HOW: Technology, Traffic and Revenue - Day 3 SOTB 2010 - Page 2

Part-Timers and Self-Employed bloggers seem to have the most repeat visitors. Part-Timers have a mean number of 58,867 unique visitors to their blog every month, and over twice as many views per month (119,485); Self-Employeds have 58,432 visitors every month and 113,067 views.

Monetization and Revenue Generation While the majority of bloggers are not reporting any income from their blogs (64%), this number has significantly declined from last year, indicating that more bloggers than ever are making money from their blogs. That being said, the bloggers who are making money aren’t making much. Only 37 bloggers out of the total sample reported receiving a salary for their blogs, and only 2% reported being paid per post. Among those who are paid per post, 65% made less than $2,000 last year for those posts. While a majority of Part-Timers, Corporates, and Self-Employeds have been asked to attend events or write for other publications as a result of their blog, 67% said they did not receive compensation for their work.

Interview Leslie Grandy Seattle, WA The Consumer Matters Technorati Contributor PR Leveraging Technology Bloggers "Public relation teams reach out to me because I add value to the conversation. Don't just re-purpose press releases; add something to it."

Overall, 18% of bloggers reported a non-salary income from their blog in 2010, and the mean income reported was $9,985. Even among full-time blogging Corporates, the mean income was well below $20,000, indicating that very few bloggers are making a living in the industry, but may instead view it as a slightly subsidized hobby.









53% of Self-Employed bloggers do not generate any revenue from their blogs, compared to 30% of Part-Timers. Among both bloggers, the most common ways of generating revenue from their blogs are display ads, affiliate marketing links and search ads. Despite the fact that Hobbyists do not report any income related to blogging, only 67% said they do not have any advertising on their blog.



Among bloggers, Corporates are the most likely to be invited to speak at an event or write outside of their blog. Bloggers who did attend an event or write for another source as a result of their blog were not likely to be paid, as 67% reported they did not receive compensation for their outside work.







Among Hobbyists, Part-Timers and Self-Employeds who do not have advertising on their blogs, 55% say they do not have advertising because they did not want their blogs to be cluttered with ads, while 39% said they were not interested in making money on their blog.



Among Corporates, Part-Timers, and Self-Employeds with advertising on their blogs, 68% use self-serve tools, while 47% have affiliate advertising links on their site. 31% of Corporate bloggers blog for an organization with a dedicated ad sales team, compared to 7% of respondents overall. Among respondents who use blog ad networks, the most commonly used networks are Feedburner and Technorati, and among those that use multiple networks, Technorati is seen as the most effective.



Site search provider Lijit collected and analyzed ad tag data from thousands of blogs, and found that the number of publications with an ad tag of one type or another increased 54% in the last year. Google’s percent as the installed tag percentage of those sites dropped from 47% to 44%.

As with last year, it’s important to note that this number accounts for the first ad call only. Google probably isn’t losing share, but rather getting pushed down in the ad chain by smaller, more nimble companies that grab the first position, then pass back to Google for the remnant. Google still has the number one slot overall.

Of the top 10 ad-related tags by percentage in 2009:

• 1 provider stayed the in same slot
• 2 providers moved up in share
• 4 providers moved down in share but are still in the top 10
• 3 providers moved down in share and left the top 10

This indicates that this is still a very transient space and highly competitive for the first ad call.



18% of the total sample reported a non-salary income, and in this group the mean annual income reported was $9,985. Not surprisingly, the mean income was higher for Pros, but still very low considering Corporates are blogging full time. It appears that many Corporate bloggers, while making money, are not making a majority of their income from blogging.



Nine in ten bloggers say it is important that the advertising on their blogs align with their values, and 38% said that standard, rotating display ads perform best on their blogs and make them the most money."




The Future of Blogging

Respondents believe that blogging has had the greatest impact so far on the subjects of politics, technology, and celebrity/gossip. Looking forward, they believe blogging will have the greatest impact on politics, technology, and business. Reflecting the fact that they own their own businesses, 27% of Self-Employed bloggers said that blogging has had the greatest impact on business.

Continued on the next page

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