hi, I’m absolute beginner in blogging but yesterday I earned my very first 0,03$ From Amazone Associates! I’ll start with AdSense soon.
I’m regularly read your blog and try to follow your advices!
Money is not my first motive for blogging so this 0,03$ maybe didn’t made me rich but they made me very happy!
Thanks for all your great advices!
I wonder about adsense, after the less clickable ads are adsense still a good resource for make money online? My earning is decrease sooo far :(
It’s interesting to see that you’re doing so well with Adsense while so many others are complaining about it or not having much luck at all.
And it’s good to know that professional bloggers can actually make a decent income…actually it’s good to know that someone can be a professional blogger…and make an income.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the rundown. After looking at your list I’m a bit interested in the Amazon deal.
Also, the first poster has an interesting question – will AdSense still rank high after they cut down on the clickable pixels? Only time will tell.
I’m just curious to know how far is the Amazon revenue from the direct ad sales revenue. It would seem that with the kind of traffic you get and quality associated with problogger.net you’d be able to push direct ad sales to the top earner.
Care to disclose a bit more? :)
Its nice to see what you guys at the top use to earn a crust. I only use Adsense at the moment, but your list will help me to use some of the others.
Many thanks.
As always, great post, Darren. I just started a new blog which I’m hoping to monetize in the future. This post really helps me start researching advertising methods and prioritize them in terms of their potential. Thank you for sharing your experience!
It will be interesting to see how widgetbucks ranks against chitika, which in my eyes is its closest competitor.
Love how this post also manages to include a number of affiliate links to products (as Darren mentions at the bottom of the post) – its a great way to round up all those potential earners and let the audience know about them.
I think I one of probably the 99% of readers of this site who can only dream of numbers such as $250,000 (even if that is spread over the last couple of years or so).
Thanx for the post , Darren. It’s great to see that Adsense is still on top as lately a lot of people seem to have stopped using it.
Also, what do you think of the new format of google adsense ( i am not sure if its out or coming out ). Before you could click on any place within the box to get the click counted but now you have to click on the heading or the link to count your click.
Once again , thanx for the post. I wonder what you would charge if you did reviews here, that would be a money maker for you but again that would take the essence of this blog away
Here are a few more, granted it’s for a completely different niche, but the Glam Ad Network and Vizu polls are huge income streams for the entertainment/fashion blog industry.
Now this has created a much bigger dilemma for me. TLA is working much better than AdSense on my blog and it’s helping me stay in school. If I stop using TLA and rely on AdSense alone, I risk putting all the eggs in one basket.
I guess it’s time to seriously pursue other monetization means.
Very nice work. I’m with everyone else in wondering whether or not the change to Adsense will bump out out of that #1 spot.
While I’d love know your actual figures, this is still good for us out there who are looking for ways to make money. I’ve experimented with a lot of what you’ve listed here, and I’m trying to find the right combination still!
Thank you for the list, it is nice to see where our problogger is generating income.
Thanks for putting your revenue sources out for all of us to see. Adsense is still my biggest money maker, though it took a drop this month. Number two for me is Kontera, it’s performing very well. I find my writing blog is hard to monetize, but it’s kind of fun playing around with different revenue sources and seeing what works.
Thanks for sharing this Darren. While I currently make zero with my small little start of a blog, just knowing how much you make through your various blogs shows that it truly can be done. You have given some resources here that will definitely be coming across my radar in the near future as I expand in blogging and make some attempts to monetize it to cover hosting costs and have a family night out once a month (okay, so I have 5 children, so a nice dinner, movie with necessary popcorn and soda reaches nearly $200). Not very lofty goals, and certainly attainable – I just need to write more.
I’ve also dumped Text-Link-Ads from my main blog at mattwardman.com, and I’m now taking a careful look at Google Ads, purely on the basis that Google is acting more and more like a monopolist, and I don’t like monopolies – even if I have to take a moderate financial hit.
See the link on my name.
Newbie blogger here. Thanks so much for sharing stuff like this. It helps me focus on what to go after in terms of monetizing my blog. There’s so many ways to monetize that it can be overwhelming where to start or what to try.
I also like Yaro’s “Throw things at the wall” type of give it a try and see if it sticks mantra that I’ve heard him talk about before.
Thanks for this, Darren, a useful post as always. Interesting to see that Amazon is at #3, I’m just starting to get a trickle of income from there but can see that is likely to grow if I make my posts more product focused.
Looks like I will also have to investigate Chitika as a potential earner, I’d not really considered them seriously before.
Hi Darren
Very interesting post, and thanks for sharing the information with us on which one work best for you.
It would be interesting to see a comparison top 10 list of how these income streams work on your different types of blogs, ie which ones work best on Problogger and which ones work best on one of your other blogs, i.e the Digital Camera one.
I recently installed Chikita about a week ago and have seen great results with it on my gadgets blog.
I’ve tried Auction Ads and they are just too buggy for me, sometimes they don’t even display at all showing a missing page error.. which looks real bad :(
I use their negative keywords like starcraft -boat – trailer, but I still sometimes get ads selling the Boat not the game lol…
Thanks for sharing.
BTW, I love the improvements with Widget Bucks! I’m about to try it again.
Thanks for the information. Very informative to see how each one rates for you. Looking forward to the next report.
You have a lot to analyze and keep track of which I would think would take up some significant amount of time.
I can only dream of such problems at this point.
I’ve got a question. Of the programs you run, which do you feel offers the best value to the advertisers?
