Earlier in the month I asked readers to share their blog earnings for the month of October. As usual this poll was a popular one with 3054 responses. I’ve run this survey previously so will compare the results between this and last time I ran it below.
Of this number 857 said that they did not earn any money blogging (28%). This is either because they don’t try to – or they try but fail (next time I’ll ask for clarification around this).
Of those that do earn some money blogging the breakdown of earnings into different earning ranges was as follows:
For those of you interested in the percentages – here’s a pie chart.
Keep in mind that these figures are just for those who earn something from blogging (and don’t include the 28% who don’t).
49% earned under $100
23% earned over $1000
16% earned over $2500
9% earned over $15000
Comparison to last time
So how do these recent results compare with previous times that we’ve carried out this same survey of readers?
In mid 2006 I asked exactly the same question with the same earning ranges and I think you’ll see below that the percentages are remarkably similar:
One last note. When I’ve asked readers to respond to how much they earn from different ad networks (AdSense and Chitika) the shape of the graphs has always been the same. While the percentages vary slightly the results are always quite similar.
So – what can we conclude?
For me the most striking ‘lesson’ from these surveys is that while there is significant hype around the idea of bloggers making money – that the vast majority earn very little (or nothing). A quarter of those who earn something make less than 0.33 cents per day. If that’s not a reality check then I don’t know what is.
On the flip side – a smaller group of bloggers are making good to great amounts of money. While I’m sure there are some votes that are put in the highest category falsely – I do believe that there are an increasing number of bloggers who making significant part time income through to full time income from their blogs. That top category is significant and seem to be growing.
i m not earning anything ryt now…suggest me sumthing gud to bring traffic my site has gud content related to computers and internet
The most amazing part is 9% earned over $15000! That should provide enough motivation.
What this chart says to me is that it’s relatively easy to get to the $100-500, but then a lot of people hit a wall and the numbers decline significantly as the amounts get higher. The question is what are the people making serious bucks doing differently that they not only got past that wall, but obviously hit a jet stream. Is it their niche, their investment of time/money, their monetization scheme…
Has anyone else found it’s hard to get past the $500 number? Any thoughts on what the others are doing right?
In order to be able to get in those 9% earning more than 15.000 you need these things:
– a great idea
– great skills in a niche
– lots of money to invest in the first months
– a great idea
It’s that simple :)
I, too, am grateful for this peek “behind the curtain.” I’m not surprised that so many of the respondents are stuck in the bottom rungs of income level. Having often been stuck there with my blogs, I can say that there are three main causes for this: too little traffic, too little traffic, and too little traffic! Once you have decent traffic, monetizing it is a simple matter of experimenting with various programs (AdSense, affiliate programs, and so on) to see which gives the best earned CPM.
And the early stages are SO difficult! I, and I’m sure many readers, would appreciate advice on how to first break out of that terrible zone of 0-20 visitors per day.
It’s definantely not a get rich quick scheme, that’s for sure! It’s HARD WORK, you need to have passion and be very dedicated to it! Months of work with little income, don’t qwuit your day job until you reach at least $3,000 per month.
I agree, Mommy Poppins. That is why it would be interesting to me to know how much these people would be interested in pursuing. I make in that range, but I am not particularly trying to make more. I know that takes an investment of time that I do not have, so I am quite content with the fact that what I earn from blogging covers extra expenses of homeschooling, like more books and a microscope!
89.9% of stats are made up ;-)
Throwing my own site into the mess, http://www.WellingtonGrey.net/ I’m pulling in about 100-200USD a month. Very interesting to see the raw numbers, but I agree with a poster above that it would be useful to see ‘typical’ sites for each of the categories.
I ran a blog for six months last year and earned a grand total of $3.12. I stopped it last June, due to lack of time, and i took it offline.
A few weeks ago, i got a new day job which allows me to be home at 4.30 and blog for one hour so i decided to start a new blog. The topic of my blog is the same (songwriting and music recording) and in the last 3 weeks, i have earned almost $15!
Far from being enough to make a living off it, but it is very encouraging – my goal is to make a part time income from blogging, to complement my part time income from music/writing, which would allow me to focus all my energy on music and writing (i consider blogging to be a form of writing – when working on a long term project like a novel, it’s quite refreshing to be able to write short pieces and deliver them to an audience right away).
The main difference between my new blog and my old one? I am more selective in terms of content – i only write one post a day but the quality of it is higher than in my old blog, for which i wrote 2 or 3 posts a day. Also, i blog regurlaly – i schedule all my posts for noon (UK time) every day and i have noticed a peak in traffic around that time, from regular readers checking my new post.
Lastly, i spend a lot of time brainstorming ideas for posts – i make a list of 20, write a few then weed one the not so good ideas from the list, and start brainstorming for the next batch. So i always have a few ideas in store but i also force myself to brainstorm new ideas once a week – it helps maintain the quality of the content.
It would be very interesting to see what level of traffic they all achieved in those bands of income. We are seeing about 150 vistors per day (fairly new site only 5 months old) and our Google Adsense is at 50/month. We were at 5-20/month until we broke through 100 visitors per day.
