Fred Wilson Dot VC
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Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetThanks Jen
So it's simply a mean versus median issue
$22,000 for 100k is almost exactly proportional to $30k for 150k
I am not doing something wrong!
And this also tells us that a blog UV is worth in the range of $0.20/year
for a blog like mineIf you treat that like an annuity (a bad assumption I think), a blog like
this one would be worth around $2/UV to a buyer
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetHi, Fred,
I'm a long-time reader of your blog. Great post. I don't think that "you're doing anything wrong", :-) but I do think you are not doing enough to monetize your blog traffic. Without working a lot harder, you should still be able to generate much more than the $30K you're making now.
I just wrote a detailed post (see http://www.geekmba360.com/?p=196#more-196) that compares your blog to a top-earning blog that is generating $30K+ a month with only 183,633 monthly unique users. I'm curious if you'd be open to try out some of the suggestions. :-)
cheers,
Bill
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetFederated Media is doing a great job for you, turning an estimated $20 eCPM. Other high traffic blogs flood their pages with ads to earn similar eCPM, but at the cost of low ROI to the advertiser. The Long Tail earns less than $1.00 eCPM. (See New Economics of Advertising for 900 pages of collected research.)
I agree that $75k per year would start another renaissance of content on the Internet. It's green, rich media, and connects communities.
100k unique users make no sense. Most real communities have less than 50,000 total population. This also applies to most B2B markets. For vertical communities, 100 million UU might be needed to sustain long term viability. 100k is a no-man's land.
Small business advertisers mostly target 50,000; not millions.
The big picture is that we need thousands of communities with 50k UU, 10 pages per month, $50 eCPM net to the publisher. That's $25k per month - enough for salaries, investment in rich media content, and interactive features.
At tEarn, we're beta testing with 50 local newspapers and niche publishers to realize this goal. It's time to stop inflating hits for size sake. It's time for change to segment into real, sustainable communities - tens of thousands of what we call microchannels.
-Dash Chang
http://tEarn.com/
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetWas talking visitors not pageviews....
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetThese numbers imply $20 eCPM - surprisingly high when the industry is reporting $1 eCPM for the long tail, and $10 and declining for top sites.
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetWould it be the quality of the ads or ads better directed at their audience then just simply the fact that a blog has visitors. Could a blog or even website that provides real value to its visitors make more than those who are simply after all the visitors it can get. Example, a blog that is focused only on getting visitors - any visitors - gets the 100K plus visitors a month, has ads that target every thing from get rich quick schemes to ED pills but only earns revenues of $6K per month. On the other hand, a blog that only gets say 10K visitors a month but targets its ads to it content – content that provides real value to its users – and earns $75K plus per month. Is this possible? I ask because I am new to blogging and would like to make money as well as provide real value to my visitors. If I am off the mark here, I would assume that I would then need to forget about the ‘add value’ idea and just fill my site with the most popular ads.
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetHmmm. Classic case of lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Seems the long tail is wagging the dog?
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetFred - this has nothing to do with your post.. but I think you're into this sort of thing, and i read your blog everyday.. so WTF.
Your icon on the iPhone - when i saved it as a bookmark to my iPhone's home screen - sucks.. you need to make a web clip. it's very simple.
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetA quick analysis of the biggest blogs or blog networks that have been sold and published their revenues would support the argument that there is tremendous elasticity in the interactive ad market right now. PaidContent, ArsTechnica, SugarPublishing, DailyCandy (tho not a blog, an email/web property recently on the auction block) even some of the Gawker sales... all show that running a blog like a real media business can prove to be immensely profitable.
Supporting a diversity of revenue streams that support the market as it is today (CPM based display advertising, email newsletter ads and list rental) combined with higher-margin revenue streams that serve a more unique value prop (post roll video, organic sponsorships, lead gen, microsites) is the only way to operate profitably in this climate. This way, your community/audience is served first and your editorial remains strong, but the business fundamentals are taken into consideration. The industry-wide transition in media consumption and sales presents enormous opportunity for brave clients and creative entrepreneurs, alike. But it's not for the faint of heart!
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetMedian/mean rears its ugly head again :) Thanks Jen!
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetSorry the summary was not more clear ("Among those with advertising, the mean annual investment in their blog is $1,800, but it’s paying off. The mean annual revenue is $6,000 with $75K+ in revenue for those with 100,000 or more unique visitors per month.")
Here’s some additional context: among active bloggers that we surveyed, the average income was $75,000 for those who had 100,000 or more unique visitors per month. Some of the bloggers in this group told us that they have more than one million unique visitors each month. Note that the median annual income for this group is significantly lower -- $22,000. These numbers represent self-reported income. We’ll have much more detailed data on revenue in the Day 4 segment: Blogging for Profit.
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetWow I'm shocked at those amounts...
I have about 1500 uniques a month (which is .015% of 100k). Using Fred's numbers ($30k) I should be able to make $450/yr and using the $75k number I should be able to make $1125, assuming this scales downward proportionally.
Do you Fred, or other readers think that a growing blog at this level would stunt its growth by adding a banner ad? If you the readers think that it wouldn't I may change my philosophy here and "ad" one :)
Thanks in advance for suggestions and help.
http://ryanagraves.com
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetFred, I did an analysis of the underlying tables (see blog post below), which have medians, not the average - gives much lower values, an order of magnitude below your blog's (assuming your 150,000 are unique visitors rather than visits). Hypothesis is that the "hit head" is making nearly all the money - explains high average/mean, very low medians.
