You would be curious to know how much money I make per month. Honestly, I love to reveal my earning if it’s high. No point in disclosing 3 figure monthly blog revenue. It would not be motivating for others as well.
I previously predicted $3.5k revenue this year, but I was lucky (I know this phrase is so clichéd; but it’s true) and now I’m projecting somewhere around $4.5-6k revenue this year. Beer money for the thing I love to do!
Don’t judge a Blog by it’s Alexa, Technorati rank or RSS subscribers count!
Here’s the Screenshot of The Newspaper Blog’s traffic for the month of March and April:
March: (281k Page Views)
April: (202K Page Views)
In fact the page views should have been around 325k and 300k respectively, but for the downtimes. On certain days, the traffic was unusually high (more than 35k in a single day) and due to my ignorance I installed some WP Plugins which I shouldn’t have done. The server load was high and they had to suspend my blog. Lessons learnt by the hard way and credit goes to Deep who helped me and this blog back on it’s feet.
It’s really humbling to note that this blog had more traffic than some popular blogs like JohnTP (only 172k page views). The traffic is almost close to John Chow’s blog as well (266k page views). I don’t want to compare (each blog being unique) but this leaves me more room for monetizing. I hardly have ads in home page and I’m going to remove Kontera also. My RSS feeds are also not monetized.
Advertisers, take hint! Contact me if you want to run your ad campaign in The Newspaper Blog. In case you’re interested in Text links or RSS feed ads, then advertise through Text Link Ads.
Diversifying my Blog Revenue
It’s good sense to diversify you income sources, so that you earn more. Till some time back, The Newspaper Blog was monetized by AdSense only. That was not out of ignorance that I put all the eggs in one basket. I wanted this blog to grow. When I came to Dubai (8 months back), Alexa rank was 800k. Now it’s in top 115k and a Technorati rank of 51k. I thought it would be ideal time for me to monetize and diversify the income. Plus advertisers also want a fairly big site with reasonable traffic before they want to advertise.
Right now this blog is monetized by AdSense, Kontera and Text Link Ads(aff). I’ve signed up with other programs as well, but I don’t think I’ll use them here. It’s interesting to note that all the programs are unique and different from each other; ranging from CPA (Amazon), CPM (Vizu Polls), CPC (AdSense), Text Ads (Text Link Ads), Content link (Kontera), Chitika (CPC and CPA) and Sponsored Reviews (ReviewMe).
Sometime in future I would like to earn with RSS feeds, CPA and affiliate marketing, CPM campaigns like Tribal Fusion, Direct Ad sale, etc..
My $0.02 on the Ads programs
The hard reality in online earning with blogs are that you should have a fairly reasonable traffic. The money earned is directly proportional to the traffic. Any number of this advertising program can’t help if you don’t have traffic.
AdSense: 90-95% of this blog revenue comes from Google AdSense. It’s easy to get accepted. Google AdSense needs no further testimonial. It’s the launch pad for many other good things to follow.
Kontera: To monetize with Kontera you should have a decent traffic, otherwise there’s no point in keeping the ads, as I personally feel that it affects the reader’s experience. I make money in cents unless there’s good amount of traffic. But it depends on site to site. I guess technology and gadgets perform well. Maybe that’s the reason why they ask 500k page view monthly to get accepted. I got accepted via John Chow-Kontera Patnership (you can also apply).
Kontera on low traffic blogs is really worthless. You earn not more than $0.50 a day. For that kind of money, it’s not worth to spoil your readers experience. I know some people hate in line ads. In the other news, I’m going to remove Kontera and place only when the traffic is high.
Text Link Ads: Some blog make 4 figure revenue every month but it’s not as easy as it might look. You need to be in a niche blogging, have good Alexa and Technorati rank, preferably PR 4+ blog and of course good content to make decent money with TLA. Advantages are the minimum $25 payout, good affiliate payout and a nice way of making money without much clutter.
Making Difference in others life
As said before, I believe that we make a living by what we get whereas we make a life by what we give.
I will donate 8% of anything I earn more than $5K this year. Of course I should make $5k this year which I think it’s possible. 8% is just a threshold. I will donate more depending on the revenue. I would love to donate more but I’m not in the high earners bracket. Some bloggers earn excess of $5k every month. But I’m doing my best, what I can honestly do to make difference in others life.
I don’t blog for money
One more point before I shut shop this post. I love blogging. I like to do this stuff so much that I would take pains and put in hard work even if I don’t earn money. I didn’t start this blog to make money. I post about things that I’m truly passionate about never posted any article thinking that it might get me traffic or money. Money is a motivator but not the only reason of this blog existence.
Hailing from a middle class family, this money goes paying loans and bills. Once my mom remarked (when I said for the next 2 months I’ll be sending around Rs 110k including my salary savings): “Ashwin, I have never seen this kind of money before”. You bet, I was really happy when I heard that statement. 
I want to earn more to donate and give others. Honestly.
So coming back to the question I asked. How much money do you think this blog (or any personal blog) can make? I seriously thought about for a very long time but I couldn’t figure out a answer myself. What’s your take? Do you see Personal blogs, general niche-less blogs monetarily viable?
P.S: I wrote this post sometime back but forgot about it. Because I didn’t want to post. But when I saw this draft, I already wrote major portion of this post and I didn’t have the heart to discard.
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28 comments ↓
Hmm personal blog can earn as much as any niche blog too, provided you know how to earn haha I have touched nearly 4 digits a month (that was only for 1 month) but my old hosting prorvided (MediaTemple) did the job of screwing the things up and my blog got kicked out of search engine for about a month and I lost all potential earnings haha but point is a personal blog can make good amount of money at any point of time.
Congrats on your achievements. Keep moving!
Deep -
That’s what even I thought about. Personal blogs can earn as much as niche blogs but the reader base won’t be as high unless you write well or you’re a celebrity.
The dips are actually good for blogs naa, Deep? There are no real failures, only lessons, maybe learnt in the hard way.
Nirmal -
So much more to travel with my blog. This is nothing compared to what levels I want to achieve.
Yes, reader base won’t be as high as niche blogs unless you are any celebrity but for many posts you know personal blogs can get people from search engines coming in and clicking the stuff. These people will be mostly one time visitors looking for some information and clicking on the links provided in the post.
But yea, in the end, it helps..
About the traffic low down and all - to be frank it has hurt me most, just imagine i was like nearly 4 digits, daily some high end 2 digits to 1 digit amount, it affected me a lot but again I learnt a good lesson
I am going to write some tutorial on it so that other blog owners does not make such mistakes.
Regards,
Deep
Stats are amazing! Congrats and good luck!
Deep -
Yeah. Two more advantage is that the CTR is little high than the normal standards in niche blogs. Secondly, the page visited per visitor is also high.
Regarding the tutorial, write about the WP Plugins that are bad as well.
Shankar -
Thanks!
I want figure in 4 digits/month for mine as well as yours Ashwin.
I was having debate with colleagues about clinching more from advertisers (adsense or other). wht we derived out of it was-if 1 can get more ,he can do more with his annual % of charity target. we earn by legit for good cause why not push it little more (that was lasted for long time when we fought about “blog is not just for money”).
Great work … Grudgy
“Don’t judge a Blog by it’s Alexa, Technorati rank or RSS subscribers count!”
That is the best line..
Keep working, never worry about the stats. They do not mean anything.
rahul -
I really didn’t understood what you wanted to tell. The 4 figure part is Ok, what’s up with the charity part and the other things?
By the way, what exactly do you do? You seem to living in a nutshell man. I thought you were studying till this comment.
Manas -
Yeah, they are not accurate. Many other sites having lesser traffic than this one are rated higher in Alexa/Technorati. Even if they are accurate, frankly speaking, I don’t care. My Blog worth is not weighted by rankings. After all what are rankings? They are comparison or relative with other sites. My blog is unique.
