Pro Bloggers, SEO and earning over $10,000 from AdSense
Folks like Chris Pirillo, this guy Darren Rowse and others have figured out how ot game the system and make some real corn off of AdSense.
Congrats.
But I can’t help but think about folks like Dooce - whom I sat on a panel with last month. She complained that she only makes about $200 a month - and that she’d really like to make her living off of blogging - but can’t.
There you have it - the two ends of the spectrum - those who spend ALL DAY LONG worrying about surveys, stats and blogging, while Docoe lives her life, reports on it - and as far as she’s concerned - that’s blogging.
So is blogging a profession to game search engines or a means of personal expression? Well you know my answer right? = YES.
But the system rewards Pirillo, while ignores Dooce.
So let me make this clear - whenever I talk about “making money for bloggers” from now on - I’m talking about folks like Dooce - not Pirillo or Darren. And if my sentiments aren’t clear - Dooce is the real blogger. if the word real meant anyhthing.
July 17th, 2005 at 8:14 pm
I’d say that both Darren and Chris make their money not as much from blogging, as from running highly useful and well-targeted commercial Web sites. Darren mentions that ProBlogger site (kinda his personal blog) is not making a whole lot.
July 18th, 2005 at 7:24 am
yep, the only thing that’s really blog like about the search engine gamers is the software that powers their sites. Other then that they run a bunch of cnet lites making money by taxing people on the path of their shopping experiences.
the real bloggers making money off their sites don’t use adsense much, if at all. They develop strong brands and followings and sell ads to people who covet their audience. DailyKos and Talking Points Memo are great examples, do the math on their BlogAds (the rates are public) and you’ll see that they pull in cash for real. Kos’ sbnation is an interesting move to really develop that route, although as with Denton & Calicanis you can feel the commercial creeping (rushing?) in. IThe blog as a better way to structure a news site online…
Yes you can stay at home, surf all day and make money now, but its a job and I suspect not the funnest one around, like being a reporter who never leaves the house or something…
July 18th, 2005 at 10:16 am
I agree with Abe. I run a blog called Muniwireless.com and make most of my money from direct advertising not Google. Moreover, the site has a lot of brand recognition — I have a weekly newsletter and am organizing a conference in September in San Francisco.
You won’t make money from blogs by just writing what you think is interesting. You have to focus on one or two topics and do that very well. Whatever you do has to serve a distinct and pressing need out there. A daily stream of consciousness posting with some pretty pictures around it will not generate a large and steady stream of income.
In the case of Muniwireless, I set it up to do one thing: provide cities and regions with information on which other cities and regions were setting up large area wireless broadband networks, how they were doing it, which vendors they were using, what apps they were running, etc.
It took two years to get there and the first year was difficult - no income at all, but lots of work. I still have a lot of work but the efforts I have put in are finally paying off. Once again, just because you think you put pretty words on the page does not mean you’ll make money.