Written on February 14th, 2006 at 08:02 pm by Darren Rowse
What’s a Blog Post Worth?
Wired News has a mini interview with Harold Davis from Googleplex (which doesn’t seem to have any content on it today for some reason) which has some good basic information on making a living from blogging.
Interestingly he puts a dollar value on a per page basis(over a year) to blogging:
‘As for money, people who are really in the business of making a living off content pages say they average about $10 a page per year. That would be a pretty good average. Usually, it’s not enough to make a living on, but it’s a good supplement.’
I’d actually not considered measuring income in terms of a per page basis. I’m not sure it’s a terribly good measure because it would vary so much depending upon the level of traffic that you get to your page per year and the topic of the page (and the resulting click value in AdSense) but it’s an interesting one to calculate.
Here at ProBlogger I’d say that my figures are well and truly under the $10 per year per post figure (they are probably a third of it) but on some of my other blogs they are much higher. In fact overall my blogs I’d say it’d be a conservative estimate.
30 Responses to “What’s a Blog Post Worth?”
Liam Daly
February 14th, 2006 8:49 pm
A couple of weeks ago ShoeMoney had a post where he said he looked at what he termed IPUs (Income Per Uniques) and that his sites brought in from 2-9 cents depending on the niche.
It seemd a far more meaningful (and practical) metric for analysis - and he also uses it in evaluating domains for purchase:
http://www.shoemoney.com/2006/02/01/is-your-website-makeing-what-it-should-be/
Marius
February 15th, 2006 12:14 am
It’s maybe not an important number for the blogger himself but for an blog-entrepreneur (like you) it could be a number which you can use for paying your bloggers. One model under a lot of others ;)
I think Jason Calacanis used this scheme in some of his blogs to pay the bloggers.
ProWeblogs » Como casi Vivir del Blogging - Generando Ingresos con tus Blogs
February 15th, 2006 1:51 am
[…] Nota: Acabo de ver que Darren de Pro Blogger acaba de comentar la entrevista y sobre el sistema de medición de retorno dice: Realmente no consideré medir el ingreso en términos de por página. No estoy seguro si es una muy buena medición porque varía mucho dependiendo el nivel de tráfico que recibas en la página por año (y el valor por click de AdSense resultante) pero es una interesante para calcular. […]
Not Sure Yet
February 15th, 2006 1:55 am
Will you make money from your blog
Wired News interviewed Harold Davis on the topic of pro blogging or making a living off of blogging (I first saw mention of this at problogger.net). I would reco…
Peter Cooper
February 15th, 2006 2:48 am
FWIW, My blog is totally untargeted and most of the posts have reasonably poor AdSense ads on them, and I’m averaging $6 per year per post. I imagine if I targeted a certain industry it’d be a lot higher, but that’s not why I blog :)
Sarah Leon
February 15th, 2006 3:25 am
So using the $10 annual revenue per post per year, and assuming a blogger posts at a steady rate each month from starting, we get figures like this:
After 1 year, the blogger who posts 30 times per month will be making $300 per month; after 2 years, $600 per month; and after 3 years, $900 per month. With approximately the same output of effort.
A blogger who posts 50 times per month will be making $500 per month after the first year, $1000 per month after the second year, and $1500 per month after the third year.
Very interesting, and it makes the things you’ve previously said about posting rate and “your archives are the money-makers” more clear.
Blogging: how much are your posts worth? » The Tlog
February 15th, 2006 4:16 am
[…] In a recent interview with Harold Davis from Googleplex (seen on ProBlogger), he says the following: […]
Quanto valem os teus posts? » A Arte de Blogar
February 15th, 2006 4:26 am
[…] Numa entrevista com o Harold Davis do Googleplex (vista no ProBlogger), ele diz o seguinte: As for money, people who are really in the business of making a living off content pages say they average about $10 a page per year. That would be a pretty good average. Usually, it’s not enough to make a living on, but it’s a good supplement. […]
pcunix
February 15th, 2006 7:29 am
Hmmm. I have many pages making more than $10 a month, never mind a year, but if I average out ALL pages, it’s about $1.00 per page per year. Good thing I have a lot of pages :-)
Part of the problem is that you just never know what’s going to be a money maker. I have *some* idea, but sometimes a post I really think will be winner is a dud and something else that I thought was important to post but never would make a dime will chalk up great results.
