Blog Revenue - What Kind of Money Are We Talking About?
According to a chitika.com study, $500M in revenue was made in 2006 for the top 50,000 blogging sites. Note the finding that the top 15% of blogs accounted for 90% of the $500M total revenue. This means that lower ranking blogs compete for a significantly smaller slice of the pie.
See Advertising Revenue Website for a related article.
Here is the kind of money that top blogging sites make.
Website | Monthly Revenue | Revenue Source |
---|---|---|
Perez Hilton | $450,000 | Advertising |
TechCrunch | $400,000 | Advertising |
Timothy Sykes | $150,000 | Affiliate Sales |
John Chow | $35,000 | Affiliate Sales |
Go Fug Yourself | $6,240 | Advertising |
CSS Tricks | $2,887 | Advertising |
Creattica | $1,987 | Advertising |
Here is a page that talks about the kind of money that top blogging sites make.
The basic premise is to build interesting content to attract new and returning visitors and to use revenue generating instruments such as:
- Google AdSense CPC Ads - When a visitor clicks on an ad, the publisher site gets paid.
- Banner Ads for Affiliate Programs - When a visitor clicks on a banner ad, the visitor is directed to the affiliate webpage and the publisher site is tracked as the source of the click thus earning revenue.
- Link Ads - These are hyperlinks which when clicked by a visitor will result in revenue for the publisher site.
- CPM Ads - The publisher site gets paid a pre-set amount per 1000 ad impressions.
- Building Opt-In Mailing List - Typically a bonus giveaway is used to induce a visitor to sign-up to the mailing list. Internet marketers employ such lists to promote and sell products and services to members of the list.
There are various ad networks with the Google ad network being an example. On the advertiser side, Google offers the AdWords program. On the publisher side, Google offers the AdSense program. The Google ad network then provides the delivery of advertisers' ads to publisher sites along with account tracking and administration for both parties.
Here are a couple more ad networks for illustration: