Jason Calacanis has just revealed that Weblogs Inc has just passed the $100,000 earnings mark from Adsense which is pretty good for the 7 months they’ve been using it. The post is not explicit and doesn’t contain heaps of details but its got enough in it to give readers a pretty good indication of a few interesting points about Weblogs Inc. Let me play around with his figures for a few minutes:
– They’ve earned $100,000 in around 7 months from Adsense which averages out at about $14,285 per month (although Jason says their last few months have been increasing so are probably above this whilst their first few would have been less – maybe my exponential blogging theory does have some credence)
– Jason reminds us that this sounds like good money but to keep in mind that they have 75 blogs. So on average they earn $190 per month per blog. Again keep in mind that some of their blogs are much much bigger than others so we can assume that some earn many times this amount whilst others much less).
– Jason also reminds us that they have over 70 bloggers to pay each month who each earn between $200 and ‘over $1000’ per month. So lets take the base rate of $200 for all 70 bloggers – their monthly outgoing would be $14,000. Add to that those who earn more and you see that their Adsense earnings might not be covering their author/editor expenses.
– Also keep in mind that the $100,000 figure is just for Adsense which is only one of Weblogs Inc’s income streams. As I’ve mentioned before Adsense doesn’t occupy the only prime ad space on their sites so we can assume they do earn a reasonable amount from other advertising streams which would go towards their other expenses and hopefully some profits.
All in all I continue to be impressed with Weblogs Inc – for a reasonably new network (its only a year old from memory) they have definitely had some real success if these number are anything to go by. So many companies in start up mode take years to post any profits at all but the team at Weblogs Inc are really kicking some goals and should be an inspiration to ProBloggers everywhere.
ProBlogger readers will be happy to know that Jason agreed a while back to do an interview with us and we hope to feature him in the upcoming weeks when he gets a chance to get to our questions (hint hint Jason) – but at the moment he may just have his hands full counting all that cash!
Google Adsense is not all of our revenue you are correct.
We are making much more now then in the first three months when we were just playing with Google Adsense, so you are right to think that the last couple of months are much more then the first couple.
Bloggers make much more then $190 on average, but our model is for blogging to be one of the things people do. This is the way I see it:
2003 blogging for fun
2004 blogging for spare change
2005 blogging helps pay half the rent
2006 blogging pays the rent
2007 have begun, the blogging talent wars have
(say that last one in a Yoda voice for extra effect :-)
Anyway… we’re just trying to figure this all out like everyone else. The best thing for me is that we are creating world-class content on the blogs without filtering people. We don’t tell people what to blog or how to blog… they just blog with passion and we take care of everything else.
I’m having the time of my life running this business because everyone involved is doing what they love… no one is doing this to make money or as a job… although they are making money, and I guess you could call it “work” in some ways.
best jason
thanks for your comments Jason – appreciate your transparency and willingness to share what you’re learning. Great stuff.
Darren can you do some comparisons on your blogging approach as a single blogger and what Weblogs Inc is doing? My suspicion is that you’ll be earning less overall but have a lot less expenses so are probably earning more than them in a sense. Would I be right in suggesting this?
$100.00
$100,000 – The Jason Calacanis Weblog – calacanis.weblogsinc.com _: “Google AdSense is impressive—really impressive.
We started playing with it in September and three days ago I relized that we broke the $100,000 mark.”
This weekend, I broke …
Allie
you are probably going to the crux of individual blogging v network blogging thats a reasonable point. My experience in talking to people is that an established blogger will usually make more on average going it alone than going on a network because your obviously not sharing the take, but having said this going it alone requires a lot more work, and for that matter risk. I suppose its like anything, doing it with the support of others (in this case a network) provides security, is lower risk (because you promotion and advertising is being managed by someone else) and you’ve got a much better chance of a reasonable return, going it along has the potential of bigger rewards with a higher rate of failure.
(PS the figure for Darren in apparently 6 figures, although I’m sure he might want to correct me on that. As he’ll tell you though its a 17 hour, 7 days a week job)
Nice question Allie – as Duncan says you’re going to an age old question between two approaches – individual blogger vs network. Let me say right up front that I’m cool with both approaches and strongly believe that they are both valid and can be very very profitable if you work hard and give it some time.
Whilst I’ve gone the ‘individual’ approach so far I am exploring networks with a couple of friends with the Breaking News Blog Collective which is fun. Whilst it is slowly growing its not making as much as my individual blogs are at this point however (probably because I’ve been at them longer).
Anyway – to your question which seems to have two parts:
1. you say I’m probably earning less than Weblogs Inc – I would agree with that statement although am not privy to their exact earnings. The post I refer to above from Jason indicates they’ve earned $100,000 in 7 months – this is more than my own total earnings for the last 7 months from Adsense – mine are around half of that rate – lets just say its $50,000 as a round number.
2. you guess that I probably have a lot less less expenses – Again I’ll say I have no real idea of what their expenses are except for what Jason says above – however I can say my own expenses are close to nothing. I have some net access costs, hosting costs (I have a great deal and its very little), a laptop and a few design costs (again I have a great deal where I do work for my designer in return for services rendered). I work from home so my overheads are tiny. In comparison to Weblogs Inc’s 9 full time staff, 70+ bloggers etc I guess my expenses are pretty small. My income is almost completely profit.
So at present I’d say you could be right Allie if we just take Adsense into account – however remember Weblogs Inc have other advertisers which contribute who knows how much income into their business. Whilst I also have other income streams I suspect theirs are considerably higher.
It is also well worth saying that the individual blogger model has some limitations which largely revolve around time. 1 person blogging hard can only fit so much into each day – two can do double, three triple. There is a ceiling to the hours I can put in and the amount of blogs I can keep running – Weblogs Inc can do so many more if they just keep adding bloggers. In time they should earn a lot more than i do unless I add authors too.
Darren,
I enjoyed reading through your blog and the discussion above. I’m a one-man blogger at the moment, and I’ve also been following the progress of Weblogs, Inc. I believe that a full-time income from blogging is possible (as you’ve shown) and I hope to reach that stage soon. I think it’s also important to diversify with different income streams as the competition heats up.
Adsense is interesting as it applies a model taken from porn to normal sites. I once met a young dutch guy who had already bought his first house for 200,000 euro odd having earned his money from a couple of sites full of banners linking to niche porn sites. For those of you who are unauawre of this business. People visiting his link site that then click on one of his banners who directly subscribe to a porn site lead to him recieving a pay-out. There are a number of different options available. I would be interested to hear what pro-adult site owners and porn-link site owners have to say about adsense and more importantly, where they see the market leading in their own sector and possible knock-on effects in the non-adult world.
$100,000/$50,000 of Motivation
As I mentioned in the previous entry I have decided to get off my ass and start doing things right. I have a new company coming soon (signups are tomorrow by the way, 24 hours only) and have put new…
remeber that google adsense is a small portion of our overall revenue.
good reminder Jason. As I keep saying to people we’re not really privy to the full picture so all we can do here is speculate (which isn’t really that helpful in many ways).
Its also hard to compare the two models of blogging (individual vs networking) because there are two types of people in a networking approach:
1. network owners
2. network participants/employees/authors/editors
In asking ‘which way is best’ I guess one needs to ask it from each perspective.
I take it that the owner/s of a network is in the best position to benefit financially from the blogging done there. Like you say somewhere above your authors generally do other things as well as blog. Do you know how many of them blog full time?
Interesting discussion – thanks for continuing to participate Jason I know how busy you must be.