I am a partner at HRM Today, a social network that was created to help improve the HR blogging community. There are blogs, a network of HR professionals, and forums where people come together and discuss important workforce issues.
One question caught my eye.
Breanne asked, “How do you make money on your blog?”
My answer was simple: there are no rich bloggers out there.
There are wealthy people who blog, but the money is earned through
- owning a business (related to the blog) with a tangible product or service,
- speaking to groups,
- organizing conferences,
- or working for a real company.
I want to be paid handsomely to sit at home and write about myself — but it’s not going to happen. People enjoy reading about my experiences in Human Resources and I have received compliments on my blog; I have been interviewed by a few MSM outlets and have been asked to provide insight on workforce strategies & talent acquisition in Corporate America; however, no one will give me an unlimited bukkit of cash to blog about my life as a Human Resources professional, to post pictures and stories about my cat, or to write about my sick & crazy grandmother.
It’s a shame. It’s a crying shame, really.
Business Week published a slide show, last year, with a nice list of the most successful bloggy entrepreneurs. Those entrepreneurs made money through a mix of advertising, VC infusion, and licensing agreements. Go Fug Yourself, a site mentioned in Business Week’s article, earned a little less than $7,000/month at the time of publication. While that may seem like a lot of money for a blog about celebrity fashion, it’s a business — and there are expenses that offset the revenues. You could double the monthly revenue and I’m sure the authors of the blog — Heather & Jessica — wouldn’t consider themselves rich.
ProBlogger had an interesting and informal poll of bloggers and revenue streams — and I learned that a whopping 28% of bloggers made no money in 2007, and 25% of bloggers who made money earned less than 33 cents/day.
I’ve been blogging since 2004 in one format or another. If anyone has the key to being a wealthy HR blogger, besides marrying a dude like J. Howard Marshall and waiting for him to have a heart attack, please let me know. You can contact me here or find me on Twitter.
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Laurie,
If you could get your site optimized for ad words related to serious diseases and the related class action litigation firms seking clients, you would see you earnings go up. Some ad words in that category go for $65 a click at Google. They have to pay higher clickthrough rates.
And by the way, here is a link to one of those well paid bloggers and how he lives when in Vegas. http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/09/23/ways-i-role-in-vegas/
He claims he will earn $350,000 this year with his blog and allied business, all driven thru the Web. crikie!
Another point to consider is your target market. Many blogs are region specific (including HR – different laws, etc). Countries vary in size, so if it is US based you are more likely to have a bigger readership and better chances at making any money, than say somewhere like the UK.
If you blog on something that applies to a global audience, then you have an even better chance of making money, but even so, if it’s global the competition is likely to be much more fierce.
It’s usually better to use a blog as a learning and social tool. There are significant benefits, but mostly indirectly. Employers, for example, will always be impressed if you maintain a good blog on your specific interest.
The equation is simple.
Traffic + sell stuff = people buy stuff = you make money
So, you just have to figure out who are you attracting (traffic) & what do they want (sell stuff).
And while the equation is simple, the execution is not.
Oh yeah, my favorite guru who tells you how to make a living as a blogger is Yaro Starack (http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/)
If you have any interest in making money at this thing, go read his Blog Profit Blueprint. It’s good.
Someone show me this yesterday, but there’s a site called Website Outlook. What it does is it tells you your net worth of your site depending on hits, clicks, views, etc. Here’s how much your site is worth:
http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.punkrockhr.com
You’re right in that this is typically a mechanism to drive upsell/x-sell of other services. This is how blogging has generated tremendous value to my consulting firm.
Best,
Mark
You could try the “Idiocracy” route>Brought to you by Carl’s Jr. If you have not seen the movie yet it is a MUST for HR people.
Laurie, I think that you’re using a ridiculously narrow definition.
If we applied your definition to music, you could also say that nobody ever got rich playing music.
If your point is that nobody is going to get rich solely through writing about HR and nothing else, you’re probably close to right. How many magazine or book writers have gotten rich off of HR topics?
I’m certainly not rich yet, and my blogging is barely on the topic of HR, but my business is based in blogging. It’s the foundation for everything else. That’s a new phenomenon, and a lot of people are building great businesses this way. I plan to be one of them.
@Michael It’s a mad mad mad mad world. I think it’s great that ads can help bloggers rake in the dough, but I don’t want to visit a website or read an RSS feed that’s covered in ads.
@Rosie Good point about employers.
@Perry Traffic + sell stuff = people buy stuff = you make money Simple & brill. I want to make money at blogging, sure, but I also want to make money being cute & playing with my cats. I’m not sure this bloggy/advertising model is mature enough — despite what the evangelists have said as they emerged from the blogworld conference. (Blogging conferences ARE a business model.)
@Tracy My blog is worth as much as my 401k!
@Mark I like the synergies that blogs can provide…
@Nick LOVE LOVE LOVE Idiocracy. Love it.
@Willy You’re right — I think that no one gets rich playing music. They get rich by licensing their music, selling merch, playing concerts, and managing their money in a proper & thoughtful manner. Ever see the TLC Behind the Music where they ask, “How does a band that earned $30MM claim bankruptcy?” There are some good parallels between blogging & music, Willy, because musicians are the ultimate entrepreneurs in our society. Jay Z, Diddy, even Aerosmith. I will also say that there’s a history of musicians who finally do make money and begin to suck.
The number of bloggers who earn a living from their blog is minimal at best.
A-list bloggers like John Chow and even Darren Rowse will occasionally talk about their sources of income (the former more than the latter) and the interesting point I noticed was something that many aspiring bloggers don’t realize (unlike Perry, who follows a great mentor like Yaro) and that is:
The moneymaking bloggers use their blog to gain authority and then leverage that authority to make money in ways that *aren’t directly blogging related* such as affiliate marketing or consulting services. Of course they make money from advertising too but it’s not even 25% of their income and wasn’t enough to live off of, and these are blogs with 30K+ subscribers and millions of pageviews.
Skellie – one of my favorite bloggers – recently posted a handy list of blog business models that should give you some ideas of where to go with your blog:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/09/22/10-innovative-blog-business-models/