I Can Has Dollarz 4 My Blog

July 18, 2007 7:22 AM

In 2004 some proposed that "bloggers" be named TIME's Persons of the Year. In 2007 Business Week reveals "How Top Bloggers Earn Money" and how much.
posted by ericb (35 comments total)

Bloggers Bring in the Big Bucks -- "How a personal obsession can turn into a popular favorite and maybe even a full-time job."
posted by ericb at 7:24 AM on July 18, 2007

WHO WILL BE AMERICA'S NEXT TOP BLOGGER?
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:27 AM on July 18, 2007

WHO WILL BE AMERICA'S NEXT TOP BLOGGER?

A show like that would be just as exciting as watching a video of how Robert Scoble culls through 600 RSS feeds a day!
posted by ericb at 7:31 AM on July 18, 2007

Business Week is the same rag that stated Kevin Rose made some obsecene amount like $60 million dollars for Digg when none of that was "real" money.

Business Week is a rag for people who want to make money. So, like the glamour mags promising 'how to get thin!', they're saying 'hey get rich!'. I wouldn't trust a single frackin' dollar amount they've posted.

The BB money startles me. They started ads because they were getting killed on bandwidth costs. If somehow they've reversed the streams and are now insanely profitable, hell, good for them, but I doubt it immensely.
posted by cavalier at 7:48 AM on July 18, 2007

Soon after he posted a few more images in the same vein: cute cats with funny captions written in a silly, invented hybrid of Internet shorthand and baby-talk.

I don't envy anyone who has to explain lolcats to a mainstream audience. I think if my Dad ever asks me about them (not that I think that's likely to happen anytime soon) I'm going to pretend I've never heard the word before in my life. Otherwise, we're going to be there for hours.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:59 AM on July 18, 2007

Seriously, who is clicking on these ads? I don't get this. I have never clicked on an adsense or any other ad ever. And it's not on some lofty principle. I don't even see them, they don't register to my eye, they're noise.

And $1 million in ad revenue for boing-boing? I get that they get paid even if no one clicks the ads, but is that really a lot of money? That's one of the most popular blogs, right?

They have three writers, they have to give some of that revenue back to Federated Media, pay massive bandwidth costs. All out of a million bucks? Not so hot in my mind.


And that Shoemoney guy? I look at that picture of him holding the Adsense check (the same picture that he shows everyone everywhere), and it makes me wonder if Google isn't one WSJ click-fraud report away from a $100 stock price.
posted by Pastabagel at 7:59 AM on July 18, 2007 [5 favorites]

Even GM looks good when you look at gross.
posted by srboisvert at 8:03 AM on July 18, 2007

Seriously, who is clicking on these ads? I don't get this. I have never clicked on an adsense or any other ad ever. And it's not on some lofty principle. I don't even see them, they don't register to my eye, they're noise.

Ditto. Does anyone know if on-line ads work, or how effective they are?
posted by MarshallPoe at 8:10 AM on July 18, 2007

I don't envy anyone who has to explain lolcats to a mainstream audience.

TIME magazine describes LOLCATS in this week's issue: Creating a Cute Cat Frenzy.
posted by ericb at 8:15 AM on July 18, 2007

Depends on what you mean by "work," click-throughs or conversions. Our recent Google Ads campaign has certainly driven people to our website, so in that sense the campaign's been effective. How many of those visitors turn into paying clients remains to be seen.

Personally, if I'm looking for something in particular, I'll keep an eye on the ads in the Google results page. But in most cases I don't even notice them.
posted by schoolgirl report at 8:16 AM on July 18, 2007

I have made $23.85 on Google AdSense since I started putting ads on my blog last year.

Watch out, Bill Gates, I'm gonna OWN your ass!
posted by briank at 8:26 AM on July 18, 2007

Ditto. Does anyone know if on-line ads work, or how effective they are?
posted by MarshallPoe at 11:10 AM on July 18

The crazy thing is that they must work, because google pulls in $2 billion in revenue every three months on the dumb things, so someone has to be clicking. I just don't know who. I almost what there to be click farms in India and China, because that would at least make sense to me.

