Money for Blogging, No Clicks for Free
John Hawkins, who is attempting to make a living solely from his blog, has A Mini-Interview With Henry Copeland From Blogads. Copeland offers some interesting insights into the business of blog advertising.
John Hawkins: How much of a drop off in advertising, if any, has there been from the election until today?
Henry Copeland: After dropping 40-50% for the first couple of months after the election, it looks like we’ll be at new highs in March and April. I won’t call it a tipping point, because you can only see those in retrospect, but we’re definitely at a tottering point.
John Hawkins: Can you give us an estimate of how many blogs cracked $25,000 in revenue earned last year & how much the top 5 blogads bloggers earned last month?
Henry Copeland: Don’t want to be specific, but I can say a number of bloggers make more selling blogads each month than my own salary.
John Hawkins: Do you believe the number of advertisers and amount of revenue generated by blogging is going to continue to grow for the rest of this year and into next year?
Henry Copeland: I think the numbers will continue to grow at LEAST until bloggers get 0.1% of the total US annual advertising spend, $250 billion. That may take 3 years or it may take 18, but it is inevitable. Bloggers understand their subjects and their audiences better than anyone else in media AND they’ve got the lowest overheads. After all, pajamas cost much less than suits.
John Hawkins: I want you to play Nostradamus here — don’t worry, everybody understands you’re just speculating — and give me an estimate: How many bloggers do you see reaching the “earning a living” threshold over the next few years?
Henry Copeland: I’d be thrilled to reach 500. But 5000 is possible. And if things go really well 50,000.
Interesting stuff. The blogs getting 100,000 or more visitors a day could probably sell enough advertising to make a decent living. I’m a long way from either, although I’ve been quite pleased overall with the BlogAds experience, bringing in substantially more than the $10-$15 a month that I expected when I signed up a little over a year ago.
