Profiles of Successful Money Making Blogs

Blogs can be highly profitable as a recent Business Week report on full time bloggers reveal. The ability to make money from the simple act of blogging or writing is an attractive concept to many, particularly when one realizes the amount of income blogs can really generate.

Business Week’s article offers several mini-case studies with income and traffic reports for several websites and I found it a rather interesting read, although I’m already familiar with the blogs profiled.

Some of the blogs included in Business Week’s list include popular blogs like Boing Boing, Shoemoney, Problogger and Perez Hilton.

I thought it’ll be interesting to profile 6 of the 13 blogs mentioned, list their stats and do a quick comparison. I also added in the Alexa Rank, just so you can see it’s inherent flaws when used as a tool to assess an individual web site’s traffic value.

1. I Can Has Cheezburger?

“If you hit a niche and you can build a community, you might not have a $1 million idea, but you might have a $10,000 or a $100,000 idea,” says Nakagawa, who gave up his job as a software developer to play Cheezburger full-time.”

Launched: January 2007Niche: HumorRevenue: Estimated $5,600/mthTraffic: 15 million pageviews/mthAlexa Rank: 4,996

2. Boing Boing

Advertising costs range from $350 to display a small button ad for one week to between $2,000 and $3,000 for the minimum 170,000 impressions on banner ads, all sold exclusively through Federated Media. Frequent posting—the four authors update the site 20 to 40 times each day—drives high traffic to the blog.

Launched: January, 2000Niche: Humor/CybercultureRevenue: Over $1 million a yearTraffic: 22 million pageviews/mthAlexa Rank: 2,180

3. Mashable

Cashmore says it’s the most-trafficked blog on the subject. But he didn’t expect to make a living from it when he began. “The idea that top bloggers would be making large sums was laughable,” Cashmore says. “The folks who held on, however, are doing pretty well these days.”

Launched: July, 2005Niche: Technology/Web 2.0Revenue: Estimated $166,000/mthTraffic: 4 million pageviews/mthAlexa Rank: 1,493

4. Go Fug Yourself

The mechanics are simple: They take celebrity photos from a wire service, add snarky comments about the getups, and click “publish.” The result? Some 3.5 million unique visitors a month, a book coming out in February, and two full-time jobs.

Launched: July, 2004Niche: CelebrityRevenue: Estimated $6,240Traffic: 4 million pageviews/mthAlexa Rank: 14,237

5. Perez Hilton

He may also be the hardest-working blogger making fun of show business, with 24 posts on an average day—and as many as 40 on a day with talk of a Britney Spears meltdown. “Advertisers come to me because I get a lot of traffic. I get a lot of traffic because I work hard.”

Launched: September, 2004Niche: CelebrityRevenue: Estimated $111,000/mthTraffic: 4 million pageviews/mthAlexa Rank: 929

6. Overheard in New York

Although Overheard brings in cash, he says, “I’ve always approached it more as a community than a business. I want to make enough so we can invest more to grow. I’m not trying to build a Web 2.0 company that I can sell for millions of dollars.”

Launched: July, 2003Niche: Humor/Urban CultureRevenue: Estimated $8,100/mthTraffic: 6 million pageviews/mthAlexa Rank: 30,122

Lessons to Learn from Profitable Blogs

Having briefly looked at the growth, traffic, niche and revenue for these blogs, one can come to a few general conclusions. While they may be relevant to most bloggers, they might not apply to some outstanding bloggers within any particular niche.

Web traffic is a very important factor in monetization and profit. Blogs with little traffic will not make as much money as blogs with a lot of traffic, even if conversion ratios differ.

The niche you choose affects how much money you will eventually make. Some niches are almost inherently easier to monetize. (Tech>Humor)

Highly unique blogs with interesting topics (Cheezburger) can become profitable and popular very quickly.

Comparative analysis will show you that you are under-monetizing or not making full use of your traffic. Despite the niche differences, Cheezburger still earns less than Go Fug Yourself, while having four times more traffic.

Lucrative blog niches with a large potential audience are tech, humor and celebrity culture.

Metablogging (blogging about blogging) will not make you a lot of money unless you are exceptionally good at it.

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