But there are other factors here that rough math like this doesn’t cover. I’ve been posting regularly since 1997, and actually started (under a different domain name) way back in the early 90’s. Some of the stuff from those early days is completely out of date and of little use to anyone, so it attracts very little traffic. On the other hand, some of it ages more gracefully and still gets traffic. If I wanted to do a real analysis of page value, I’d need to take things like that into the picture - nand that’s very hard to do.
Many bloggers haven’t been at it long enough to see the real effects of time on pages, so could falsely think that a page that generates X dollars a year now always will. It might, but it probably won’t, and how quickly its glory fades is dependent on a lot of factors out of your control.
My point is simply that it just isn’t true that if you bang out three times the posts you’ll get three times the income and that it will accumulate over the years, giving you more and more equity. It is extremely unlikely to work that way.
pcunix
February 15th, 2006 7:45 am
BTW, Shoemoney’s concept of IPU is probably a more useful tool than anything else suggested.
I’m just astonished at his contention that 2 cents per unique is a LOW figure. I do around 6,000 uniques per day and only earn about 3/4 of a cent per unique - so either I’m really, really doing something wrong or he’s wrong.. so with an eye toward your post looking for poll suggestions, there’s a real good one: what’s your IPU ? Less than 1 cent? Less than 2 cents? Five? Ten? More?
Thoughts?
Clark
February 15th, 2006 6:04 pm
Any method that helps objectify the decision to treat your blogging as a business is worthwhile.
I prefer to think of time invested in writing and managing a site like one of the web logs I have as a way to make a decision as to whether it is worthwhile or not. So far I would say that there are far more profitable ways to earn money with the 2 hrs minimum per day it takes me to update my weblogs. I can’t imagine that they will ever pay a decent hourly rate. Ie: If I was so inclined (i’m not) I could make a meager income teaching english for 2 hours a day at a rate of $35US an hour. That works out to about $1400 a month based on a 10hr week. Will that ever happen for me with a weblog? Not likely and if it did how long would it take me to recoup the time already invested? And that’s just teaching English which in this country takes about as much effort as showing up and talking.
Luckily there are other benefits other than salary.
The Most Profitable Lens on Squidoo - Earnings Revealed: ProBlogger Blog Tips
February 16th, 2006 12:33 am
[…] • $10.21 over two months for one page isn’t bad really. Just yesterday I was writing how some people say an average blog post can earn $10 per year! This is better return than that - even if the income is split 50/50 with Squidoo. • Squidoo is still a new entity. My Nikon D200 lens hasn’t even got a page rank yet (none of Squidoo has). It’s only been 2 months and things should grow. • 1 lens earning $10.21 over 2 months isn’t much, but what if I’d taken the time to develop 100 lenses? What if I’d made 1000? Of course we can’t just multiply the number of lenses by $10.21 because that lens is obviously more profitable than anyone elses - but the earnings would surely be more (even though I have 5 lenses and this is the only one to make anything so far). I would critique a blog with one post by telling the blogger to add more content - it would be unfair to judge Squidoo based upon my 5 lenses. […]
raj
February 18th, 2006 4:22 pm
Darren, please correct me if I’m wrong or have misread, but your average earnings figure of $10/yr per post seems low. If I recall, the last time I saw you post your monthly earnings, it was around the $30,000 mark. That’s $360K per year. At $10/yr, you would have to have 36,000 posts across all your blogs. Maybe my memory fails me, but didn’t you say, around November 2005, that you had about 15,000 posts?
My estimate is that you are doing much better than $10/yr per post - something closer to $24 YIPU (Yearly Income Per Unit). Am I mistaken?
Darren Rowse
February 18th, 2006 5:58 pm
havn’t done the actual overall calculations raj but as I said in the last sentence of the post:
‘In fact overall my blogs I’d say it’d be a conservative estimate.’ ie the $10 per page would be less than the actual figure.
in terms of what the actual figure is - I’m not going to say, partly because I don’t know, partly because it would go up month to month, partly because I worry that people would apply it to their own blogging (I think the number varies so much from blog to blog, topic to topic etc that it’s not a good measure really) and partly because a guy has to have some secrets and of late I’ve not gotten into the ‘this is how much I earn’ side of things as much.
