Revenue Sources for a $10,000 a month blog

Revenue Split

Last month was a pretty good month for my flagship site CG, this is how the various revenue sources broke down.

Google Adsense 8,982.03
Chitika *1 1,405.54
Commision Junction 548.30
Other Affiliated Sales 350.00
Kontera 539.07
Blog Ads 406.75
Feed Burner 95.08
Private Sales 500.00
BlogBurst *2 ?.??
Total $12,826.77

*1 - With Chitika they audit the amount before paying you, my unaudited total was $1561.71 so I knocked off 10%

*2 - BlogBurst pay their top 100 publishers on a quarterly basis on a sliding ladder scale. In the last quarter of 2006 their #1 publisher received $1,500. There has been no announcement yet as to how much publishers will be paid this quarter but CG did finish #1 so I’m hoping to hear something soon.

I’m always one for trying different monetisation stratergies and like to utilise multiple revenue streams. I am concerned that Adsense currently equates to 70% of the sites income (especially after reading one of Scott’s posts), this is a percentage I intend to reduce, hopefully by increasing other sources rather than decreasing the Adsense income.

It’s always worth trying different revenue sources. With the current sources I’m sure with better placement I can increase the price of my BlogAds to more attractive level. Looking at the prices, inventory sold and placement on other similar themed sites I am under-charging big time. I’m also going to be developing the private sales aspect more as by missing out the middle man (the advertising agency) I’ll be able to avoid paying a cut to them.

There are plenty of other revenue streams that I’m currently not using, I’ll do another post in the future on those.

About Al Carlton

Al quit the 9 to 5 rat race in January of 2007, before then he was a software engineer and systems architect of financial system. Nowadays Al spends the days running his various businesses and experimenting with different ideas and opportunities.
Al can be found on twitter at AlCarlton.

Comments

  1. That’s a tidy income, a great month indeed Al. Nice that you already have lots of income streams and maybe overall you could do better by improving some and reducing others but your certainly experimenting with a few at present so you’ll know which one’s have room to expand.

  2. Got any tips on how to be a top blogburst blog? My content gets syndicated on some major sources but I don’t really understand it yet.

    Actually, I just logged in and I am number 56. I only started a couple of weeks ago. I assume the rankings are from April 1st to the present.

  3. The BlogBurst thing surprised me, I logged in one day and saw CG was #1 and I thought wow! They do have a page of tips over at http://www.burstblog.com/2007/04/03/extreme-blog-makeover-the-ideal-post/ and I think CG meets all those naturally. The next thing would be to do more posts per day that you think they’d be interested in.

  4. It seems that Adsense is your main income stream.I’m feeling bad now,I got banned from adsense last year. :(

  5. Nice work Al, Keep it up

    One suggestion that could increase your sales a lot.

    Place static links in the footer for say $100 a month. Lots of people would accept that knowing your stats.

    You could then automate it to use mysql to place the links, you would have to set the expiry date, and then a con job that runs everyday could see what links have expired and email the link ownwer if they wish to renew.

    What do you think

    I persoanlly think thats a good way for your site.

  6. I have seen sites lose rankings for selling links. If you earn $10k a month why take the risk for an extra $1000?

  7. What do you mean by lose ranking? do you mean PR or members?

    and why does that happen?

  8. mad4 means SERP.

  9. I used to sell footer links. I agree with mad4 about being very careful with selling links as it could effect SERPS (Search Engine Results pages). I try to sell advertising rather than plain old links so as not to break engine guidelines, in the long run it isn’t worth it.

  10. Would you please explain this SERP stuff, i have never came accross it before, how owuld having links in the footer affetct it?

  11. Google is pretty clear about the fact they don’t like sites that buy or sell links. Its natural that they might want to do something about it.

    Its sometimes OK but if you start selling off topic links on every page of your site then you should be aware of the possible risks.

  12. So if I am selling text links on to a related website that should be OK? say 10 links in the footer of every page?

  13. Its up to you, just be aware of the possible risks. Some sites make all their money selling links and thats fine as they are not so reliant on good rankings in the search results.

  14. I’d say ten text links in the footer would appear very clinical and deliberate. It would be fairly evident that links are being sold. IMO.

