Blogging Income: How much money do bloggers earn?

This is perhaps the most commonly asked questions. When I just started blogging i found it almost hard to believe that small bloggers (for example like the one that I am) could potentially earn over $1000 per month. Well, now I believe it, because my income from Adsense in May 2009 was $1042. While I cannot reveal the details of my ads and performances (am bound by Google Adsense TOC), let me tell you how to estimate the blogging income of a blog.

If you do not have a blog or a high traffic website, you may be interested in reading my Site Build It! review.

For the impatient: Here is a quick table for estimating blogging income earned by bloggers from Google Adsense. The assumption is that most visitors are from Search engines.

Page Views per month	Approx. Blogging Income
10,000	$30 to $150
50,000	$150 to $750
100,000	$300 to $1500

My blogging income last month (March 2009) was $890.

If you want to read how overall the blogging community is doing in terms of earning money, i encourage you to look at blogging income estimate by problogger where a poll was conducted to see how much the bloggers usually earn. Surprisingly most bloggers hardly earn $30 per month.

You may either read more about make money online blogging and the progress report about this blog or continue reading more about the above estimates for blogging income.

First you have to understand that the amount of advertising money earned by a blog or a website depends on various factors. For e.g. the first main factor is the type of visitors to that blog or site. Are most of the visitors regular visitors? Or do most of the visitors arrive on the blog or website from search engines like google? It is quite easy to understand that visitors who arrive from search engines are 'information hungry' and are most likely to click on ads. Regular visitors on the other hand are not actively searching for any particular information and moreover they usually become 'ad blind' to the ads placed on a site they frequently visit. They know where the actual content lies, so they only tend to look in those places, ignoring the ads. Thus it is very hard to estimate advertising income if the visitors are regular visitors.

Now before we proceed to the analysis, recall that there are more than one ways in which a blog can earn money. Read my post on How to make money online from blogs to know more. Let me quickly list those.

1. Money earned from advertising, for e.g. by displaying ads by Google Adsense. There are two types of ads which Google Adsense displays - Cost Per Impression (CPM) ads and Cost per click (CPC) ads. Money is earned from the CPM ads simply if somebody visits the site. While in order to earn money from the CPC type of ads the visitor has to click on the ad. Whether to display CPC ad or CPM ad is a decision taken purely by Google and is not in the hand of the blogger or site owner. Usually small sites will see more of CPC ads. Large sites whcih have high traffic but low Click Through Rate (CTR) usually are a candidate for displaying the CPM ads.
   
2. Money earned by referral / affiliate marketing programs. (this depends on how specific a site is. For example if a site is focussed on selling mens clothing then it is likely that it will have a high affiliate income. My blog on the other hand has practically not earned any income from affiliate or referral programs.
   
3. Money earned by direct advertising, writing sponsored articles or paid reviews, etc. This depends usually on the page rank but also on a number of other factors. Again money earned in this fashion is hard to estimate. One of the most important factor which decides blogging income in this category is the page rank and popularity of the blog or site. A blog with page rank 2 would earn less than $100 money per month by writing paid articles and reviews in my opinion. While a blog of page rank 5 has the potential to earn $200 to $500 or even more by writing paid reviews. Depends on how many reivews, paid articles the blogger writes per month.
   

Let me ignore the income earned by bloggers from 2 and 3 because firstly it is hard to estimate, and secondly usually for small bloggers the income earned from 2. and 3. is very small as compared to the income earned from Google Adsense.

To measure the effectiveness of a blog or a website in earning advertising money, Google has come up with a number called eCPM , called the effective Cost per Impression. It is defined as the money the blogger or the site owner makes after 1000 page views of the site. This eCPM is the totality of ads performance on the site. It takes into account all click through rate and all that. Read more about eCPM.

So what is a typical value for eCPM? Unfortunately I am unable to disclose any values because of Adsense TOC. However, the eCPM can vary vastly from less than $1 to much more than $10. The value of eCPM you get is a good measure of the efficiency of your blog to earn money from Google Adsense.

Typical value of CTR or click through rate for a page (not individual ad units, but the sum total of all ad units on that page) is mentioned on this blog. It also contains estimates for income earned by some well known blogs. Although the affiliate or referral income there is a bit over estimated. I almost earn nothing from referral programs.

Posts related to Blogging for Money and Regular Income Make Money Online from a Blog - Step by Step Guide How much do bloggers earn? A vague estimate of blogging income and a statistical overview of money that bloggers make online. Make Money Online from Home: Blogging - the most efficient way of earning money online. Some tips to start your own blog and turn it into a make money blog. Get Paid to Blog - List of various paid blogging networks where you can get paid to write blog posts, sponsored reviews or display blogging ads. A useful way of earning income from your blog in addition to Google Adsense or other advertising money.