Success stories

Most successful bloggers

Recently I came across Business Week’s article about successful bloggers. Getting money from blogs is attractive concept to many, especially when you realize what income blogs can generate.

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

I thought it’ll be interesting to profile some of the 13 blogs mentioned. So here’s the list:

1. BoingBoing.net

• Launched: January, 2000
• Revenue: Over $1 million a year
• Traffic: 11 million pageviews/mth
• Niche: Humor/Cyberculture

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. Frequent posting—the four authors update the site 20 to 40 times each day—drives high traffic to the blog.

2. TechCrunch.com

• Launched: June, 2005
• Revenue: $200,000 a month
• Traffic: 35 million pageviews/mth
• Niche: Tech

TechCrunch became Michael Arrington’s full-time business in 2006, with $200,000 in monthly revenue from job boards and ads. Federated Media handles ad sales for the sites, which get a total of about 5 million page views a month: $300 buys a small text ad for a week; banners start in the thousands.

3. Mashable.com

• Launched: July, 2005
• Revenue: Estimated $166,000 a month
• Traffic: 4 million pageviews/mth
• Niche: social networking

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.” Mashable uses Federated Media for its ad sales. Text ads start at $100 per week, banners at $2,000.

4. Problogger.com

• Launched: November, 2004
• Revenue: Over $100,000 a year (multiple sites)
• Niche: various. Blogging to religion

The top question people ask Problogger author Darren Rowse is how much money he makes from blogging. He doesn’t disclose the details, but across the many blogs he writes, he clears six figures a year from a mix of private ads, affiliate deals, and ads sold through platforms such as Chitika, Google AdSense, Text Link Ads, and Amazon Associates.

5. PerezHilton.com

• Launched: September, 2004
• Revenue: Estimated $111,000 a month
• Traffic: 4 million pageviews/mth
• Niche: celebrity

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,” says Mario Lavandeira, Perez’s creator.

6. Shoemoney.com

• Launched: October, 2005
• Revenue: $12,000 a month
• Traffic: 7 million pageviews/mth
• Niche: money online

What better way to make money online than to write a blog about making money online? The half hour he spends each day writing ShoeMoney attracts 20,000 unique visitors daily, brings in $12,000 a month, and gives him a platform from which to launch his own Web products. Schoemaker had no ads on the blog until January, 2007, and the five spots sell out quickly. “We’ve never had an open advertising spot,” he says. “We have a waiting list.”

7. Talkingpointsmemo.com

• Launched: November, 2000
• Revenue: Estimated $45,000 a month
• Traffic: 4 million pageviews/mth
• Niche: politics

He started accepting ads at the end of 2003, when Blogads approached him. Now ad sales are a mix of site-specific direct buys and mass buys through third-party bureaus. Sales bring in tens of thousands of dollars a month. “The challenge for a very small business like ours is to be able to monetize and support our original reporting, to make it work in business terms,” Josh Marshall says.

8. Gothamist.com

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