I was interviewed during the week by an Australian journalist who was fascinated by the idea that people were making money from blogs.
As with most interviews that I do the old ‘how much can bloggers earn?’ question came out fairly early in the piece (it’s an oldie but a goodie).
I quoted a couple of the polls that I did of ProBlogger readers last year with regards to their AdSense and Chitika earnings and then realized that it’s been a while since we did a poll on reader earnings. In fact it’s been an even longer time since we did a ‘total earnings’ poll.
So it’s time for another one.
This week’s sidebar Poll asks the question:
How Much Money did you Make from Blogging in April?
I’m talking ALL forms of income from your blog – from direct income earners like Advertising, Selling products and Affiliate programs through to indirect earners like consulting or speaking work that you might have picked up BECAUSE of your blog (more on the distinction between direct and indirect earnings here).
I’m also talking on a personal level – what YOU earnt from all blogs you work on.
Don’t answer straight away – tally it up, give it some thought and then let us know.
If you didn’t earn any money from your blog in April either because you tried and didn’t have any luck or because you don’t try to then there is an option for you also.
If you’d like to comment on your vote or on the poll in general feel free to do so on this post.
April was a banner month for me (no pun intended) because all my blogs increased across the board. That was kinda cool. So I was happy to participate in the poll. Can’t wait to see the results at the end of the day.
-DM
I wondered who those $15k plus people were Don! :-)
About 6$.
Not too shabby for a personal blog, eh. heheheheheheh
This month is going to be much better than that.
My situation is little bit different. Since I stopped blogging at HomeOfficeVoice I striped my sidebar and placed AdSense and I’m earning between $300-500 a month from this – and I haven’t blogged there since the start of the year!
I guess that’s the long-tail in effect – ie: 200+ plus posts doing the rounds through Google.
I still get approx. 5000 uniques a month. I guess all the hard work in networking this site I initially put into it is starting to pay me back now (Hmmm makes me wonder whether I should 301 it to another domain and continue it in some way or form).
I guess the lesson here is patience. Posts I’ve long forgotten about are still getting 50-70 views a month and the ad clicks.
Having just started my blog in April, I am pretty proud of my $4 I’ve made. I think this is the first time (since high school) that this amount made me happy :)
My source of income is adsense alone these days. Does anyone have recommendations for another source or maybe a better alternative then adsense?
Ohad: try maybe CrispAds, AdBrite, eChikita, Linkshare, Text Link Ads…
A little over $10,- but with not many visitors. Some traffic comes from technorati the day that I post but most of the times generate good CTR.
I made 308 $ from Adsense but finally on 30th of last month I got my Account Banned for Invalid Clicks :-(
Google always been cheating Small Publishers !!
Did anyone of you had the same experience ?
I’m also happy, because in April I started to have ads in my blogs. And I have Adsense and Text Link Ads, and a couple of aff programs, and I had and income of $51.20. And I expect to increase this for this month.
I’ll take this oportunity to thank Darren, because I have implemented the ads following some of his advice, and it’s working.
The $1.89 I’ve made since the end of April is the best money I’ve ever made. Strictly Adsense for now as it’s what I’m most accustomed to.
I’ll be testing and writing and testing and writing for the next months, so be sure to poll us again, Darren! Maybe I can double my earnings. There’s only one way to go from $1.89 and that’s up.
Good luck, everyone.
My 96 cents puts me in the largest bucket in the poll. Take that all you losers making massive cash on your sites.
$8.88
Oh yeah.
I’ve made $9.63 in total. Pathetic, but my blog is less than a year old, so it should increse.
Suggestion to Darren:
How about a poll about what the efficiency of the ads are?
Like comparing eCPM…
Clicks / Impression * 1000
Of course, since it would be an anonymous poll, I don’t think this would breach the google agreement. would it? :)
I don’t understand how people do it. Write everyday about gadgets and whatnot. Maybe I should be more interested in injuries, morgages and impotence and giving advise on lawyers and what to buy? Man, I wish I’d find those topics worth writing about! I’d be filthy rich!! ;-))
April was the first month I made decent money (for a newbie) from my blog. I found a couple of paid to blog opportunities and am now trying Crispads, Adbrite, Pheedo and others. I’ve also started a new blog and expect to earn more from referrals over the next couple of months. I may be new byt I’m learning. I launched my site last July, started blogging in November and have made about $160 so far. Not yet time to retire :-)
How much did Darren Rowse make in April?
I’m just climbing to the tops. This month will be the first 600+ in adsense. Pluse textlinks and some affili-sales I will see the 1000 $
Started blogging 10 months ago, this is nice, isn’t it?
I made a little over $12 from Adsense and Adgenta. I only wish that my topic was not so niched. I’m getting about 50 people per day with over a 2% response on adsense which I think is pretty good. Still not time to quit the day job, but things are starting to look better.
Thanks to Blogger Jobs I found a part-time gig blogging on a political site and earn about $300 every month. (It’ll be a little less this month because I took some vacation.)