  15. OK I’ll try and reduce that to 4

  16. There is a whole lot of vital info being shared on the chitika blog page. 30days, 30expert bloggers sharing tips on how to be successful. You should check it out.
    http://chitika.com/blog/ I was thrilled from all the vital info each expert has to share. From lockergnome to Gizmodo. Man! its some Blog Bash

  17. Thanks Scoobie, the chitika blog bash is looking to be a very cool blogging series so to speak

  18. What is your plan for developing the private sales aspect of your site, Al?

  19. congratulations on some nice numbers. I’ve also started sharing my numbers in an attempt to encourage more people to do so, so that we all can improve our performance. I had a record month last month making $9k.

    Can I ask please if your Chitika earnings are from ads or referrals?

  20. Thanks for the question Andy,my plan to improve private sales is to approach advertisers directly and get them to sponsor different sections of the site. So the Spy Gadget category will hopefully be sponsored by some Spy shop.

    Great blog you have there Everton, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. The Chitika income I posted is purely off the ads on CG, I do get a minimal amount of referral income (talking cents a day) but for what it’s worth that’s not included. The best for of Chitika income that I have on CG is the RPU (related product units), these are the CPC links you can see at the end of each individual post (e.g. http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20070405/personal-barcode-scanner/ ).

  21. Thanks for the reply. I’ve had no joy with Chitika, but my site isn’t product focussed. I’d love to have the time to start up a produce focussed site as I’m convinced the CPM will be higher than on a blog about blogging read by bloggers….

    Are you a new reader of my site or have you visited before? If not, don’t forget to subscribe!

  22. I’m sure you are right there Everton, product based sites are so much easier to monetise. But it is much easier to get people to comment on blogs like this :)

    It was the first time I’d visited your blog today but I’ve subscribed now and will be a regular reader from now on.

  23. Wow, Thats all l can say when l see these incomes from web ? So you dont need to work 😀 very good, Congruculations!
    l only amble to earn just 10$’s of dollars from adsense daily, and l just registered “AuctionAds”, Did you tried it be4? How they are ?
    Also l want to ak you how l long you are working with adsense, and how many sites u have around, and how old are they ? these are the things l wanna learn about 😀 if you dont mind..
    Thanks, Good Luck, get more from google :)

  24. Hi recep, I’ve been messing with Adsense for 3-4 years but only started working seriously towards my goals around 2 years ago. I have about 20 sites, the site that this post is about is about 18 months old.

    I’ve not tried Auction Ads yet but will be soon.

  25. I’ve just had confirmation from BlogBurst that they will be paying out at the same scales as Q4 2006, so that means I’ll be getting an extra $1,500 :) which I think now makes it just about CG’s best month.

  26. On average how many visitors do you get per day to make the $10k/month?

  27. It’s at about 12K uniques on weekdays and around 9K on weekends.

  28. The stats and figure look really amazing, but the only problem I find is that Adsense makes a HUGE part of your online income. You must have heard of the saying ‘don’t put all your eggs in the same basket’ which is what is bothering me a little bit. I think you should focus and try and improve your earnings from the other sources also to be on the safe side :) Good Luck and Great job! I’m really motivated and inspired now 😀

    • Thanks for the comment Rosie and I totally agree with you. Since I first did this post I have been experimenting with other income streams which have improved the overall income but Adsense continues to climb so it probably still equates to a similar percentage, I’ll go into that a bit more in a follow up post.
      Fortunately I do have other sites that aren’t as reliant on Adsense for their primary income, though I still intend to diversify a lot more.

  29. I am having a mixed feeling about Kontera as soon as i started running Kontera, Adsense started doing smart pricing but i do not know if it is related.

  30. few of my blogs are just about to break the barrier to get in to white label sponsored links! wish me luck

  31. Well done. Almost $9000 with adsense. That’s impressive.

  32. I have started getting clicks on a site I set up a wghile ago - only up to about $15 a month on it so far but seems to be increasing.
    So reading this is very impressive - and inspiring- I hope it has doubled for you since you did this post!

  33. I manage PPC accounts for a few of my clients, unsurprisingly I find that almost %60 is coming from contextual advertising (adsense) $9000/month ? well done! well done!

  34. Some impressive figures. I’m working towards monitizing a few sites at the moment and think I’ll take a leaf out of your book and try different revenue sources and networks

  35. I can’t seem to get over $400 per month in adsense. Great job in breaking almost $9000!

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