:-)
raj
February 21st, 2006 5:52 pm
ah, yes, of course :D
CountWordula » Leveraging Your Writing And Blogging Efforts
May 18th, 2006 3:34 am
[…] Consider what a single post might be worth, especially if you are running contextual advertising. Current evidence says the majority of bloggers are not anywhere near earning a living. So you need legitimate ways to leverage your blogging efforts. At least, if you’re planning to be a professional blogger (or if you prefer, online writer). […]
Shoemoney
June 2nd, 2006 8:12 pm
More to the point, what is a blog worth online?
mariczu
February 27th, 2007 1:39 am
Hi, owner this site - the best.
Anil Tandon
February 12th, 2008 4:56 pm
$10 per post, thats real low, why would people pay writers $10-$15 per post if thats all they could make in a year off it?
rubu
February 22nd, 2008 1:27 am
That works out to about $1400 a month based on a 10hr week.?
Nick's Traffic Tricks
February 27th, 2008 6:34 am
In the short run I think $10 is quite high.
As readership goes up your amount goes up too.
By the time you have several thousand visitors you should be able to hit $10.
Gift Bird
March 20th, 2008 6:49 am
I tend to agree with Nick. When you’re first starting with only 10 content pages, you’re likely making pennies per page. But as your site ages and gains notoriety (from visitors and major search engines), the per page average should continually increase.
Of course, I also agree with Darren. The industry and page topics you write about will also determine the page worth based on potential traffic, CTR and Adsense click value.
Garg the Unzola
April 9th, 2008 4:48 am
That’s interesting. I never thought about thinking of my blog as a per post value. To me, it’s still a matter of the amount of traffic that determines the value of the blog. All the monetising in the world is not going to make a difference if nobody sees it.
By extension, your traffic growth rate should certainly also count for something. As an example, when I started reading ProBlogger, the comments averaged about 20 per day per topic. Now it averages about 50 per day per topic, depending on when during the day I see the new posts, but it’s generally at the same time each day. This is not an accurate measure but it seems to indicate that traffic to ProBlogger is growing.
Using these guidelines, posts that generate traffic are worth far more than posts that are just there.
My gut feeling tells me the $10 per post is an estimate of what the bloggers earn before they take other avenues of income into consideration. The $10 per post is money in the bank, while the other streams of income could result in far more income per post, on average.
Orfej
April 14th, 2008 8:13 am
This is interesting value of price of blog post , $10 a year, but this price is worh as same as subject of blog.
Konsumer Elektroniks
April 15th, 2008 1:33 pm
Great! You can really make that much? I will have to get on my horse and start blogging then. I am hoping to make $300 a month. Any tips?
Clark
April 15th, 2008 2:30 pm
‘Any tips?’
Sure, try something other than blogging.
Ryan McLean
April 16th, 2008 2:40 pm
I think at the moment my posts are worth about $0.01c per post
No where near $10
My site has only been going a month
I need some help getting it up and going as this is my career of choice
any tips on how to fastrack my success? so I don’t have to wait a whole year before I start making any money?
Jace
April 28th, 2008 7:53 pm
I wish my pages had more value than that, but I don’t think they do…maybe some day!
Andy T
May 3rd, 2008 2:57 pm
I’m very new in blog. My origional idea is make the blog as a place to put up my father’s article contributed in Chinese Newspaper in 1994 [still working on it] and some thought not suitable to put in company web. I did not think of the revenue of the pay per click ads. I put the ads up because most of the blog on web got ads. If I don’t, I look too strange.
Somehow the blog generated some new traffic. I have some new customer ask for job quote. That’s extra bonus for writting the blog.
Thomas Johnson
May 8th, 2008 10:40 pm
My new site is on target for about $3.60 per post in the first year.
Looking at lifetime value of posts would be quite interesting after a few years.
Clark, I like your “try something other than blogging” comment … it’s so true, most people would make more money cleaning toilets than blogging.
But of course blogging is a lot more fun and there’s always that chance that you’ll find some secret formula to generate massive amounts of traffic with little effort.
Leave a Reply