Thoughts? Come and visit!
There is a book called something like The Winner Take All Economy. Sorry I forget the author.
Their point is that in particular markets there are big winners and lots of loosers with very little in between. These are the kinds of markets where there is little upper limit to what is regarded as fair pay. These markets are things like celebrities.
So Pavarotti was paid a squillion and led to the demise of opera in Italy. All the mid-range companies that were good. People now went to see Pavarotti once every year or five instead of going to the local opera house every month or year.
Other examples are sports and movie stars.
I think this is a good description of the blogosphere too.
I think it is likely that there will be a shake-out over the next decade. The magic will be getting attention – and I hope that Rich Schefren is right, when he says that it will be by providing high quality content.
Other thoughts people?
great Daren. I need this so long time… but its valid data?
It would be useful to do a regression and estimating the real factors contributing on earnings…that data need to be analyzed accurately!
Pierluigi Rotundo
PS: However, it is a great survey! Thank you for all your work! I’m starting loving to blog thanks also to your advices.
Interesting but I doubt there that those numbers apply to Europe (especially Austria).
I think that over here the number of bloggers who earn ZERO is much bigger.
I would assume that the satisfaction one gains from the blogging, would be almost as much as the financial gains and for many people, actually worth more.
Imparting ones knowledge and exposing thoughts and feelings to the general public, can surely be a daunting task.
It would be interesting to have the percentages further broken down to see which niches these blogs belong to. I imagine certain niches like the make money niche where there’s tough competition, most blogs earn make very little.
I’d love to be proven wrong.
cheers
mbm
https://www.paytreck.com/?rid=akshayhack0123
signup here and get 1$ free…..its a paypal like site….offers support with e-gold e-currency etc….
I foresee that the changes in adsense ads are likely to affect bloggers’ earnings significantly in future.
These statistics are very intriguing and very motivational when you consider 16% of everyone who took part in the poll earned $1000 or more.
Much higher than I was anticipating.
Really good idea to compare the income made from blogs. I personally make around 150$ per month from adsense alone,I really want to know how people are making $15000 per month. I wish i will be there at one point of time. I started blogging around 7 months back. Initially first 3-4 months i used to make around 30$ per month, now it is increased but i dont know how to improve the number further. Any one has any ideas on any better optimizer for adsense so that i can get more CPC.
I am sorry, i concluded my earlier comment, but the question what i had in mind is that is this sample has any statistical significance as the same is not too big. Any one who is good at statistics can throw more light into this. Thanks in advance.
I believe that most of the people who earn under 10 dollars either don’t try at all or, in most cases, they try too much.
When I first hear about bloggers earning good money I started too look for information and did everything they told to do. Did’t help… I wondered what I did wrong.
Later I realized that I had ignored the most important part, the content. The essence of anybody reading blogs.
So I left the idea of earning money and started to write for fun. And the earnings started to grow steadily.
So not trying may not be so bad after all ;-)
I just started my blog back after a two year hiatus. I was going to change the dates on my posts to make them more current, but that doesn’t fool the RSS readers.
In one week, at one post a day, I have made a whopping $2, which I was paid $1.08 for. But considering it’s only a week, that’s not too bad.
Since the blog has been sitting for two years though, it is kind of already established.
I hope to grow my traffic, and am looking to learn how to social network to my advantage.
I need som clarification. Just see the expected decline in number as income is increasing and then all of sudden there is a spike in number of people earning greater than $15000. Is it becuase of long tail?
Ever occur to you that some of those who aren’t earning money weren’t trying to earn money?
I’m one of those whom voted for less than $10/month. My blog is quite new but can someone with experience please have a look at it and let me know what I’m doing wrong?
Thanks in advance.
http://prep4md.blogspot.com/
Dan wrote “Just see the expected decline in number as income is increasing and then all of sudden there is a spike in number of people earning greater than $15000. Is it becuase of long tail?”
My personal thought is that most of those people were lying/taking the piss. $15000 a month is a lot of money – i SERIOUSLY doubt that many blogs earn that much (eg yearly 6 income figure). Your thoughts Darren?
To Y.S
I too am on less than $10/month. I guess you’d prefer comments from those on $15000.
Looking at your blog the presentation is good – nice and bright.
I’d change the line about it being ‘just another’ medical student blog to something like ‘one medical students journey’ or some such.
I’m not a smoker and don’t eat junk food much so there’s not much reason for me to go back.
Like me you tend to share information rather than being more personal. I am trying to write more personally and know it is difficult for some of us (it is for me). This is what takes me back to most of the blogs I like – a sense of connection with the blogger. So I don’t feel there is much on your blog that answers, “What’s in it for me?’
Finally, I don’t think some of the popular blogs are all that much better than all the rest. It may just be luck. It may be better marketing.
Hope my impressions help.
Y.S:
I found your blog quite interesting because I’m preparing for medical school as well.
One tip I can give is that re-consider the colors. The greens make me think of vegetables, not medical school.
