Pro Blogging Isn't For the Faint of Heart
On Darren Rowse's ProBlogger.net blog, he recently posted the results (link below) of a poll of his readers: How much did readers earn last month (November) from Google AdSense on their blog(s)?
While the survey's results are not definitive of the entire blogosphere, they support the idea that only a small percentage of bloggers are making "good" money monthly, on a regular basis, from their blogs. On the other hand, the from an ad network point of view, lots of small earners still bring in money. Unfortunately, for individual bloggers, pro blogging can be a disheartening experience - something Jason Lee Miller echoes in his WebProNews article (link below).
Pro blogging, for the first year or two - unless you are a prolific writer covering a popular topic - is a frustrating experience. It's disappointing, emotionally and physically exhausting, and even depressing. If you're blogging simply because you love to write, then try print instead. Or apply to one of the numerous networks out there.
If you have dreams of becoming a professional blogger - that is, to earn your living exclusively via blogs and blogging-related activities - don't discard them. But do be aware of the effort it takes. As many successful bloggers have said repeatedly, it takes a lot of effort and time to be successful. Are you willing to put in the time, the work, and the patience?
I look at pro blogging as having quantum levels of success. Remember your high school science classes? A great deal of energy has to be applied to push an electron from one quantum orbit to the next one. But it takes less effort after that to get to the next level. Blogging appears to be very similar. When you start out, you have to spend many months of long, long days. Then you achieve a new level of earnings. And with somewhat less effort - if the blogging addiction hasn't bitten you - the next level of earnings comes, and sooner.
Eventually, you reach a critical mass of daily visitors and making money starts to get easier. Yaro Starak of Entrepreneur's Journey (link below) says that while you can make "chimps change" with minimal hits a day, the critical mass is between 500-1000 unique daily visitors, "before you can start to make real money."
Now, this has to be qualified: If you've picked a topic that gets less than that in daily queries from SEs (Search Engines), then you need to also pick another topic that will earn you money. (With a bit of research, you can find a great number of popular topics.)
Case in point: after about 5 months of running my current set of blogs, I finally found a loosely-related collection of topics that I used to write about weekly in print magazines and had up until 2 weeks ago ignored. Without any Google Page rank for the new blog, and lacking any inbound links, I'm already making more on this new blog than all my others combined.
Now that's still not a lot, still peanuts a day, as I have not been maintaining my blogs because of redesign work. But it IS all a numbers game. If you want SE traffic, you need to "feed" the SE spiders: content, lots of good content, on a regular basis. And the good content will eventually accumulate links.
More specifically, in an older post, I quoted an O'Reilly article that said that if you can post at least 1 blog entry every day, in a year's time, you should be getting 500-2000 pageviews per day. That is not necessarily equivalent to 500-1000 unique visitors a day, but it sure is partway to that goal.
Push for 2-3 entries posted per day, and you'll be smiling. Or shoot for 10 quality posts per day, including several short summaries, and you'll eventually be in the blog stratosphere, with hundreds of thousands of daily visitors. Which will earn you money on both ad clicks and ad impressions, or allow you to sell your own advertising - which is what Jason Lee Miller is trying to say in his article.
Sources:
While the survey's results are not definitive of the entire blogosphere, they support the idea that only a small percentage of bloggers are making "good" money monthly, on a regular basis, from their blogs. On the other hand, the from an ad network point of view, lots of small earners still bring in money. Unfortunately, for individual bloggers, pro blogging can be a disheartening experience - something Jason Lee Miller echoes in his WebProNews article (link below).
Pro blogging, for the first year or two - unless you are a prolific writer covering a popular topic - is a frustrating experience. It's disappointing, emotionally and physically exhausting, and even depressing. If you're blogging simply because you love to write, then try print instead. Or apply to one of the numerous networks out there.
If you have dreams of becoming a professional blogger - that is, to earn your living exclusively via blogs and blogging-related activities - don't discard them. But do be aware of the effort it takes. As many successful bloggers have said repeatedly, it takes a lot of effort and time to be successful. Are you willing to put in the time, the work, and the patience?
I look at pro blogging as having quantum levels of success. Remember your high school science classes? A great deal of energy has to be applied to push an electron from one quantum orbit to the next one. But it takes less effort after that to get to the next level. Blogging appears to be very similar. When you start out, you have to spend many months of long, long days. Then you achieve a new level of earnings. And with somewhat less effort - if the blogging addiction hasn't bitten you - the next level of earnings comes, and sooner.
Eventually, you reach a critical mass of daily visitors and making money starts to get easier. Yaro Starak of Entrepreneur's Journey (link below) says that while you can make "chimps change" with minimal hits a day, the critical mass is between 500-1000 unique daily visitors, "before you can start to make real money."
Now, this has to be qualified: If you've picked a topic that gets less than that in daily queries from SEs (Search Engines), then you need to also pick another topic that will earn you money. (With a bit of research, you can find a great number of popular topics.)
Case in point: after about 5 months of running my current set of blogs, I finally found a loosely-related collection of topics that I used to write about weekly in print magazines and had up until 2 weeks ago ignored. Without any Google Page rank for the new blog, and lacking any inbound links, I'm already making more on this new blog than all my others combined.
Now that's still not a lot, still peanuts a day, as I have not been maintaining my blogs because of redesign work. But it IS all a numbers game. If you want SE traffic, you need to "feed" the SE spiders: content, lots of good content, on a regular basis. And the good content will eventually accumulate links.
More specifically, in an older post, I quoted an O'Reilly article that said that if you can post at least 1 blog entry every day, in a year's time, you should be getting 500-2000 pageviews per day. That is not necessarily equivalent to 500-1000 unique visitors a day, but it sure is partway to that goal.
Push for 2-3 entries posted per day, and you'll be smiling. Or shoot for 10 quality posts per day, including several short summaries, and you'll eventually be in the blog stratosphere, with hundreds of thousands of daily visitors. Which will earn you money on both ad clicks and ad impressions, or allow you to sell your own advertising - which is what Jason Lee Miller is trying to say in his article.
Sources:
- Darren Rowser, ProBlogger - AdSense earnings survey results
- Yaro Starak, Entrepreneur's Journey - Making money from your website using advertising
- Jason Lee Miller, WebProNews - How AdSense lowers site self esteem.