I'd love to see some market research on this.
posted by Pastabagel at 8:29 AM on July 18, 2007

How do people NOT make money on blogs? I've only had mine running for 2 years, and I've already made 71 cents! Yes, you read that right, 71 cents! I plan on retiring in 612,000 years. It's going to be AWESOME!
posted by blue_beetle at 8:30 AM on July 18, 2007

There you go, briank, I just went to your blog and hooked you up. You can buy me a Coke later.
posted by Pastabagel at 8:31 AM on July 18, 2007

Chegwin's earned me a whopping $37 since I started his site.

But since he cost me 99p, it's around 1800% profit, so I'm expecting that call from Business Week any second now.

Yep. Waiting.
posted by Katemonkey at 8:33 AM on July 18, 2007

I'm absolutely astounded that the wits behind gofugyourself are big faced, badly dressed and fugly.
posted by fire&wings at 8:44 AM on July 18, 2007

Pastabagel:

I used to work in newspapers, and I felt the same way about print ads: Who actually looks at them? When I read a newspaper, my eyes bounce off the ads and right to the editorial (or, as we called it, the news hole). As you said, I don't even see them, they don't register to my eye, they're noise.

But readership surveys -- including the kind that track people's eyes as they read -- found that the vast majority of readers make no distinction between ads and the news hole. They look, indiscriminately, at whatever is interesting.

I would suspect that most people reading web pages don't mentally segregate Google Ad results the way you and I do. If it's there, it's to be read.
posted by argybarg at 8:49 AM on July 18, 2007

ericb writes "TIME magazine describes LOLCATS in this week's issue: Creating a Cute Cat Frenzy."

Wow. Time magazine? From the article: "These home-made cartoons seem to lift the veil on a truth that we all quietly suspected anyway: cats are small, childish, sentient beings, mischievous and innocent at the same time." I mean, yeah, LOLCATS is a pretty popular meme, but someone at Time magazine got paid to write about it?
posted by krinklyfig at 9:06 AM on July 18, 2007

I hooked you up too, blue_beetle. That next stick of bubble gum is on me. Enjoy!
posted by Pastabagel at 9:10 AM on July 18, 2007

most people reading web pages don't mentally segregate Google Ad results the way you and I do.

I disagree strongly. the ads aren't getting clicked because people aren't distinguishing them from search results. They're getting clicked because people are using them as search results.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 9:51 AM on July 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

Very old, but relevant.
posted by elwoodwiles at 10:02 AM on July 18, 2007

I'm absolutely astounded that the wits behind gofugyourself are big faced, badly dressed and fugly.

Criminey, fire&wings, that was vindictive.

I was surprised to see Michelle Malkin on that list. I thought she was fringe-of-the-fringe, but I guess not, if she can afford "gold-plated servers."
posted by IcyJuly at 10:06 AM on July 18, 2007

Ditto. Does anyone know if on-line ads work, or how effective they are?

GOOG is tracking at 546.75$ right now.
posted by xmutex at 11:10 AM on July 18, 2007

GOOG is tracking at 546.75$ right now.
posted by xmutex at 2:10 PM on July 18

Yes, but it's down 10 pts! Get clicking, everybody!
posted by Pastabagel at 11:34 AM on July 18, 2007

I know that Google's Adsense over on my blogs is actually the least of my revenue, and I am certainly not getting rich any time soon.

I figured out that I bring in about a penny per day. Woohoo!
posted by misha at 11:39 AM on July 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

There you go, briank, I just went to your blog and hooked you up. You can buy me a Coke later.

Thanks, pastabagel. I'm up to $26.60 now!

Do you feel that, Gates?? It's my hot breath down your neck!
posted by briank at 11:52 AM on July 18, 2007

I have clicked on google ads when they were relevant and I was doing a search for something I wanted to buy. I also am constantly confronted by the most off-target Google ads in the world on my Gmail: much of my correspondence has to do with exposes of teen boot camps, and you guessed it, all my ads are for teen boot camps.

