A VC - Latest Comments in I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

Chris Lake — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:09:54 -0000

Hey - mainly display advertising (CPM and a bit of Adsense), plus sponsorships, virals, etc. Let's see how hard the advertising downturn hits us in 2009... ; )

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

work at home dad — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 05:35:52 -0000

I re-read the technorati article and I think you're right. It seems that the $75k/year is the annual income of the bloggers (but not necessarily the income they got on their blogs).

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

work at home dad — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 05:12:46 -0000

Venture Capitalist

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

work at home dad — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 05:10:49 -0000

With an email list, I think they can add in more than 35k a year specially for high ticket items and products suitable for your target audience.

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

work at home dad — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 05:01:32 -0000

you run a blog that's pulling in 600k-1.25m uniques? Now that's great! Six figures a year? What sort of monetization are you using?

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

Desarae A. Veit AKA DesaraeV — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:54:05 -0000

Wow. I guess I'm doing something wrong too.

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

joblo — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 22:39:02 -0000

err... what's a VC?

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

Nate Westheimer — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 17:31:57 -0000

I'll echo what I imagine others have pointed out... if you actively sold you inventory (or had someone else do it), you could easily get to that $75k number.

if you want me to sell it for you, let me know :-)

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

fredwilson — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 07:28:30 -0000

Thanks Jen

So it's simply a mean versus median issue

$22,000 for 100k is almost exactly proportional to $30k for 150k

I am not doing something wrong!

And this also tells us that a blog UV is worth in the range of $0.20/year
for a blog like mine

If you treat that like an annuity (a bad assumption I think), a blog like
this one would be worth around $2/UV to a buyer

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

bill — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:53:23 -0000

Hi, Fred,

I'm a long-time reader of your blog. Great post. I don't think that "you're doing anything wrong", :-) but I do think you are not doing enough to monetize your blog traffic. Without working a lot harder, you should still be able to generate much more than the $30K you're making now.

I just wrote a detailed post (see http://www.geekmba360.com/?... that compares your blog to a top-earning blog that is generating $30K+ a month with only 183,633 monthly unique users. I'm curious if you'd be open to try out some of the suggestions. :-)

cheers,
Bill

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

djc8080 — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:39:54 -0000

Federated Media is doing a great job for you, turning an estimated $20 eCPM. Other high traffic blogs flood their pages with ads to earn similar eCPM, but at the cost of low ROI to the advertiser. The Long Tail earns less than $1.00 eCPM. (See New Economics of Advertising for 900 pages of collected research.)

I agree that $75k per year would start another renaissance of content on the Internet. It's green, rich media, and connects communities.

100k unique users make no sense. Most real communities have less than 50,000 total population. This also applies to most B2B markets. For vertical communities, 100 million UU might be needed to sustain long term viability. 100k is a no-man's land.

Small business advertisers mostly target 50,000; not millions.

The big picture is that we need thousands of communities with 50k UU, 10 pages per month, $50 eCPM net to the publisher. That's $25k per month - enough for salaries, investment in rich media content, and interactive features.

At tEarn, we're beta testing with 50 local newspapers and niche publishers to realize this goal. It's time to stop inflating hits for size sake. It's time for change to segment into real, sustainable communities - tens of thousands of what we call microchannels.

-Dash Chang
http://tEarn.com/

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

andyswan — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:36:38 -0000

Was talking visitors not pageviews....

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

djc8080 — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:05:08 -0000

These numbers imply $20 eCPM - surprisingly high when the industry is reporting $1 eCPM for the long tail, and $10 and declining for top sites.

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

Phanio — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 08:10:57 -0000

Would it be the quality of the ads or ads better directed at their audience then just simply the fact that a blog has visitors. Could a blog or even website that provides real value to its visitors make more than those who are simply after all the visitors it can get. Example, a blog that is focused only on getting visitors - any visitors - gets the 100K plus visitors a month, has ads that target every thing from get rich quick schemes to ED pills but only earns revenues of $6K per month. On the other hand, a blog that only gets say 10K visitors a month but targets its ads to it content – content that provides real value to its users – and earns $75K plus per month. Is this possible? I ask because I am new to blogging and would like to make money as well as provide real value to my visitors. If I am off the mark here, I would assume that I would then need to forget about the ‘add value’ idea and just fill my site with the most popular ads.

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

Rafi Kam — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 02:31:37 -0000

This discussion seems kind of silly. I know a couple bloggers who according to Compete.com have far less unique visitors but are earning over 75k from their blogs this year.

Niche matters, pageviews matter, ad networks matter...

But yes if ad money is your concern, comparing my anecdotal experience to yours, you are clearly doing something wrong. But then so am I.

