Comments on: Why Reveal Your Blogging Income?

By: Slim Smith

Slim Smith — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 05:22:21 +0000

Can you help out a veteran journalist who is a blog-o-sphere neophyte?
Here’s the story: I was a newspaper reporter, editor and columnist for 25 years until last March, when an unfortunate turn of events cost me my job as Metro Columnist at a medium size daily in the Southwest. Allright, I went to prison for felony DUI (didn’t hurt anybody, in case you are wondering). At any rate, I have a large and loyal following but no forum to share my columns, er, blogs. My question is simple: Is it practical to think that I could derive any real income from blogging? As I mentioned, I am a skilled writer, but a newcomer to this medium. Any advice would be much appreciated. And believe me, I need it….THANKS! –
Slim Smith, ex-con and ex-print journalist

By: noelevz

noelevz — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 02:11:51 +0000

i would love to reaveal my income … as soon as i get one… hehehe i just started blogging for 2 weeks now. i don’t know much about ads and stuff but i do know is that i’m doing what i love the most and its about arts.

By: WraithStrider

WraithStrider — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 10:47:19 +0000

I think credibility cannot be measured by how much money you earn from your website.
I believe all of us can agree that there are much money being gained from porno, gambling and the likes sites.
All of us could just jump into that level but some would really hold back and just keep a “moral” way of earning.
I think the quality and theme of the site should also be taken into consideration to also gauge someones blogging credibility

By: Bobby Lavish

Bobby Lavish — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 10:20:08 +0000

You’re right Darren… this does make an interesting discussion. To take the discussion further… what is your prof. opinion on what criteria should be met before releasing your blogging income in order for it to be beneficial? You touched on this a little indirectly but I would like to hear it from you a little more.

On another note… have you talked with Manolo recently at all and if so has he discussed if he income is still growing rapidly?

By: Yaro

Yaro — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 01:22:10 +0000

Credibility for sure. If you are teaching people how to make money online it helps if you are making money online. That’s a no brainer. The only concern I would have is wackos that might go stalking you knowing how much you earn (any scary incidents so far Darren?).

For people not actually teaching others how to earn online I think revealing income is still beneficial.

a) It demonstrates that you are serious about it and likely in it for the long haul since your get paid well for it. Income is a side effect of good content. I’d rather read the sites of people making good money for what they do.

b) Exposure. The manalo might have lost a few visitors because he revealed he profits from his audience, but for sure he got a lot more from the spin-off publicity. Big success comes from big publicity. One of the best ways to get big publicity is show off how unique you are, or something special you have done or achieved, or offer an interesting story – something strange, or crazy, or new, or buzzing (blogs are buzzing at the moment). There is no such thing as bad publicity!

Of course once you do reveal your income expectations change and you have to keep working hard to keep your audience. People expect a lot from people earning a lot.

I think it’s crazy when people say they will lose readers because they reveal they make money from what they do. If that’s the case I don’t think you want that sort of reader anyway. They are the jealous, depressed and full of resentment people that expect everything online to be free. Yes there is an open source movement that is free and pure and good and yes there are people out there writing good content that don’t want any money in return, but all the people behind these projects are making money in other ways or are supported by other means (inheritance, welfare, etc.). You have to earn to live – and to pay for your web access!

By: Jim Turner

Jim Turner — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 22:08:11 +0000

I just want to post about income rather than outgo!

By: ChrisH

ChrisH — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 14:37:54 +0000

One downside of talking about what you earn is it can build resentment from readers. There is the potential for them to feel used.

So unless you’re site is dedicated to blogging advice then revealing your income could cheapen and tarnish blogging as a whole.

We don’t want to sound like the store with good products but lousy service. We don’t want to generate the impression that we’re just blogging to make money.

By: pcunix

pcunix — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 13:10:45 +0000

I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours :-)

Seriously, that’s my reason. I want to know how I’m doing against my peers. Is $1,300.00 what I should expect from my sites or could I do better? While we are prohibited from revealing a lot (and that prohibition seems totally pointless to me),
anybody with half a brain can look at my sites, get a very good idea of traffic from PR, Netcraft, Alexa, et al. and by observing the ads served, can get a pretty good idea of the click value. A little backward math fills in all the unknowns, and you know whether you do a lot better or a lot worse than I do.

By: » Revealing Blog Income - Ambot ah! [ technology news and reviews ]

» Revealing Blog Income - Ambot ah! [ technology news and reviews ] — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 09:02:28 +0000

[...] Darren’s post on “Why reveal your Blog Income?” is getting some nice exchange of ideas. My take on this is two-folds but I believe not all bloggers would want to divulge how much they earn from their blog thru AdSense. [...]

By: Marc

Marc — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 05:57:14 +0000

It’s really a credibility thing I think. If you give it out, you’re basically saying, “you can also do this if you listen to what I have to say”. AdSense screenshots (assuming they’re not edited) are the best testimonials.

While the dollar amount is enticing, I think I’ll be more interested in really getting answers to questions like what percentages do each blog (in the footer) contribute and how-to information for each of Darren’s sites, e.g. content sourcing, ad placement, link building strategies, etc.

