I think your explanation about blogging expenses is very complete and details. Blogging now is also one of the proffesion like doctor, engineer and sales person. One thing I want to ask you is about time as you mentioned is as the biggest expense. How many hours you take to do your blog? I mean it is includes reading another blog and some offline source.

Thank YOu

Actually, Jim, several come immediately to mind – many folks find eBay to be their dream-come-true and invest far less than that initially, then ride that investment for quite a while.

The small Mom-and-Pop janitorial firms often start with a broom and a mop and stay small and profitable, earning 300% on their start-up costs every hour that they work.

Pet sitting, window washing, babysitting, tutoring…the list goes on and on. Granted they don’t all have the cachet of blogging, but they’re valid low-investment businesses nonetheless.

Time spent: Weekdays 10-12 hours (weekend 5-6 hours)

4 UNIX Server and high speed broadband cost: $2500pm

Ad Income: $55000-70000pm

Ad network: Direct Sales, TF, AS ( AS is lowest paying and fallback only network)

# of web properties : 5 including 2 blogs

Initial investment was $40 shared hosting in 2003

Time is biggest factor.

My advice for success – Unique content is king and do not depend upon one source of incoming traffic such as digg or google. Treat your visitors as human; never ever show more than 2-3 ad banners on a single webpage, don’t accept cheap ads provided by text-link or other dirty sources, period. Always invest in good dedicated web-hosting account and get a .com domain (please don’t go for wordpress or blogger.com account).

Tell me, is there any traditional business nowadays that you can start on an investment of less than $1,000? Or one that you can keep running for at least a year or so on that original investment?

Nope.

Internet business is going to see the rise of large, multinational companies that were started on chump change. That is if it already hasn’t happened. Look at all the power Google has nowadays.

If you watch T.V., give it up for blogging, and see if you can make something of it. You’ll know if it’s for you or not within a short period of time.

I would love to read some more on this type of thing… you know, the business side of the blogging process.

I think an article on the common business-practice pitfalls would be an excellent read, especially if it included a list of expenses to try to avoid or keep to a minimum.

I suppose that for full-time bloggers, it’s more like being on salary (or commission?) – the more time that’s put in, the higher your return must be on that investment in order to keep the hourly rate up in the range of a “living wage”…

Thanks heavens that the out-of-pocket overhead is so low, so that blogging is very accessible!

In fact — I know of one blogger who is actually homeless. He lives in a Salvation Army shelter, and does his blogging on the public access computers at the public library.

I wonder, in pure financial terms, just how ‘worth it’ it really is for the average *pro-blogger* to keep blogging. My equivalent hourly rate from working on my blogs is pitiful…

Yeah I must agree, blogging is a much more efficient way to earn cash if you know how to and the return is much faster than traditional businesses.

I mean, it’s only been 2 weeks since I’ve started blogging seriously on my own website again and I’ve already noticed traffic has increased.

Maybe it’s the passive links from ProBlogger :P

I am doing real-estate investments in my country so if I stay at home and write about my passion I might lose contracts :)

Eh so what! I am doing what I love!

While blogging is flexible and nap time is blogging time for many mothers, I find that my most popular posts are the ones that require analysis of recent medical studies.

This kind of concentration is not easy to do with a toddler present who is intent on pulling ever cable we’ve got out of the wall.

Since I also work outside the home, I may not be as adept at switching gears, multitasking and juggling child supervision with blogging as someone who works from home all the time. I believe some bloggers are very, very good at it indeed.

True, I don’t always pay money for childcare. Instead I get up early, stay up late or wait until there is another adult in the house. There’s the time investment again and I am never sure how much that ends up costing our family in non-financial ways.

ISP and hosting next biggest expense. Time is an investment for me rather than an expense. When time is wasted it becomes an expense, when it is utilized the right way it becomes an investment.

In addition to the positions you mentioned that is the biggest amount of money I spend.

My “office” space is very small — one corner of a small room. The bulk of the room is taken up with my wife’s quilting, so I didn’t even bother to claim anything for the room.

Like so many others, my biggest investment is the time that I spend on the blog and web pages. But hey, I’m retired with a pension and some modest income from investments, so I can afford the time.

Internet: $25 per month
Domain: $8 per year
Hosting: FREE for life

That’s it.

Earning $300 (and increasing) every month all from adsense!