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

Megan Cunningham — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 02:24:35 -0000

A quick analysis of the biggest blogs or blog networks that have been sold and published their revenues would support the argument that there is tremendous elasticity in the interactive ad market right now. PaidContent, ArsTechnica, SugarPublishing, DailyCandy (tho not a blog, an email/web property recently on the auction block) even some of the Gawker sales... all show that running a blog like a real media business can prove to be immensely profitable.

Supporting a diversity of revenue streams that support the market as it is today (CPM based display advertising, email newsletter ads and list rental) combined with higher-margin revenue streams that serve a more unique value prop (post roll video, organic sponsorships, lead gen, microsites) is the only way to operate profitably in this climate. This way, your community/audience is served first and your editorial remains strong, but the business fundamentals are taken into consideration. The industry-wide transition in media consumption and sales presents enormous opportunity for brave clients and creative entrepreneurs, alike. But it's not for the faint of heart!

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

andyswan — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:05:31 -0000

Median/mean rears its ugly head again :) Thanks Jen!

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

Steve Kane — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:51:09 -0000

Hmmm. Classic case of lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Seems the long tail is wagging the dog?

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

iphone guy — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:29:08 -0000

Fred - this has nothing to do with your post.. but I think you're into this sort of thing, and i read your blog everyday.. so WTF.

Your icon on the iPhone - when i saved it as a bookmark to my iPhone's home screen - sucks.. you need to make a web clip. it's very simple.

http://www.mynewiphoneworld...

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

andyswan — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:57:16 -0000

Gotta love the accuracy of common skews and distribution curves!
Great point about email list...cpm seems doomed to me.

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

Jason Preston — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:51:56 -0000

I know someone who's running about 500k pagveiews a month, pulls only ad revenue, and makes right around 120k. I'd guess the rest of your spread is pretty accurate, too.

I'm also willing to bet that a creative blogger with 100k page views could make the extra 35k by building an e-mail list and intelligently leveraging affiliate sales.

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

Logic First — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:04:14 -0000

It's also possible the average of all blogs with OVER 100k visitors/month gets 3x the traffic you do....you know, since you're near the bottom of the pool they are talking about and all.

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

Jen McLean@Technorati — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:03:01 -0000

Sorry the summary was not more clear ("Among those with advertising, the mean annual investment in their blog is $1,800, but it’s paying off. The mean annual revenue is $6,000 with $75K+ in revenue for those with 100,000 or more unique visitors per month.")

Here’s some additional context: among active bloggers that we surveyed, the average income was $75,000 for those who had 100,000 or more unique visitors per month. Some of the bloggers in this group told us that they have more than one million unique visitors each month. Note that the median annual income for this group is significantly lower -- $22,000. These numbers represent self-reported income. We’ll have much more detailed data on revenue in the Day 4 segment: Blogging for Profit.

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

danvers — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:33:36 -0000

Isn't this the crucial point. It is all about the subject matter and therefore the type of person who reads your blog. Also, your blog is not consumer product related, and I assume those blogs do quite well.

Am I not right in thinking that the more sophisticated web user (i.e. your readers) are less likely to click on ad words or any other links - also, as you have pointed out, many will be using feedreaders which do not generate page impressions - and presumably you don't give a stuff about SEO crap.

Finally your blog is nicely designed so you don't have to click madly to navigate (i.e. more after the ****ing jump) - which also keeps down impressions.

Basically it is a nice blog which you happen to monetise... please keep it that way.

Oh - how about increasing your charitable giving by investing the $30k pa in a brilliant start up (crowd sourced by your readers, natch) and then donating the profits after the exit at 10x initial investment??

Re: I Guess I'm Doing Something Wrong

ChrisLake — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:57:59 -0000

Hey Daniel,

Just to be clear, the Digg traffic is *highly interested* in the article (hence the visit), but not necessarily interested in everything else on the website. In addition to that, we haven't optimised our site especially well, so we're not doing a good job of encouraging these readers to stick around.

But the fact that Digg is there allows us to promote older articles (Seth's 'backlist'). That article certainly provides some food for thought. But there's that old media saying: "Today's newspaper is tomorrow's chip paper." Old 'news' stories aren't going to be worth anything on a site like Digg, or any other site for that matter. You need a specific kind of article to do well on sites like Digg (the ones that aren't time-sensitive, and deliver some kind of value or entertainment).

Besides, this sort of behaviour (the 'in-and-out') occurs frequently on news aggregators and social media sites.

On aggregators, readers go back and forth, reading a few versions of one story across different sources (for a different view, or new facts, or reader comments... think sports, politics, gossip)

On social media sites users often return to leave comments or rate articles (and I don't mind where that conversation happens, so long as it happens).

And with that backlist in mind maybe the investment in content should be less news and more features...