Antti
With this info how does one get into the 7% of bloggers
Well for me I’m not that suspicious! I think the stats are not fake, but I’m sure SOME people dind’t respond 100% accurately! It is GREAT to see some people making good to great money blogging! This is what I aspire to be able to do in time. I think it takes incredible patience and diligence to achieve this. We shall see. Only the strong survive and don’t give up kind of thing, eh?
My PPC Advice Blog
Many thanks for this brief diagram, now I can see what is my target percentage :).
A quick question: The survey is international, from all over the world, or just from US?
Thanks
It looks like bloggers either get into it a little bit and just toss up a few ads because they can and aren’t really expecting to earn anything, or they are trying to optimize for their adds and make a couple hundred bucks. Then there are the crazies, that have a real knack for blogging, like professional athletes, their a different breed
After joining a new blog network I hope to join that 9% making over $15,000!
We have some bloggers that are involved in our affiliate program. We offer Mainstream, Adult and Alternative lifestyle messenger systems where we pay out 50% commissions on all new and rebill payments.
One of our bloggers finds news articles that are associated with nudism, lesbian, swingers, etc and remarks on them, including our nutsworldwide.com website address, with a remark, interested in the nudist lifestyle, try this link. When a person posts a profile and if that person ever makes a purchase or their purchase rebills monthly, they are paid 50% commissions. One of our website has an annual membership figure of $90 USD, earning the referring blogger $45 USD. When this person’s subscription rebills a year later, that person earns another $45 USD. Monthly rebills are at $14.95 UDS earning the member $7.47 USD Monthly.
On mature websites, don’t be afraid casually mentioning an adult website, you can mention it in humor and still reap the benefits. Relying solely on adwords/adsense will not make you steady income. Think outside of the box to gain other avenues of revenue for your blogging time.
I was meeting with one of our affiliate bloggers last March and he commented that his web log earned him $240,000 US dollars in 2006, a very believable figure.
Remember, Millions of people are running adsense, as we do run adwords. Our adwords click payout monthly is minimal. It is so hard to write a fresh, catching ad in three lines, that will catch a persons attention and result in a click. Many of your visitors have seen the same ads running for years and will never click them. The amount of views versus the amount of actual clicks is astronomical. It is almost free advertising, branding, without having to pay for the clicks.
I just wanted to add insight to the conversation from a different point of view.
chatlinecash.com
I haven’t made any money off of my blog, but now that my blog is awaiting admission for some of the revenue sites that Darren suggested, I hope to soon be competing with the top writers of the blogging community.
i will be in the slot above 10$ /day.
I make around $10 to $20 a month. I would like to know the website that make more over $15,000 in blogging alone.
It would have been interesting to get a “cents per visitor” figure. Based on some very rough calculations from scant data, I calculate the average blog gets about 1.4 cents per unique visitor.
See this post:
http://www.searchtempoblog.com/index.php/blogging-for-cash-the-awful-truth/
I’m on about $1.40 a day on average so far. It doesn’t seem like much, but considering I’m getting real money for something I’ve been doing for free anyway.
You can earn a lot more if you combine your blog with an informative website!
I just started to get interested in the concept of making money by blogging. Couple of questions for you who have done so, even if you made only one cent.
1) How exactly do you get the money after people click on your ads? Do you get a check for $0.03 cents?
2) How do you actually report your earnings on tax forms? That is, do you have some documentation?
3) I live in Japan, but have accounts there and in the USA (my homeland). Anyone else in a similar situation and can explain how to pay the taxes?
In answer to your questions:
1. You’ll either get a check or PayPal credit once your earning reach a certain level. For example, I think the trigger point with Google is $25. Once you reach that, you will get paid that amount plus any amount before the cut-off calculation date.
2. If you are paid by PayPal, you can use that credit on your statement as the documentation to prove your earning. if not, then you will just have to keep records of payments and declare that income when you do your tax.
3. I live is Australia and can’t really help you. I suggest come tax time you ask your accountant. There are probably some rules about foreign sourced income.
Hmm.. I dont get much really.
Damn you 15k bloggers!
I am new to the blogging world; however, I generally have a good grasp on concepts.
I agree with everyone else, that those who do not make much, don’t work hard enough or choose not to put adds.
Finding a niche is very important; however, your income does not have to come from a niche. For example my blog University Scholar is, and will be, targeted towards college students who are involved on their campus and very academic. However, all college students enjoy fun. My blog may be 90% college stuff, then 10% fun stuff. The college stuff pulls in the traffic, but the fun stuff gets the revenue because the ads may be better.
These numbers must be bogus. Otherwise I can’t explain the difference between the number of people earning 10-15k and those earning over 15k.
I know this may be a stupid question, but where does the money you make go? You have to have a bank account. you have to setup the blog, people click on adverts, but where does the money go.
Frustrated. very very frustrated. I think I’m missing something, but what?
Thank You
Daniel – it depends upon how you make money. For using a tool like AdSense if someone clicks an ad then an advertiser pays AdSense (Google) and then at the end of the month they send you a cheque for all the clicks. In most cases there is a middle man that collects the money and sends it on to you.
The money is flying in!
These numbers must be bogus. Otherwise I can’t explain the difference between the number of people earning 10-15k and those earning over 15k.