A Review of My First Year of Blogging

1. 2,436,117 page views for an average of approximately 6,200/day.

2. 262 posts generated 6,961 comments and 1,937 trackbacks. That’s 25 comments/post and 7 trackbacks/post.

3. 21,000 people receive RSS feeds via Feedburner and 1,457 receive emails via FeedBlitz.

4. Total advertising revenue: approximately $3,350 = $1.39 cpm. (This assumes that I can get Google to pay me. I’ve tried several times during the year to get my snail mail PIN so that I can get paid, but I’ve never received it. I don’t mind Google getting the float...)

   Update: the product manager of Adsense, Rob Kniaz, read this in my blog and got my account squared away. This happened in approximately fourteen hours from the time I first posted mentioned the problem on a national holiday. Life is good...

5. Most linked-to posting (953): The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint.

6. Can’t-understand-why-more people-(11)-haven’t-linked-to posting: Ten Questions With Aziza Mohmmand. What a shame because this is the purest story of entrepreneurship that I covered.

7. Ending Technorati ranking: #45. Highest ranking during the year: #35 or so. One interpretation of this self-judged lack of success is that the blogosphere prefers news and gossip to essays although my buddy Seth Godin disproves this theory.

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8. Primary blogging tools: MarsEdit (Dear Ranchero hands, MarsEdit needs the ability to schedule postings), ImageScale, and iStockphoto.

9. Most disappointing realization: After a week, most postings are “gone.” Perhaps people’s expectations of blogs are so low that they don’t consider them reference sources. Hence, I have to write another book. My challenge is that I have three tasks: answering email, blogging, and writing a book, and I can only do two. :-)

10. Speaking of books: my request for ideas generated approximately 125 suggestions. Thanks, guys! I’m leaning towards writing a book called How to Change the World: A Practical Book for Impractical People. I just have to figure out how to make it a curve-jump ahead of, as opposed to repackaging of, The Art of the Start. If you’d like to help, please click here for a wiki for this idea. The password is “kickbutt.”

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Comments

[Jingalink]

Nice efforts. Glad to see someone doing good.

Anyone else?

[forrest]

lol!! even with traffic less than you i am earning quite a lot at http://lethaljokes.blogspot.com

this is due to placement of my ads. if i was getting traffic like u r getting i would have been earning 10 times u r earning.

[Angel Grancharov]

Hi I too much wanted to ask your opinion about my blog http://angeligdb.wordpress.com/ if you he liked, I shall pleased, thank you!

[RayC22]

It surprised me when you and comments left tells that people (generally) don't read thought old post. Perhaps, I am in the minority, but I even went through the trouble to you your very first post to see how you've evolved. In fact, I have and will be quoting you again in my upcoming blog (should be up by Saturday, 8/10/07), hope you don't mind. If you do, send me a note and I'll remove it.

[mara]

encouraging figures for fellow bloggers :)

[Allan Johnston]

Really love the challenging of peoples thinking that you push. There are so many so called experts out there, now when I hear the word expert I look someplace other. Your thinking, I feel is beyond cutting but bleeding edge.

[Robert]

stinks that one of the most popular bloggers today only made 3,300 in add revenue. i suppose thats not why you, or any of us blog. but hey, pays a few bills!

[Earn Money Online Tips]

I appreciate with Jon. Thank You for becoming frank about your traffic and earnings

Regards
Joynal Abedin
www.EarnMoneyOnlineTips.COm

[justin anderson]

Monatizing a blog is one of the most important things that need to be done.

In my opinion, relying on google adsense totally to make money from a blog is not a good idea.

Putting an advertising info page on your site, giving advertising opportunities for advertisers to choose from can be much more proiftable than cutting and pasting a google adsense code on your site. If your site has a good google PR and traffic, you can charge $10 CPM, for a banner ad, charge a monthly flat fee for sponsor links, and do paid reviews of products and services related to your visitors.

having 10 sponsor links at $20-50 a month (depending on traffic quantity) can earn you $200-$500 per month. that right there is more than he made for the entire year with adsense.

