I've been blogging for more than three years now and, apart from the occasional burst of interest, my readership figures have been steady, rather than spectacular. I've not been terribly disciplined, and at one point could easily go a whole week without posting anything. In January, however, I was invited to be one of the contributors to GlobalPost, and began to take this blog a bit more seriously. I bolstered the advertising a bit, starting to blog more frequently and waited to see what would happen.
Unsurprisingly, my readership figures rose and, in the month to 2 March, my monthly readership has reached over 2,500 unique visits and very nearly 3,000 page views. Now, compared to the 'big boys' of political blogging, these figures barely register but, given that it's taken nearly three and a half years to reach 50,000 visitors, I'm quite pleased.
Of course, the more people reading your blog, the more money you make from advertising. I'm not going to get rich from the advertising revenue that 'Liberal Bureaucracy' brings in, but given that I'd earned $4.61 in two years, $4.31 in the past two months is riches indeed. By comparison, Iain Dale gets about 34 times as many unique visits. Whilst I guess that he earns more than $70 per month, I also suspect that he isn't making anything resembling a good living from it.
However, I'm curious to know whether or not there is any data on the amount of money earned by bloggers from advertising, and whether there are any reports on successful advertising campaigns which have used bloggers as anything other than a peripheral part of a wider strategy.
Anyone got any suggestions?
You mean you don't get paid for displaying the "I'm4Ros" banner? I'm shocked and dismayed.
ReplyDeleteMr Quist, that's not so much advertising, given that she's won now, as Mark being a big soppy.
ReplyDeleteYou want to see the fridge magnets. It's incredibly sweet.
Mark, you might want to consider using MessageSpace as earnings with them are substantially higher. Indeed, I think Iain is pulling in a four-figure sum a month from his MS ads. True, they are a lot more annoying than the unobtrusive Google ones, but moulah is moulah!
ReplyDeleteWord verification: rehapled.
If only 'Liberal Bureaucracy' was so successful as to be of interest to MessageSpace!
ReplyDeleteTheir website states that, at present, they are only accepting sites that deliver more than 1000 page impressions daily.
Given that I reckon on delivering one tenth of that, it's going to require a quantum leap in readership or a lowering of their standards...
Just for information, fellow Global Post syndicee (and local bete noire), Richard Willis, claims to receive ave300 impressions/day having only begun posting at the end of 2008.
ReplyDeleteIt is however noticeable that he has achieved this figure with much assistance from Mr Dale, having been regularly promoted there as a favorite (and favoured) tory propagandist - though events may be conspiring against him.
I think this goes to prove the value of a blog with a tabloid agenda which can offer readers navigation around their preferred network of blogs (which is partly the idea of my local Reading List).