I agree with you that blogging should not be started just to earn money. If you are passionate about what you write, the rewards will automatically follow.
I made that mistake when I started to blog, but later started loving blogging.
Hi, congratulations for the good progress of your blog. I strated about 4 mounths ago and I have got abot 7.000 visits..I do not know if it is good or bad I know that it is progressing positively. I also have Adsense + Amazon and sometime video sharing with Revver.
Thanks for the advices and for the visit (if you want..)
http://www.lucianobove.blogspot.com/
Techie Buzz -
I never thought about money when I started. I didn’t know we can earn this much by blogging as well.
Luciano -
Thanks a lot. Wish you success for your blog as well.
hey i too never knew you could make so much money just out of blogging. exprees your views and get paid for it, isn’t it great? Absolutely great, I say.
For my movie blog, which I started in March, I’m making quite good money but the problem is that the CPM of ads($1-$2) is very low and the cTR is high(12-14%). Is this kind of normal. I mean what kind of CTR and CPM you hv. I’m quite happy with the CTR but CPM is a major problem. Is this kind of normal or is it really bad? Please do answer ashwin so that I understand if I am doing right or not. Any suggestions to improve my earnings?
By the way what do you do ashwin? where do you work?
by the way ashwin try nautanki ads. Not got the money in hand as yet. But the money seems to be good. See the ads on my blog and try them out. You shall surely get more money to give out to charity.
^^
CTR of anything more than 8% is very good. Double digit is awesome. But the CPM is a factor. CPM depends on the niche or the type of content ads your visitors are clicking. My CTR is around 5-7% this month, CPM of around $4-5. Your earnings are normal only. If you want to earn more, then no other way but to have more traffic. Did you try blocking out some advertisers who might offer just 2-3 cents for a click?
Rs 2K daily? Thats a lot of money man! Even Labnol posted about this thing. Maybe I’ll it replacing one of the Adsense rectangle block. How much traffic do you get?
I work for Dutco Tennant, Dubai. GIS Engineer for our division.
around 3K uniques a day for my movie blog(not personal one ). It’s a dream come true
. But keeping my fingers crossed fror the moment!!! Waiting for the first nautanki cheque. Wats ur daily traffic?
You now know my monthly traffic. Daily traffic is not significant as on some days it’s high and some days is low. Maybe we can tell around 1k unique visitors a day. But the page visits per visitor is more than 4, so the page views tend to be higher.
You have a good traffic level man. Keep it up and all the best.
You need Rs 10k in the account, before they can pay you. But you said you’re making Rs 2k a day, so I’m not sure how things are going. By the way, how much money on an average do you make per month?
hey do u hv a yahoo account…could chat there…doesnt look good telling all details openly here
^^
My YIM id is ‘drgrudge1984′
Congrats man , you earnings are good but there is always room for improvement . I think if you monetize your blog well , you can earn enough. The traffic of my site is also good but i dont earn much due to poor CTR , got to do something about it .
Yeah, even I think my blog is under monetized. In fact for some time being (maybe till it reaches 0.5 million page views a month) this is going to be the setup.
Maybe you have a tech blog, that’s why the CTR is less. Even with the same theme and ads placement, the CTR is not the same. I feel CTR mainly depends on the contents that you have. All the best for your blog.
I am really surprised that you earn only so much with a mind boggling number of page views. If you had monetized it like John Chow, your job in dubai would be unnecessary I guess
^^
Thanks for the comment, Vijay.
I’m focusing on building the blog and the community. Till I build 8-10k daily page views on a consistent basis, I wont be tempted to change this set up.
You know what eventually, my job in Dubai won’t be necessary. It’s just matter of time…
[...] the number of ads. I don’t blog for money. Hoping that the readers experience is enhanced [...]
Well,
Cool that you are making some decent income out of blogging
[...] money through blogging is seriously hard work. I couldn’t achieve the target of $5k. I know I’m undermonetizing this site so things can only improve. I brought a $2000 (costs Rs [...]
congrats man you are doing well
that too with out any with out any refrels
^^
Thanks.
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