I’ve been very critical recently of certain bloggers who flaunt their blog earnings like some sort of credibility trophy. My anger towards these bloggers is fueled by their use of these income statements to persuade unwitting newbies to sign up for affiliate click through programs. This results in each individual newbie making next to nothing while the referring blogger generates an income by virtue of the number of newbies propping them up.
For example, if they are lucky, each newbie makes $10 per month from the click through program they signed up for. The blogger that referred them makes, for sake of argument, 10% of that. If the blogger refers 1000 newbies to the program, which shouldn’t be difficult if they wave a massive income statement under their noses, then the blogger makes $1000 per month. This figure then grows and grows as more and more newbies are referred. It soon makes a handsome sum for the blogger doing the referring. Thats why massive untrue income statements have become commonplace in the last couple of years, usually with headlines like ‘Look at me, I make $37,546 a week with the super magic text ad program’.
Putting my anger aside for a moment, would you like to know how much money this blog makes each month? Is it ok for a professional blogger to share honest information about their income with their readers, as long as that information is not used to try and persuade readers to join vacuous click through programs?
Obviously Upstart Blogger makes money. I wouldn’t have paid $14,500 for it last December if I wasn’t confident about it’s current earnings at that time and it’s potential.
Sharing the information with you has been on my mind for a little while now and I have reached the conclusion that the only way to resolve the issue is to canvas your opinion.
Is the amount of income generated by Upstart Blogger of interest to you as a reader?
i’ve been busting my buttocks with 3 sites and blogfarm. if you eliminate the private paid work, I think my sports blog makes like $75 a month. if you shared the money stats, no one would hate you. I’ve been reading this blog for a while and I feel like youre a great guy and you aren’t trying to rip me off or shame me. so if you shared, I wouldn’t mind. i’d even appreciate some tips on trying to accomplish what you have. we’re not competitors for the same readers, so i’d take anything from you that i could get. to be honest, i already ripped a few of your themes apart and worked some of the finer points into the themes on my site. so I guess I prolly owe you, then.
go ahead and share and then teach us how to do the same.
thanks,
Curt
I think it all depends on the tone and the reason. Like you said above, it’s done constantly and with an urgency to get newbies to sign up, then that’s just crass. And I’m sure you’ll be honest and forthright with it, not like the one blog I read who said “I made $500 this month just by blogging!” and then buried in the paragraph somewhere was a mumbled “after I spent $200 on advertising…”
Probably your readers are mostly just curious. :)
Most of the blogs I read don’t have ads because they are mostly personal blogs. Of the ones that do make an income, I don’t really care about how much they make. All I worry about is that the blog owner doesn’t put so many ads on his/her page that is distracts from the blog itself.
I think it’s perfectly okay to share your earnings with the rest of the world. Things such as pay-through click programs could help those less fortunate and other people such as students work their way through college or high-school, or even life. Even if they do benefit the referrer as well, I believe it’s still worth it.
It’s not going to cause any harm in doing so, and I see no reason for someone to get upset about it. It could even lead to bigger and greater things.
Thanks for the kind words. Income statements will be a regular monthly feature, at the end of each month, starting at the end of March 2008, as part of monthly progress review.