Don't quit your day job

An interesting tidbit from Guy Kawasaki's wrap-up of his first full year blogging. The key part is bolded. Note that his blog has been consistently between the 35th and 45th most popular in the world, according to Technorati. Here are some of his stats:

• 2,436,117 page views for an average of approximately 6,200/day. 21,000 people receive RSS feeds via Feedburner and 1,457 receive emails via FeedBlitz.

• 21,000 people receive RSS feeds via Feedburner and 1,457 receive emails via FeedBlitz.

• Total advertising revenue: approximately $3,350 = $1.39 cpm. (This assumes that I can get Google to pay me. I’ve tried several times during the year to get my snail mail PIN so that I can get paid, but I’ve never received it. I don’t mind Google getting the float...)

So just to review, that's:

A best-selling author and genuine tech celebrity writing a thoughtful essay nearly every workday on a top-50 blog for an audience of around 30,000 people/day.

And the pay for that is about $280 a month. If Guy can get Google to write a check at all.

Just another reminder that the reason to be a Long Tail producer is not direct revenues. Instead, it's exactly what Guy uses it for: marketing for his books, VC firm, speeches and consulting. For which he's exceedingly well paid. Indirect revenues rule!

(Note that he has since switched from Google Adsense to John Battelle's Federated Media, presumably to get higher CPMs. Although why a wealthy VC like Guy cares about such trivial ad revenues at all is not clear; perhaps it's for the first-hand learning experience in the web ad economy, a land of skim milk and honey flavoring.)

UPDATE: Many interesting comments, including from Guy himself. The general theme seems to be that Adsense is for suckers, and that most people with a little effort can do better (more stats at the Data Mining blog). That's clearly true from the commercial operations with their own ad sales forces, such as Gawker and Weblogs Inc, and it's true for those high-profile, high-traffic bloggers who can interest the boutique ad networks such as Federated. But it's not much of a solution for the Long Tail producer, which I would define as the anyone outside the top 1,000 or so. BlogKits has a good post on this that offers some alternatives, but I still think that there's a lot of opportunity for ad networks that offer the scaleable, automated DIY appeal of Adsense but the higher CPMs of a boutique network.

Also, one interesting thing to note is that Adsense is mostly text ads, which I suspect people are starting to tune out, while the boutique ad networks tend to use banners, which have enough visual variety to still catch the eye. Banners have traditionally been part of the pay-per-impression model (best for branding), while text ads are pay-per-click (best for transactions).

In our excitement over the transaction-based Google model, we've tended to overlook that branding is still about half the ad market, even though it's hard to measure the performance of those ads. The old problem with banners is that it's hard to create enough variety ("inventory")  to do proper targeting, the way Google does with easy-to-create text. But maybe the market has matured enough since the dot.com era to allow banners to scale down the Long Tail without becoming random clutter. Could the growing recognition of Adsense's limitations lead to the comeback of the banner?

Comments

[Guy A]

I dont get paid from google. I paid google for the security camera advertising. but its very hard to track the trafic.

[Anita Campbell]

I agree with Brian: "But as much as we might admire them, Nick and Jason are not the best source of inspiration for someone without substantial resources just starting out. Neither are Mike Arrington, Arrian Huffington, Om, Malkin, etc."

A significant trend today is the entrepreneur who works at several business interests/ has several revenue streams. This trend has been chronicled and it is real (and it plays nicely into your long tail theory).

The "multiple hats entrepreneur" is a good way to describe many bloggers. They make money by running 3 or 4 blogs that each make a modest amount but together add up to something meaningful; they supervise teams of people who do ghost writing and link building for other blogs; they do consulting of one kind or another (and not just blog consulting but all kinds of serious consulting for which their blogs serve as major marketing vehicles to attract clients, as well as serving as a revenue source); they may run other online businesses that a blog is an integral distribution channel; they sell books and products through their blogs; they have several affiliate programs they earn from; etc. It is not uncommon for these entrepreneurs to have 20 or 25 revenue sources a month. To them, another revenue source is just like a big corporation adding another product line. All those small checks and PayPal payments add up every month.

I can name dozens of people who are running their business interests for which blogging is their core, and they are not the blogging darlings everyone writes about. Many of them even manage to employ other people or outsource to other entrepreneurs -- when you consider the entire food chain, it adds up to meaningful commerce.

Even big media companies have multiple revenue sources. You wouldn't just look at revenues from one advertising type with them, but look instead at the totality: their webinar businesses, their events revenues, their subscriber revenues, their book sales, their affiliate revenues, etc.

So bottom line, you can make money from blogs. But you have to look on it on a portfolio-wide basis. How much money do these bloggers make overall, not how much do they make from a single one of their blogs or a single source of revenues.

[jiotn]

yes, thats true Ad sence is not giving much income

take care
http://www.sumitkar.org

[hitlen]

yes adsence is to small income

bye

[nahar]

Have you ever quit a job, then second-guessed yourself? Ever WANTED to quit a job, but could see no possible way to do it? Maybe you felt “trapped” in the job because of several reasons, like “I need the money”, or “Gotta pay the bills”… perhaps you’ve “got a family to take care of”.

How is it possible to quit one’s job and not feel guilty about it? Let’s find out :) A few years back, when I was confronted with the decision of whether or not to re-enlist (again!?) in the Navy, it was quite a quandry. I had all the thoughts mentioned above. I was in a job that I basically couldn’t stand any longer. The work itself isn’t particularly hard, unless you cound the occasional months-long time away from friends, family and any semblance of a “normal” life. I was ok with that part, because I was the one who signed up. Read more: How to quit your job and never look back?

[Jeremy Waller]

Ditto to nearly everyone above. Guy's blog is not well monetized. Many blogs earn a much higher eCPM.

[K.Sako]

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[K.Sako]

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[K.Sako]

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[übersetzungen]

There are many useful informations in this great article…I really enjoy reading the whole blog that you write. Thanks!

[Фотограф в Пензе]

I make about $3000/month from Google

[Stay At Home Jobs]

Thank you for your information.

[Make Money From Home]

Oh very intersting.