How Much Money Are Professional Bloggers Really Making?
Monday June 2, 2008
More and more people are trying to earn money blogging these days. That's certainly understandable -- it's a lot of fun, very flexible and inexpensive to get started.
Back in April, I took a look at how much money you can make blogging. Now, some of the top "make money online" bloggers have shared their stats, and Income Diary has ranked the top bloggers by monthly income.
It's great to have this reference so you can kind of see just what it takes and how much potential there is. There are a couple of caveats though:
- This is by no means a complete list -- it's just those that have chosen to participate and share their earnings. Some top earners like Darren Rowse of Problogger (and others), Maki from Dosh Dosh, Shai Coggins, the Performancing crew, Carl Ocab, et al., are notably absent. There are definitely more people making a full-time living at it than this list would indicate. For a more comprehensive list, ranked based on a combination of other statistics (not income), see the 45n5 Top 100.
- It's only "make money online" type bloggers. There are plenty of other bloggers who blog about other topics and quietly make money at it. If you look at Technorati's Top 100 Blogs, you have to get to #18 (Dosh Dosh) before you get to any "make money online" bloggers, and all the way down to #43 (ShoeMoney) before you get to one on the Income Diary list.
- In case you're wondering about the people reporting only a few hundred dollars a month income and wondering how they're living on that, remember that this is only their blogging income we're looking at here -- not other business activities like consulting or a day job.
If you'd like more details about how top earner John Chow makes all that money, he provides more details in his monthly Blog Income Reports.
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Comments
Thanks for sharing our report! The reason some of the more high profile bloggers are not on the list yet is because I can find no information about their monthly income. I will be emailing them all and hopefully they will be kind enough to share their stats with everyone.
That Monthly Income chart plays out the classic 80/20 rule. It is good to be Shoemoney or JohnChow… and that’s about it.
I hear what you’re saying, Mike, but that’s not necessarily the case (though it certainly could be). We just don’t have enough information to go on.
Hypothetically, if John Chow works 160 hours to make $32,000 and Zac Johnson works 10 hours to make $3,000, who’s really doing better? Or if Caroline Middlebrook’s is doing $10,000 a month in consulting as a result of her blog that she’s not counting in that number?
But of course, there’s another good point in here… how many of these can someone really read and keep up with? Why would someone be a repeat reader of one of the lesser-known blogs on the topic if they’re covering the same things as the bigger ones? And especially if you’re trying to learn how to make money online — who are you going to pay attention to most? The people who are making money online successfully, of course.
great training to build an authority site is what Jack Humprey has put together in his blogsuccess.com site. Good tips and techniques.