Over on John Chow’s blog I found a report from Chitika (pdf) that states that the top fifty-thousand blogs brought in five hundred million dollars in ad revenue in 2006. My first thought is that if that money was evenly split, that would only be $10,000 per blog. While I know it isn’t an even split, I have to say that $10,000 per blog isn’t enough to live on.

According to a recent case study by the University of Texas and Chitika, the top 50,000 blogs on the Internet generated $500 million in ad revenue last year. That sounds all well and good but I think the methodology to come up with the $500 million number is questionable.

Chitika took their 12,000 publishers, found their Technorati ranking and how much they made from Chitika in 2006. Then they made the assumption that the blogs will run three revenue sources and came up with a revenue number.

It is an interesting article, and if you want more details you will have to check out the report, it is only three pages long.

Originally posted on August 4, 2007 @ 2:29 am

John Chow might be kicking himself a bit right now as the advertising spot he sold on his site originally for $1000 USD has made others much more than that, and is now going to be sold once again.

After the Google 300×250 ad spot was flipped the first time, some readers speculated if it would be flipped again. Well, those speculations are about to come true. It seems Rich4Life.Us, the buyer of the ad spot will be flipping the spot to advertisers for the last 10 days of the ad run.

The advertisers blame a slow down on sales coming from the advertisement and have begun selling spots which will help make them even more from their now seemingly small investment. A brilliant move by all those involved.

I look forward to seeing what John does with the advertisement next month.

Originally posted on August 21, 2007 @ 10:03 pm

There is a reason lists are so popular online. They give a vast amount of information in an easy to digest format, and Freelance Switch’s tips for telecommuting success is no exception. They list some great tips that will help you succeed in any telecommuting job, including problogging.

Here are two of the ones I really liked:

Find your zone. Most people have a time of day when they’re most productive, when they can really crank out the work. Find your zone, and make the most of it. Don’t schedule trivial tasks during this time, but the most important tasks of your day.

Communicate. Whether you’re a regular employee working from home, or a freelancer working on a contract basis, you need to communicate with those you’re working with. That includes communicating what you’re working on, the progress you’re making, what you’ve achieved, any issues that need to be resolved, and anything that needs to be followed up on. Keep that communication regular, so you can’t be accused of not doing your work.

My most productive time actually shifts, sometimes I can get an amazing amount done first thing in the morning, while other times, I am only productive late in the evening, so don’t feel bad if finding your zone is difficult.

As for communication, I find this to be difficult to do, but very helpful. Communicating takes time, energy, focus, but making sure that everyone you work for, or with, knows what is going on, can help a project move faster, and keeps things organized.

Check out Freelance Switch’s full list.

Originally posted on August 16, 2007 @ 1:21 am

Bloggers that get paid for their work are entrepreneurs in a sense, and so when I saw a link on Telegraphik relating to the 100 daily must reads for entrepreneurs, I was intrigued, and rightly so. Bootstrapper has put together a great list of links.

These days, it seems that almost everyone has a blog, so it’s often hard to separate what’s really worth reading from what isn’t. Luckily, we’ve done the work for you and narrowed it down to 100 highly informative sites. Take a look at what they have to say and see how they can help you grow your business.

Sites I read every day like Slacker Manager, Steve Pavlina, Duct Tape Marketing and Micro Persuasion all made the list. There are others that I haven’t checked out before, that are definitely on my must see list.

While these links are not specifically for blogging, I have no doubt that every one of us will find at least one very useful site in this list.

Originally posted on July 26, 2007 @ 3:01 am

John Chow is an online idol of mine. While I don’t agree with how heavily he monetizes his blog, you have to respect someone that can do so well from their blog. Sidenote: he is a fellow Canadian He recently released a post talking about valuing advertising space on your blog and makes some good points.

Here is a snippet from the article:

The bottom line is Google AdSense can only get you so far. If your prime ad spot isn’t pulling in the kind of money you like then ask yourself what you can replace it with. Can you sell the spot to a direct sponsor? Can you replace it with an affiliate deal? Would the spot do better promoting your own site(s)? Would it be better just to get rid of the spot? The key is to experiment and mix things up. It is a lot easier to double blog income by tweaking than it is to double income by doubling blog traffic.

There are very few websites though that have maximized their potential with Google’s AdSense program, but working on various high level blogs, I have seen situations where this has occurred, and like John, private sales seem to be the best way to attain the maximum amount of money from an advertising spot.

The last thing I would like to say about all this is that bloggers should try hard to balance their need to monetize their traffic with the user experience of the site. I find certain types of advertising really put me off using a site.

Read John’s full article for some insightful details on how you can get the most money for your advertising space.

Originally posted on August 17, 2007 @ 2:08 am