This series of articles, written by the one and only Accordion Guy Joey deVilla, explains how to make some money from your blogging by adding the Google Adsense service to your blog.
That's right: what I'm going to do is show you how to make a little money off your blog.
But first, let me tell you a story...
The Cocktail Party Pitch (A True Story)
It all started at a cocktail party for nerds (yes, such things exist). I won't go into the details of the party, other than the fact that a large software corporation had hired a boutique PR company to throw the shindig. This meant that the snacks -- and more importantly, the drinks -- were free. This probably explains why my friend was a mite tipsy when he approached me.
"How come you're not blogging full-time?" he asked. "Your blog's good. You get lots of hits. You could make a killing!"
Oh wow, is he drunk, I thought. I figured it was the bloggy equivalent those druken moments when a buddy comes up to you and says "I love you, man." At least I was dealing with a happy drunk.
"I don't think so," I said. "Boing Boing -- I can see that making a lot of money, but not my blog."
"How many pageviews d'you get on your blog?"
"I average about 3,500, maybe 4,000 a day," I replied, "with the occasional spike on a good day."
"You can make money, then."
"Why? How much do you make off your blogs?"
"I make my living off my blogs, dude."
A living?
I should make it clear at this point that my friend does not live in a single-room apartment in a nearly-condemned tenement building, nor does he subsist on ramen noodles (the starving student's best friend). He's got a house, a wife and kids, a car and all the other stuff that you'd associate with suburban living.
"Just off the ads?" I asked. His were regular blogs; none of his pages were behind any kind of for-pay "firewall". I didn't remember seeing any kind of "tip jar" either, which left advertising as the most likely possibility.
"Yup, just off the ads," he replied.
I tried to think of how often I clicked on an ad on a web page. Maybe once a week, maybe once a month. Not often anyway. I couldn't imagine making more than a few pennies a month off ad clicks.
We talked for a little bit longer, and my friend gave me a few extra suggestions on how to go about making money from my blog. After I left, I decided that I'd give it a try.
The idea of harnessing a hobby to make a little extra spending money isn't new to me. I play rock and pop tunes on the accordion as a hobby, and from time to time, I play on the street. With a hat tossed down for tips, many passers-by don't mind tossing me one- and two-dollar coins (I'm in Canada), and those coins add up. On a good night, I can make enough money to buy dinner for two at a decent steakhouse. Maybe I could do something similar with my blog.
I decided that to follow the tried-and-true business strategy of taking a look at my friend's blogs and doing exactly what he did. I visited his blogs -- has has about a half dozen -- and they all relied exclusively on Google AdSense ads.
AdSense
Chances are that you're already familiar with Google AdSense ads. They're those ads that seems to be on every other other website and are marked with a text link that reads "Ads by Goooooooogle". They take on a number of forms, like the ones shown below.
Here's the "468 by 60" banner:
...here's the "120 by 240" vertical banner:
...and here's the "250 by 250" image ad:
How Adsense Works (The Quick and Dirty Version)
I used to work with at a company founded by an advertising executive, and I remember him always saying "It's not that people hate ads; it's that they hate ads that aren't relevant to them".
AdSense tries to provide relevant advertising by displaying ads that are related to the content of the page they are on. This is possible because AdSense, being owned by Google, has access to Google's data store, which has data on most of the publicly-accessible web pages in existence. AdSense uses the data that Google has on that page to determine what sort of ad to show. Here are a couple of quick examples: When I blogged about accordions, AdSense started displaying ads for accordion stores, accordion repair shops and accordion lessons. When I blogged about how silly people look on pocket bikes, AdSense showed advertisements for motorbikes (of both the regular and pocket variety) and helmets.
When you put AdSense on your blog, you make money based on the number of clicks the AdSense ads get and the number of people that visit your site. I'll go into the details in a later article, but in the meantime, it boils down to these rules:
- If people visit your site, you make some money.
- If people click on the ads on your site, you make more money.
Google will send you a check (or alternately, direct-deposits money into your bank account) at the end of the current month whenever you accumulate $100 or more.
How Much Money Can You Make?
It's hard to say. There are so many factors that enter into the equation.
I could cite my own earnings from the very short time I've used AdSense, but the terms and conditions of joining the AdSense program specifically prohibit you from announcing how much you've earned.
Luckily, there are a few people on the net who have provided examples without mentioning specific blog names. Darren Rowse at problogger.net has written about the AdSense earnings of three unnamed blogs with which he is involved:
| Blog | Pageviews
per month |
Earnings from AdSense |
|---|---|---|
| Blog A | 20,000 | $790.91 |
| Blog B | 40,000 | $99.08 |
| Blog C | 160,000 | $515.12 |
As you can see, there isn't a direct correlation between pageviews and revenues from AdSense. Pageviews help, but clicks on ads are where the money's at.
A Washington Post article titled A New Model For Getting Rich Online cites several examples:
- PodcastDirectory.com grew from a site from 100 hits a month in 2004 to getting a million per month -- it earns about $30,000 to $40,000 a year, "the equivalent of an entry-level government worker's salary".
- Two 20-year-olds cashed in on the MySpace phenomenon by creating FreeWebLayouts.net, where people can download designs to customize their MySpace pages. Their AdSense revenues: $100,000 a month. Not bad for a year-old site.
- A guy who flies often created SeatGuru, a site provides information on various airlines' seats, such as which ones have the most legroom and recline, which ones provide audio and video in-flight entertainment, which ones have laptop power, and so on. He makes about $10,000 to $20,000 a month from AdSense.
While these stories are of exceptional cases, these people didn't do anything that most people couldn't do: create a list of podcast sites, create a bunch of templates for web pages and collect information about airline seats. Sometimes the simplest ideas are the most successful.
At the very least, a blog that gets a few hundred hits a month should be able to cover its own hosting expenses; a blog that gets a few thousand hits a month should be able to meet the threshold to get a Google check at the end of each month, which is enough to give yourself a new computer or plane tickets for a decent-haul trip every year for your birthday.
If at this point you're salivating at the thought of making a little extra money by harnessing your existing blog or starting one, check out Blogging for Dollars, Part II: Setting up your Adsense Account!