By: Danny Foo

Danny Foo — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 04:43:17 +0000

I definetely wouldn’t mind revealing my my blogging figures generated if I had a stable flow of it. However, I feel that it’s quite embarassing revealing the less than average gain I get because it feels like I’m somehow lowering my own self-esteem.

And matters become worst when there are those who might be gaining more than you decides to take a cheap punch at you just cause they might be earning more. Human behaviour always finds loopholes like this to exploit for some reason.

I suppose that’s two reasons why I wouldn’t reveal my figures unless it’s just right.

By: Kevinius

Kevinius — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 02:00:20 +0000

hmm, interesting topic. Non-blog sites aren’t revealing their income, so why should blogs do? It will only give you more competitors.

By: duncan

duncan — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 01:56:13 +0000

Its a catch 22, for example I know everytime Darren gets mentioned on Slashdot but a whole pile of people write that his full of you know what and that it cant be true, so in this regards I think its important to discuss the dollars out there in blogging so people start to wake up to the fact that blogging is becoming a serious business to some, and yet on the other hand its never been something I’ve been easy talking about myself, theres a cultural thing about talking about how much money you earn, lest in be seen as being arrogant or boastful. I personally don’t talk about specifics, and I never probably will, but I am confortable talking about generalisations, for example I’m now a 5 figure blogger if we look at it yearly, but I’m not going to put an exaxct figure to that.

By: Tom Hanna

Tom Hanna — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 23:25:11 +0000

It’s satisfying in itself to chart our progress. The book “Get Clients Now!” (review in my URL) recommends “Write in Your Success Journal” as a daily “dessert” item for its action plans. There’s satisfaction and permanency in writing down our achievements and milestones on paper. The book was written in 1999. If it had been written in 2002, it might have said “Write about success in your LiveJournal”. Updated today, the pro-blogger version would doubtless say, “Blog about your successes”.

The only real question is where it’s appropriate to do so. For those who don’t have a separate ‘metablog’ and whose blog isn’t about blogging, consider a Livejournal or something similar as some of your readers won’t want to read the off-topic income reports.

By: Martin (HomeOfficeVoice)

Martin (HomeOfficeVoice) — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 22:41:02 +0000

To me it’s either to scam people, brag (ego maniacs) or as said perviously for credibility.

In Darren’s case it’s purely ego … no, only kidding! Obviously Darren has a vested interest in letting the world know of his successes – that’s what ProB is all about – making money from blogging.

And Darren, you may have hit it right on the head with your last comment: anything to do with blogs and money generates a lot of interest.

I know of a way to get publicity: if your AdSense went up from say 10 cents a day to 80 cents a day (that would be me) then how’s this for a post heading: ” skyrockets 800% in revenue earning” ;-) … of course, the sub-heading (ie: very, very small type face) would read “this now makes him a 2-figure blogger” ;-)

But seriously, I come at it from a purely business perspective: If you’ve got a niche that’s making you good money why would you want to let the world know about it. You’d want to keep this all to yourself for as long as possible.

By: Darren Rowse

Darren Rowse — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 21:57:01 +0000

One interesting thing I’ll add is that Manolo has had a fair bit of publicity from the interview we did here where he revealed and approximation of his income. He got slashdotted and had a lot of other link ups as a result. I guess this is another benefit of revealing a large income.

links=increase page rank=more traffic=higher earnings.

By: tim

tim — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 21:47:24 +0000

As a junior blogger compared to Darren I see a couple reasons for revealing income. First, revelations of high income help promotoe and market affiliate programs, seminars, and books. This is beneficial not only to someone like Darren but also helps those looking for opportunities know best were to invest time. Second, it certainly is helpful in motivating those of us who at times struggle with our up and coming sites.

By: Jon Gales

Jon Gales — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 21:37:09 +0000

I had my earnings (from about a year ago, they are increased now) revealed last year because of some magazine interviews. It was a good chance for publicity for my website so I didn’t think twice about it. Though it was a bit awkward after all my friends read the article, but that’s just because my nature I’m a pretty private person.

Unless there’s another mainstream publication writing an article about me I doubt I will reveal my earnings publically.

By: Toivo Lainevool

Toivo Lainevool — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 20:16:56 +0000

I think you are missing one important aspect of revealing your income – people believe in free (as in speech) information on the internet. The internet exists because people have had the desire to share information. Openness and transparency were hallmarks of the early days of the net. Now that people have realized the commercial potential of the net, things are not as open and transparent, but some people still have the desire to share.

Earnings data is just one more piece of information to share with the internet. By sharing this information everybody benefits, they get to see what works and what doesn’t. I started a site (URL in my name), that exists for the sole purpose of sharing AdSense Earnings income.

By: Ash Buckles

Ash Buckles — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 18:57:05 +0000

What a smart crowd. Blogging is all about sharing information with an interested audience. In your case, Darren, we want to know how you’re doing, where you’re doing it, and with what frequency because it allows us to have hope and understanding from someone who has travelled that road already.

Each reader has perceptions of scammers, ego-maniacs, and true business professionals, but in your case I’m glad I was referred to you by another blogger (don’t remember who now, sorry) because your information has added to the puzzle and given me great awareness so far.

Lastly, it was how much money you were making that grabbed my attention. It pissed me off, but it got my attention nonetheless. ;-)