Business and Blogging
Blogging in infancy as a Business Model
Tuesday, February 21st, 2006The Financial Times examines the business model for blogging and does not come away impressed.
After talking to various people in the new media world, it’s possible to estimate an income of $1,000 to $2,000 a month in ad revenue from a typical blog getting 10,000 visitors a day and playing to a national audience with a popular topic such as politics.
The problem is that few blogs do even that much traffic. According to the monitoring done by thetruthlaidbear.com, only two blogs get more than 1 million visitors a day and the numbers drop quickly after that: the 10th ranked blog for traffic gets around 120,000 visits; the 50th around 28,000; the 100th around 9,700; the 500th only 1,400 and the 1000th under 600. By contrast, the online edition of The New York Times had an average of 1.7 million visitors per weekday last November, according to the Nielsen ratings, and the physical paper a reach of 5 million people per weekday, according to Scarborough research.
It’s true that, right now, bloggers probably aren’t going to quit their jobs. However, looking at the ad rates at BlogAds.com, you’ll see the reason why it’s hard to make a buck blogging.
Most blogs charge around 60 cents to $1 per 1,000 page views. Compared to Wonkette, for example who asks ten times as much, that’s a pittance. If bloggers were able to get market rates for their advertising, a medium-sized blog with, say, 3000 readers a day, running 3 ads, could net $6,000 a month before taxes–enough to survive on in most parts of the Country. When you consider that such a business model would make blogging-for-a-living available to, say the top 250 bloggers instead of just the top 50-100, things begin to look revolutionary!