1000 only from job board..
that is huge..and I want to hit the 1000 mark with all the income.
Although i have been using adsene only until now but with a theme design in progress (I AM LOOKING FOR DESIGNERS :) ) and 125×125 ad spots to open up..I plan to hit the $500+ mark by may 2008 (that is when my studies end any I join a company)
That is very impressive. These posts are really inspiring to people like me, who are looking for building a living from Internet. Thanks!
Thanks for the wisdom. This was a very informative post and I now understand how to monetize blogging…
This post is NOT helpful. at all. more goobledegook about “look how I make money” while not actually saying how much money you are making.
I know it’s rude to ask, but seriously. How much money does a blogger make from what you are talking about? cents? tens of dollars? hundreds of dollars? per day? per week? per year?
useless information………………!
but look at how many commments you get from quasi-spammers! gosh, you must be doing SOMETHING right.
Thanks for the great list of programs that you use. This will help me in my endeavorers to make money blogging.
Darren,
I have seen a jump in my Adsense income the past few months as well, without doing anything differently. I was surprised that direct ad sales weren’t higher on your list.
Very interesting post.
– George
Interesting that you are doing so well with Google.
Was your PageRank affected by the Google slap on the whole NOFOLLOW paid links, TLA, etc?
In your opinion, should a service based organization place ads like these throughout their site?
terapixel (and others) – yep, I am going to be watching AdSense very carefully over the coming month to see how their changes impact earnings. I suspect they’ll go down a little initially but hope that they increase again as prices increase (fingers crossed). Otherwise I’ll move more ad units to Chitika and WidgetBucks.
Bontb – never really been into TNX – when I was into text link selling I was happy with TLA. There’s only so many systems you can use at once :-)
A. Marques – yes I’d expect direct ad sales to keep increasing – however Amazon continually surprises me with it’s own increases. I’d say in the next quarter that Amazon sales will still be up on direct ad sales as it’s the Christmas quarter (and last year Amazon leapt up about 30% in the last quarter) but then the first quarter next year it’ll come back down and direct ads sales could compete with it.
Advice Network Writing contest – tough question. I think they each offer something different to advertisers and depending upon the product each could work. Probably AdSense seems to be most popular and with recent changes to their system it seems that advertisers are getting a better and better deal.
Carrie – I’d encourage you to look a little deeper at the post. While I don’t mention specific figures for each one – if you do a little sleuthing you’ll get a better picture. For example I say that the overall income for a year is comfortably over six figures (ie per quarter it’s comfortably over $25,000 – I also mention that #6 on the list is bringing in around $1,000 a month (so you can deduce that numbers 1-5 are all above that figure), I mention that Chitika has earned me a quarter of a million since I started using it (so obviously that’s considerably higher than #6 and less than #1), I also link to a post about Amazon that talks about earning $2500 a month….
While I don’t give specific figures I do purposely drop in some figures like that to help people gave some understanding of the earnings brought in by different parts of the list – I do this so that people will have some ability to gauge how much each earns in general/relative figures.
Antonio – my page rank dropped to a 4 for a few days but then went back up.
Jason – I wouldn’t recommend it really. If you have a site for an organization I would have thought that the main purpose was to advertise that organization and what it offers. To put ads for other organization on it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to me as you’d be sending people away from the thing you want to sell.
thanks for sharing your revenue sources. it really helps us new guys out, giving us an idea of where to start. also gives us encouragement to see that its working for people like yourself
Nice post Darren.
You say you earn well over six figures, but not quite seven figures. if you don’t make seven figures, then you probably make exactly six figures, unless you earn something like $100,000.99, in which case you earn 8 figures, which is excellent.
Regardless. Good site, but that was an imprecise thing to say on your part.
Chazzie – I think you’ll find that it’s generally accepted that ‘six figure income’ means over 100,000 – the ‘cents’ don’t count.
I guess all I was saying is that I earn over $100k a year from blogging (comfortably) but that it’s not over $1m. Big gap yes – but an attempt to give at least some context to the post. For example without it the list could be from a blogger earnings 0.40c with #10 and $3.57 with #1 on the list.
Thanks. As usual very informative.
If you don’t mind me asking; how many sites is this spread across? And is it fairly evenly spread? That info would be very useful to me.
Thanks again.
hmm good post. alot of people were saying bad stuff about widgetbucks but i guess they have worked out for you. well we will truly see if they pay u ha.
Very interesting. I have plenty of clicks on my music sites for CDs I recommend. But no orders yet. Im a little suprised since all of them are 4-5 star ratings on Amazon. It is all top quality music.
Thanks, Nice information on how to generate money through blog.
Not every blogger will reach to the same levels as you achieved Darren. I think the secret formula is persistence in blogging. Because you face with a lot of obstacles both mentally (yourself) and physically. Organic growth comes after so many years of persistence and hardworking. Thanks for sharing all this information. By the way, have you downloaded your gifts yet ? http://searchforblogging.com/index.php/2007/11/14/have-you-downloaded-your-gifts-yet/
Darren I am wondering whether you are coming up with any potential alternatives for Amazon? While their products are second to none the reports are crap as is the commission. Do you think any of this will improve with time? Do you think Chitika will offer a text link similar to the one you use at the end of each digital camera review?
RT
Darren,
I think it’s important to illustrate in this post that even though you don’t spend a lot today, you might’ve spent a lot before your website grew to the size it is today. Relatively speaking of course.
Give the result, the % how much you earn from each programme. Atleast show the % please.