Earlier in the month I asked readers to share their blog earnings for the month of October. As usual this poll was a popular one with 3054 responses. I’ve run this survey previously so will compare the results between this and last time I ran it below.
Of this number 857 said that they did not earn any money blogging (28%). This is either because they don’t try to – or they try but fail (next time I’ll ask for clarification around this).
Of those that do earn some money blogging the breakdown of earnings into different earning ranges was as follows:
For those of you interested in the percentages – here’s a pie chart.
Keep in mind that these figures are just for those who earn something from blogging (and don’t include the 28% who don’t).
49% earned under $100
23% earned over $1000
16% earned over $2500
9% earned over $15000
Comparison to last time
So how do these recent results compare with previous times that we’ve carried out this same survey of readers?
In mid 2006 I asked exactly the same question with the same earning ranges and I think you’ll see below that the percentages are remarkably similar:
One last note. When I’ve asked readers to respond to how much they earn from different ad networks (AdSense and Chitika) the shape of the graphs has always been the same. While the percentages vary slightly the results are always quite similar.
So – what can we conclude?
For me the most striking ‘lesson’ from these surveys is that while there is significant hype around the idea of bloggers making money – that the vast majority earn very little (or nothing). A quarter of those who earn something make less than 0.33 cents per day. If that’s not a reality check then I don’t know what is.
On the flip side – a smaller group of bloggers are making good to great amounts of money. While I’m sure there are some votes that are put in the highest category falsely – I do believe that there are an increasing number of bloggers who making significant part time income through to full time income from their blogs. That top category is significant and seem to be growing.
kiz oyunlari – I agree that there are probably a few people who just ticked the highest earning category for ‘fun’ but I do think that there are quite a few bloggers earning this kind of figure and it makes sense to me that it’d be bigger than the 10-15k amount as there’s no upper limit. ie it includes those earning 15-20, but also 20-25, 25-30 and onwards.
So yes, skewed – but I’m not sure it’s badly skewed.
It would be very interesting to see a blogging survey conducted on most popular monetization efforts plus revenue/traffic ratios. Such a survey could shed some light on the fact that a quarter of those surveyed who can earn something make less than 0.33 cents per day.
I also want to know the cucsses maker money blogger ,
how many hours there spend on blog every day?
I had only heard / read of people earning thousands of dollars just from their blogs! Thanks to all who shared their blog income with Darren. This makes me believe that it is possible to make good money from blogging.
Look at my site I’m on about $25 a day on average so far.
Another interesting stat to collect would be how long the blog has been going, then you could report something like “of the blogs earning over $15k/month, 87% had been running over 2 years”
im only getting about $3 a day with 500 visits and 1500 page views a day , im only running a week or two tho.
Your charts are probably pretty acccurate except for the people who claimed to make over $15,000. That is obviously skewed. The percentage would continue to go down for this category and would probably be more like 0.1 percent.
There are some sexy $$ earners there!!!
Most people I talk to make $50 – 100 per month from click revenue. I guess like in most industries the top 1% make most of the cash through skill, hard work, luck and time.
yach…good idea, I am one with little money erning…very sad
I would like to know if most of the respondents answered based on running one blog, or if they answered with a total from all the blogs they are running. I have recently started a small blog network in a very tight niche and if I am able to build my income to around $500 from each of them within 6 months to a year I will be very happy.
Also, I have seen other surveys similar to this where the answers could be sliced another way. How much do you earn from Adsense, how much from an Ad Network, how much from affiliate sales, etc. Again, a relatively small income from each of those sources would add up nicely.
Thanks, These stats were just what i was looking for!!
I suspect a lot of people were interested in these stats and are now rethinking any notion of getting rich quickly from blogging :)
I think 1.5 cents per unique visitor is a good rule of thumb.
now ….my earning more better than my first time I read this posting……heeeee
Impressive figures..
How long does it take to see any money coming in, regardless of their amount? after you’ve blogged continuously for about 4-5 post a week, put up some ads, etc…
There’s a few sites out there that pay you upfront for the articles you write… seems to be a much easier way to make money then blogging. Checkout http://www.brighthub.com I believe they pay $10 for each article you submit and also pay you 80% of advertising revenue.
Search engine traffic is better, with blogging you can never go wrong.
Very interesting, but like one of the previous commenters I was very surprised and not a little sceptical at the number of those earning more than 15k per month!
I’ve been blogging for 2 years and tend to create about $50 a month from my efforts.
The second month into putting ads on my site, I earned over $100 and was very excited, thinking that an increase in page views would translate to higher ad revenue, but this has not been the case.
The correlation between visitors and income earned is a bit all over the place – very frustrating to me at first, but now I just keep trying new things and see what happens, and tweak it from there.
I would really love to move beyond the bracket I’m in now into the $100+ a month bracket.
I created several blogs on popular websites and linked them to my personal website to get traffic.
How much do you earn from Adsense
Bloggers earning is increased a lot from 2007. Today there are many more blogger then in 2007 and because of that you will find that there are many more bloggers are earning very less than 2007.
I am pretty sure the over $15 000 votes are all false.
I like this poll, tells a lot!
Are you talking about just 1 blog or many to make that from 1 blog would be hard
I think it would be great to have this survey but linked to which host you use.
My personal golf blog which is very new (50 posts) is run on blogger.
I read alot that if you want to monetise seriously the only way is to use a wordpress or typepad format and blogger.com blogs do not earn anything. Is this true??
I have another idea for a blog and of course would like to make some money out of it – at least to pay for the domain name costs, but I am technically limited…… what is the best blog host/format I should use ???
thanks
Lance (www.lancesalisbury.com)
These figures really motivate me to go further. Thanks Darren :)