Also, a lot of ads are about generating trust and recognition-- you may not consciously be aware of most newspaper ads or google ads, but some part of your brain does register them.

Then, when you want to buy that product, and you go to the site, the manufacturer's name is coded under "safe, familiar" somewhere in your head and you are more likely to buy from them than from some company you've never heard of. Advertisers aren't completely stupid.

P.S. The Time lolcats article was actually quite good.
posted by Maias at 12:44 PM on July 18, 2007

Ditto IcyJuly. That was uncalled, fire&wings. Number one, they look like perfectly normal, attractive women. They're dressed in comfortable, stylish clothes, they've got nice blowouts and understated, classy makeup. This makes them fugly? Sheesh.

By contrast, the celebs they profile seem to consistently sport absurd, ridiculous getups designed to make you want to poke your eyes out. And they do it with humor, too.

Why is it no one's all WELL, JASON KOTTKE IS BALDING -- LOL!

?
posted by bitter-girl.com at 1:25 PM on July 18, 2007

Does anyone know if on-line ads work, or how effective they are?

I think I clicked on an American Apparel ad just to see what all the fuss was about (not my kind of clothing, but if it were, I'd go rag-pickin' at the thrift shop anyhow). I saw an ad for a T-shirt with the slogan "Bacon Is A Vegetable and thought it was whimiscal enough to go see what other T-shirts they had. (It was close to gift-giving season, IIRC.) The first & so far only time I ever bought anything based on interest from a banner ad was in the mid-90s or so, when I saw an ad for a clear, soft-vinyl keyboard cover and wound up buying one for my old Macintosh because it seemed like a sensible, useful product.

One shortcoming of sidebar ads is that they're not interesting, quirky, or humorous enough to grab my interest most of the time. Being wired the usual way, I'll instinctively glance at at an ad featuring an attractive woman in it, but that's not enough to get me to find out about the product if it's not something I'd be interested in buying in the first place.
posted by pax digita at 1:31 PM on July 18, 2007

Why is it no one's all WELL, JASON KOTTKE IS BALDING -- LOL!

Because he is not balding. He is just increasing his hair's kerning.
posted by srboisvert at 1:55 PM on July 18, 2007 [3 favorites]

Good one, srboisvert. I'll have to repeat that one to my typographic genius / ultra-kerned boyfriend. But you know what I mean. Anything techie that highlights both men and women inevitably seems to concentrate on

a. what the women look like
b. how "girl stuff" is dumb

(For a fine example of "b," see some of the comments here)
posted by bitter-girl.com at 2:19 PM on July 18, 2007

Kinda interesting figures...especially the really big dollar tech blogs listed there. I've never been to any of them--or even heard about a couple of them.

I make about $200 a month from ads on one of my sites, but it's a very targeted audience and a very targeted ad for a service most of my visitors use anyway. In other words, I expect that a lot of that money is people "donating" to me by visiting the advertiser and buying things (that they were already going to buy) through my affiliate connection because I mention that it helps.

Incidentally, has anyone, outside of a beg-a-thon, ever made any money from a "donate to this site" box? I've never run a beg-a-thon but did have a donate link up for about a year. Donations topped out at...one.
posted by maxwelton at 2:21 PM on July 18, 2007

bitter-girl.com, fire&wings comment was lame, but I can't rush to defend a couple of bloggers who seem to make their living running down the style, makeup, and body types of celebrities. I mean it'd be one thing to rag on people for a bad elective surgery choice, but that blog was way close to "oh my god she has muscles how disgusting".
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:58 PM on July 18, 2007

The adsense revenue on my fiance's very niche site brings in enough to make our car payment most months. Somebody's clicking, but I don't know who.
posted by chiababe at 5:34 PM on July 18, 2007

Such self-righteous pricks. Has any person or group of people ever before demanded or suggested that they should be the TIME Person of the Year?


and I've never clicked a text ad, not even in Google results. I do click picture ads sometimes.
posted by Shakeer at 11:38 AM on July 19, 2007