I have one blog that makes a little bit of money from Adsense.
April – 2,040 impressions = 92 clicks = $39.38
This is a blog I started on March 18, 2006 so I am pretty excited about it. (I hope Google doesn’t see this)
I don’t know..sometimes I think of giving up coz i have been impatience for a while. I get Less than a thousan visit a day and not more than 40 adsense click in one day. I have been changing themes as well like forever and still didnt come up to the right angle.
I have been reading here and followed some tricks and twist but still changes little..:D
Ohh..
I agree with the sentiment that earning such a small amount of money in a month is one I have not experienced in a long time! But the one dollar I earned from an affiliate program and the $1.57 I earned from ads made me so happy! I have only been blogging since March, so I am pretty darn happy with the results thus far. I have already made $2.18 from ads so far in May, so at least the trend is in the proper direction!
I made zero in April. $8.63 in May. Just added my first AdSense ads on May 4 so this is my first month as a pro blogger.
My sales haven’t been as good since just after January. I am still on par to make more than last year but that could change if I have a terrible Christmas season. Last year I made just over $12,000 but that includes running my own advertising slots and not just blogads.
62% came from all affiliate programs
8% from Google ads
1% from Blogads
29% from doing my own stuff
Adsense and affiliates on all blogs $19.61.
$9.61 from adsense
Slowly increasing every month.
This month I already have more in adsense than from last month and I have also added text-link-ads that I hope to bring in a few extra dollars a month.
Aloha,
$2,881.32. Adsense is only a minority of that.
Perhaps a future poll could be “How much money do you make from blogging and for how many hours did you blog to earn it?”
I’m making …ohmigod…over $1,200 a week! I know this is stupid but I’d never added it up before. Oh, and I only have one paying ad (to a friend, I charge him $50 a month, lol). I get a lot of donations, the average is about $75. I also get books off my wishlist, maybe 4-5 a month.
Your AVERAGE donation is $75! Wow — congrats — I am so in the wrong business!
I’ve been reading ProBlogger for, well a while now. Since Darren was first(?) slashdotted back last spring/summer. I’ve taken in a ton of information, digested it, discarded some, and kept other parts.
I’ve also blogged a bit in the past. My goal was to build traffic and then try to make money. I gradually lost interest in that first blog, but I’ve moved into a more niche area that is more up my alley: pharmaceuticals and the business of discovery, marketing, media, and pharmacy practice in general. Medicine is my passion, and business and money is my hobby. It should have been so terribly obvious in retrospect, do that instead of writing about “science,” but it wasn’t. Maybe I wasn’t ready for it, or something like that.
Last week I started a blog covering this industry in general. I looked high and low for a blog template for WordPress that was plain enough to be elegant, and offered enough to be easily monetized. I looked at several of my favorite websites (all of which are very financially successful, and I studied their designs and marketing methodologies. I used some of what I learned, and I discarded some others, or tweaked things into a way that I liked them better.
I decided this time I was going to do it right.
I launched OnThePharm at the beginning of last week. I decided to approach it like a part-time job. (I have another part time job in addition to being a student.) Some days I’m more consistent than others, but overall I’m liking this much more. I spend almost as much effort on marketing as I do on creating content. I shouldn’t be doing that at first, I don’t think, but I find navigating the social scene (see below) easier than sitting and actually writing. I am consistent about new content, though, which is good. Probably because I’m writing about a field that I actually know and understand, and I don’t feel like I’m a blogger trying to be an expert rather than an expert who happens to be a blogger.
I worked hard on my theme (it’s still a work in progress — some people like it, some people hate it, and others think it’s too plain) and AdSense position. Thus far my CPM is WAY higher than any of my other sites (my personal blog) and my old science blog. I think this is due to my having designed everything with advertising in mind, rather than as a secondary “add-on” type of thing. I’ve created channels to measure performance.
Things I’ve done:
Created AdSense channels for every location on my blog. This allows me to track people looking at the front page vs people looking at individual entries, and also how each ad performs.
I’ve worked the social bookmarking scene, and other big hitters in terms of traffic:
Digg (only a matter of time)
Slashdot (unsuccessful, debatable whether it’ll ever work)
Reddit (drives a surprising amount of traffic relatively easily)
Fark (Probably a lost cause, which is fine)
Signed up for FeedBlitz
Signed up with FeedBurner
Set up various WordPress plugins for convenience and traffic-driving purposes
Avenues I haven’t fully explored:
del.icio.us
Furl
Spurl
Others
Things still to do:
Get a few last WP plugins working
Constant promotion (without spamming)
Finish tweaking the WP theme I’m using
The problem is that these sites drive traffic that doesn’t click on ads as a rule. That’s okay. Eventually I think most of my revenue is going to be generated by search engine traffic, and I am using these places to help my future PageRank. I am fortunate in that my niche drives clicks that are generally worth 50 cents or more. I honestly don’t know if that’s good or bad, but I remember when I was slashdotted for hosting the BBC Beethoven symphonies, I made almost $16 in AdSense revenue, and my ads were horribly positioned, badly setup, and probably didn’t trigger keywords that were worth much money. I figure that a lower level of traffic with a higher CPM on more valuable keywords will prove to be much more profitable in the long run. (Though I will continue to try to pimp what I write to as many places as I think it’s relevant.)