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetThis discussion seems kind of silly. I know a couple bloggers who according to Compete.com have far less unique visitors but are earning over 75k from their blogs this year.
Niche matters, pageviews matter, ad networks matter...
But yes if ad money is your concern, comparing my anecdotal experience to yours, you are clearly doing something wrong. But then so am I.
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetI think both lines of thinking (mean vs. median and user engagement) here are correct, but speaking personally I would tend to say that user engagement (ironic, given the community of commenters this site has developed) is holding your revenues down relative to the "mean". While I at least skim almost all of your posts (and comments as-and-when) on a daily basis, I can't tell you one single ad I've ever even remembered, let alone clicked on. I think he can sometimes miss the big picture, but Seth Godin keeps harping on about advertisers/marketers becoming part of the conversation. My guess is that the mean is skewed by those few blogs who's ads are so interrelated with the conversation on the blog that they get higher rates than your usual CPM/CPCs.
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetIsn't this the crucial point. It is all about the subject matter and therefore the type of person who reads your blog. Also, your blog is not consumer product related, and I assume those blogs do quite well.
Am I not right in thinking that the more sophisticated web user (i.e. your readers) are less likely to click on ad words or any other links - also, as you have pointed out, many will be using feedreaders which do not generate page impressions - and presumably you don't give a stuff about SEO crap.
Finally your blog is nicely designed so you don't have to click madly to navigate (i.e. more after the ****ing jump) - which also keeps down impressions.
Basically it is a nice blog which you happen to monetise... please keep it that way.
Oh - how about increasing your charitable giving by investing the $30k pa in a brilliant start up (crowd sourced by your readers, natch) and then donating the profits after the exit at 10x initial investment??
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetIt's also possible the average of all blogs with OVER 100k visitors/month gets 3x the traffic you do....you know, since you're near the bottom of the pool they are talking about and all.
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetGotta love the accuracy of common skews and distribution curves!
Great point about email list...cpm seems doomed to me.
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetI know someone who's running about 500k pagveiews a month, pulls only ad revenue, and makes right around 120k. I'd guess the rest of your spread is pretty accurate, too.
I'm also willing to bet that a creative blogger with 100k page views could make the extra 35k by building an e-mail list and intelligently leveraging affiliate sales.
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetHey Daniel,
Just to be clear, the Digg traffic is *highly interested* in the article (hence the visit), but not necessarily interested in everything else on the website. In addition to that, we haven't optimised our site especially well, so we're not doing a good job of encouraging these readers to stick around.
But the fact that Digg is there allows us to promote older articles (Seth's 'backlist'). That article certainly provides some food for thought. But there's that old media saying: "Today's newspaper is tomorrow's chip paper." Old 'news' stories aren't going to be worth anything on a site like Digg, or any other site for that matter. You need a specific kind of article to do well on sites like Digg (the ones that aren't time-sensitive, and deliver some kind of value or entertainment).
Besides, this sort of behaviour (the 'in-and-out') occurs frequently on news aggregators and social media sites.
On aggregators, readers go back and forth, reading a few versions of one story across different sources (for a different view, or new facts, or reader comments... think sports, politics, gossip)
On social media sites users often return to leave comments or rate articles (and I don't mind where that conversation happens, so long as it happens).
And with that backlist in mind maybe the investment in content should be less news and more features...
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetThe niche the website is in very important. I know loads of sites that get the same traffic or less than a lot of my sites, and many of them make more!
The amount of revenue per visitor gets better the more niche a site is, from what evidence I regularly see. Obviously the more niche a site is, the less visitors interested about the site. It's gaining the right balance.
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetIf you're doing something wrong then I am the biggest screw up EVER. Of course relative to you that is almost certainly true anyway, but we’re over 100K uniques and via advertising --- any advertising -- I can’t imagine generating more than $50K in revenue even pushing it hard – and that would be more than 10X what we’d get via Adsense.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view) I am not yet convinced we don't have much better prospects via sponsorships.
I'm glad though that *you* are not in this for the advertising revenue :-)
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetI agree with you almost completely Fred. I would just emphasize something that you touched on in your post. Your primary goal with your blog is not to make money and yet you still make $30k a year. This is not your primary occupation or source of income and you still make $30k a year off of it?. That is pretty substantial and impressive.
Do you factor in the deal flow you receive based on positioning yourself as a very social media savy VC via your blog?
I think once you do that in your case you will exponentially exceed that $75k a month number.
Lastly if you were to review your blog with a few experts who do blog with the express purpose of making money like Darren Rowse, John Chow, Wendy Piersall, Shoemoney, etc I would be willing to wager you could easily increase the income you earn via your blog with their recommendations.
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetJeez, guys, Stats 101. The mean of $75K for 100K+ bloggers is skewed by the very few with huge audiences and incomes. Check the median: $200. If Technorati published the distribution you'd see that most bloggers with 100K+ uniques are making next to nothing.
Reply | Original | Permalink | Share | TweetSounds like the bloggers surveyed are among the upper echilon of semi-pro bloggers. I think that a Technorati survey self-selects skewing towards those who take blogging most seriously. If you really captured every blog with ads through AdSense, BlogAds, etc, I'm confident the average revenue would be far lower.
By the way, I know there are loyalty issues, but for the benefit of your favorite charities, I've heard Pheedo is paying 3-4x Feedburner these days.
