How much are you spending to keep your blog running?
Maybe you’re not spending anything – except for your time. But maybe you’re spending without keeping in mind a plan to pay for those cool toys.
I’m curious to know what is happening in terms of money, regarding your blogs. Bizchickblogs.com in January and February was monetized through both advertising and affiliate compensation. The monthly operating costs – including things like Reader of the Month – are minimal and were covered by that income; however, the advertising and affiliate compensation hasn’t come close to covering writing expenses just yet (and I consider even my own totally free writing time an expense).
I certainly expect that to change as traffic continues to increase and we get connected with relevant products you as readers are interested in. Right now, the focus is traffic and readership. So the months of being in the red are a necessary pathway to that.
Last year, bizchickblogs.com paid for itself and more every month using LinkWorth and affiliate commission. I highly recommend the combination of those two if you are in the B2B blogging category. If your blog is like bizchickblogs.com and has a mixed readership, consider buysellads.com, admedia.com, or creating a blog sponsorship program in which you heavily promote one or two affiliate programs (hotels.com for travel blogs, or food related products for food blogs) for a certain amount of time. Or, you can hook up with a service like blogher and get into an ad network.
What about you? Is your blogging paying for itself? What are you doing to ensure your expenses are paid back?
Image credit: Shutterstock
Great tips, Tia. I would love to pick your brain some time in the near future, as I am thinking of re-designing the focus of On High Heels, more toward the format similar to BizChickBlogs. You always inspire and educate me. Thanks!
Hi Tia:
I rea the post a very real and helpful topis you have touched. I do need to get almost three thousand more readers to be where you have suggested. But now everything seems to be going very slow, and I do not know anything new to get more readers, as I tried and tries and have reached a point where it is just slow. But I am working on another site and one more project to monetize and that will help. But then each blog should serve its purpose. You have turned my mind to the right channel and I will keep that in mind. a great post as usual.
Fran A
I’ve been blogging for a long, long time.
In the beginning, monetizing the blog was really hard. Mainly due to the fact that one shouldn’t add ad blocks to their blog in the beginning. That looks way too unserious to a lot of people.
So what I did, basically, was to blog for a few months without displaying any Ads on the blog at all. It totally worked out as I gained a lot of loyal readers. I then added some advertisements – namely Google Ads – and that turned out to be the way of monetizing my blog.
As of now – I’m making lots of money blogging. Thinking of quitting my day job, actually.
Hi Tia,
Great post and you really give me something to think about. With my main blog, I’m still in the red according to time I put in and money received back but I’m working toward a goal that I see paying off in the very near future. I didn’t spend as much time promoting it as I should have so traffic has been picking up this year.
You’ve definitely given me some food for thought so thank you for that. Awesome info!
Adrienne
Hi Adrienne!
Thanks for visiting!
Since I am still with WP.com and not .org I am not able to make any real money from my blogging. I have received a variety of free products in exchange for reviews. Those right there paid for me to buy my domain name from WP.
I am still technically challenged and don’t understand all of this ad stuff but I do get the visits numbers. Last year I had 15,000 visits and I just can’t fathom that many in one month! I never set out to be the next Pioneer Woman but just to develop a faithful following who want to read about what I’m doing. Any more than that and I’ll just get lost.
Oh yeah, I spend more time than I probably should with writing and editing things on my blog.
Hi Michelle – That’s okay. We all do that. And then when you add in the time to comment and reply to comments, it really adds up.
Have you considered getting hooked up to FoodBuzz? Or are you already?
I am trying to get with them. There are a lot of issues with wp.com but not for blogspot folks. I’m not sure what to do about it. I submitted a help ticket to foodbuzz so we’ll see where that leads. Thanks for the thoughts.
Actually Michelle,
I have a website with over 70 000 uniques (that is in IPs) a day, but because of the cra… niche I choose I have to chase down advertisers which even so, are reluctant to accept to advertise their somewhat related campaigns.
And that is why I think the important thing is to establish yourself in a niche were advertisers are willing to pay money to promote their business. This also involves investing in a strong brand (I don’t know why, but people feel much safer when they have to deal business with a somewhat known brand).
It’s about the visits too, because if you have 10 visitors a day, that won’t really get you anywhere.
Also, if you have something of interest and have the right exposure you can get a lot of visits for websites like yours, moms out there and cooking challenged guys (like me
) always look for easy to cook, delicious recipes online (I don’t think people who know about the internet and have a computer or even a smart phone in their homes will ever go out and buy a cooking recipe book).
Tia,
I will have to talk to you outside of here to commend you on the great progress your blog has made over the last four months or so. Wow! You might not remember me saying it, but I told you so.
Question for you related to your post here:
Suppose someone is trying to build a B2B blog on their own from the comfort of their living room couch. What kind of traffic numbers do you think the blog would have to reach in order for them to earn enough money for it to be worth their time investment if they are monetizing using your suggested methods? Hope the question is clear enough.
Hi Kathy!
Great question. 15,000 monthly visits (not uniques, just visits) is the number to shoot for. One of the #1 blog advertising services, blogads.com, won’t even take blogs that get less than that many visits per month. We are half-way there at 8,000 visits/month in February.
Long way to go, I know. But when you are getting upwards at 15,000 monthly visits (which ends up being something like 20 or even 30 thousand impressions), you can charge what you want. It all depends on what the cost per thousand impressions ends up being. Advertising online these days is converting between 0.11% and 0.18% – not great – so advertisers are seeking low CPMs. I’ve seen CPMs on blog networks as high as $10-20. If their conversion rates are above 0.18%, they can justify it.
A blogger could expect to charge and receive $150 per banner ad per month, if they can deliver 15,000 visits/20-30,000 impressions. With rotating ads, the more banners displayed, the fewer impressions each advertiser receives, so they would want to charge less for rotating ads.
My observation is that B2B blog advertising does not pay as well as other, more commercial blog advertising. In fact, it wasn’t until I changed the format of this blog to women’s interest + B2B that it received any attention from advertisers.
My blogs pay for themselves, in terms of cost, but not in terms of my time yet, but I think I’m getting there. Also just signed up for LinkWorth, looks pretty ineteresting, put you as the referrer, not sure if that does anything.
Thanks, Jamie! I appreciate that. I don’t know if it does anything, either. I am just happy to refer you to them. They always were great at support, FYI.
It is difficult to make enough money to really cover our time. Luckily, for most of us, it is a labor of love!
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