I think it’s a good start, and I look forward to being able to answer this question in another six months when traffic grows, and I’ve got more regular readership. As always, I will continue reading and digesting.
My monthly income is around $2K from all of my websites. The majority which is earned from a couple of websites. I have built an additional 20+ sites this year in various niches.
My main income sources are Adsense, Linkworth, various affiliate programs and some direct payment from advertisors.
My own personal blog, doesn’t make too much, although I have recently sold a few links from the site which make much more than Adsense.
I read this blog everyday as well as webmasterworld. I would have to say that these have been my great sources of information. I am also a little stingy so I don’t spend a dime on information products or advertising. Alhough, I do spend a bit of money on buying domains and some scripts for my sites.
What CTR percentage is considered high and what’s the norm and low?
I haven’t made enough to cut a check on either of my blogs. However, my Linux blog is only two weeks old, but appears to be developing a little bit of a readership. And my personal blog, even though is years old, is just starting to be monetized. On both fronts, it’s just a matter of time before they both are generating a little bit of income.
I am increasing my income every month but April was a little slow, I made just over 100 dollars in adsense and about 50 from clickbank. I am starting to realize that trying to run 15 blogs or so is not very realiztic and am trying to cut back to three or four blogs that I can run like Darrens – writing three or so quality posts a day and let the others just peter out and scavange whatever quality material I can from them.
Oh, and I have been blogging for about a year and altogether probably have about 1200 blog post out there of various quality. probably only about 20% are indexed by Google even though I have tried to SEO as well as I can…hmmm. Writing this comment is a little depressing.
The answers here are great, people are always really good at sharing in their comments on this blog, thanks
I did not earn anything but at least I tried :)
I also didn’t earn anything but it is maybe because I haven’t tried yet.
Somewhere I read that you need at least 100 distinct visits a day to get it running. As I am at about 30 to 40 visits a day I will wait with putting up ads some more time.
Daniel: In my personal experience, it’s more arount 200-300 visite per day… Not to discourage you though.
Hmmm…
I do not blog for money… well, I do not believe in this. I use my blog to drive quality traffic to affiliate pages.
On the other hand, my blog help me on SERP’s.
So I’m curious how much traffic do you have on a daily basis.
Valeriu
I have just started into this new world and I am loving it. Haven’t made a cent but I am sure with somehard work and passion it will happen.
My Funny Junk site has got 6.6k unique visitors that brought me $17 from Adsense.
But my LinkShare was like dying… got some click through but no sell at allllll.
I actually started on this a couple of months back but until now, I haven’t earned anything yet. Well, I don’t really blog for money but it’s a good experience to try. I get around 40-60 unique visitors a day.
Hah .. Darren. I hadn’t looked at this post again after I posted my comments. I noticed yours afterwards with the $15k joke. Apparently some people have been taking it seriously because I have been getting a lot of referrals from this post. Heheh.
In reality I am in the $100-$499 category.
-dm
My blog is about 5 months old, and Im happy that I earned something, At least I have a source to pay for my my domain and hosting.
I currently have at 180-300 uniques a day, Im wondering how much traffic do you need to earn at least $5 a day.
Its funny. I have a blog that gets between 400 and 500 visitors per day and I make a few cents here and there.
I have another blog that is averageing about 350 visitors per day and I get anywhere between $3 and $12 per day.
Both blogs are laid out the same but with differnet color schemes. Maybe it has to do with colors as well.
You definitely need traffic but I think there are some other factors involved.
Yes you definitely need traffic, but the other main factor is the CONTENT. If the ads are related to the content then that works far better. This concept is nothing new.
But again to gain more traffic, you need to write quite frequently (which I have not been in my blog).
Other suggestion is not to go after money only from your blog. I do have another big site that uses google ads, but its not a blog site. It is doing well with google ads for last 3 years due to the content, and the nature of the site. The site is not only focused in one area, but many which means more taste and more people and more variety of ads instead of seeing the same ads over and over again.
Blogging is just an experiment for me.
Anyways….in few days I will share my last three years of experience with Google Ads, and others.
Good Luck…
Not much from adsense. But, I wonder how much Darren Rowse is making :)
Well I’ve only made a few dollars with adsense, its more about just having some fun and experimenting with blogging. I think in the future I may go more hardcore into the money making blog strategies, but for now I like posting about funny videos, reading the comments, and responding. Its what keeps the blogosphere a fun place for me =).
I have just started in the middle of last month. So far far I have made a whopping 0.02$ thru Adsense.
I have been studying the info on this site and hope to do alot better.
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