Google Adsense is the lazy mans way to make advertising dollars.

[Ernesto]

La verdad es que coincido con un comentario anterior, porque reviso la página y no veo adsense... ¿cómo ganas?, yo pienso que con el alto número de visitas deberías tener un gran ingreso (tal vez me equivoco).
Mis felicitaciones desde home based bussines un saludo para todos.
Ernesto Olavarria
www.geolay.com

[Tim Archer]

Those are some pretty darn good stats you have thre! I recently started blogging and found this post on my searches for "technorati". I'm trying to figure out what exactly their rating system means, and what does a higher score actually get you?

In any case, I vote that you write the book and continue writing blog posts! Give up on the answering email...

[JP Richards]

Guy

I would love it, if you could explain why you "After a week, most postings are “gone.”?

And why "consider them" poor "reference sources."?

It's a phenomena, I'd like to change.

[Italo]

very good!

[Italo]

Very intersting! Good blog

[Pirahna]

Keep it up mister.

[derrick]

can i have the figure of blogger in world from 2005 till 2006..how u gonna change the world by using blog?

[James Evergreen]

As far as ad revenue goes, it is something where one small tweak can make all the difference. It also matters what type of ads are showing based on the type of content you have. My peace blog makes much less than my travel sites.

It also is forecasted that print ads are now way overpriced and online ads are way underpriced so the online ads shold continue to increase in value.

Beyond ads, I'm not sure if you have had much luck selling books or services through your site with affiliate programs.

[Hock]

Guy,

I'm surprised with your AdSense earnings. I
thought they would be much higher based on the popularity of your blog. But you probably don't need the money anyway!

P.S. I heard you speak many years ago at Vision New England's conference in Boston.

[Muskie]

The first thing I did when I read this posting was try to do the math to figure out if 10% of your readers leave comments and/or trackbacks. That is the number from "Citizen Marketers". I did the math but it would really be best to have unique visitors and then a lot of people read by RSS and those are likely your most regular readers, it is a tough number to work out.

The other point with all the people worried about Guy's AdSense income, I'm pretty sure cash wasn't the motivation for blogging, but you are missing other sources of income in this blog. In addition to AdSense Guy is an Amazon Associate so when he recommends a book such as "Citizen Marketers" and someone buys it through Amazon he can reap some reward. Guy also links to his own books, sales of which likely generate him money. He is also has added Federated Media and Job Postings to his sidebar which presumably generate some income.

Now it is interesting that Guy divulged his traffic and even his AdSense numbers but the full income from his blog is greater than his earnings from AdSense, but that isn't the biggest benefit. It is all about building the brand.

Plus I remember this blog about three or more titles ago and there was less advertising in the beginning.

I read by RSS feed so I don't even see most of the ads and had to check his latest sidebar to expand this comment.

As for posts dying he has a Top Ten Posts and a recent comments section, but they are well below the fold and below some of the ads. Perhaps he could do more linking to his previous posts inline or even at the bottom of a posting. Although there might be some plugin that does this, it is really better to hand pick your links and link text.

The title is the most important text of an entire post. Guy's blog is popular, but if he chose better post titles he might get more hits on his older material. Maybe apply the rule of five from PowerPoint presentations, try five word titles max, also ensure the targeted keywords appear in the title. Guy has some good blog posting titles, but there is always room for improvement.

Although the content is the most important for the end reader the title may well be more important from a search engine optimization point of few. A flippant or humours title is fun to read and fun to write, but search engines don't get fun, or puns, or sarcasm, or alliteration etc. etc.

That said this is one of the best blogs on the Net, it doesn't need any drastic changes, and I'm sure Guy is more than pleased with the success he has had in his first year, it is well deserved and well earned. 262 posts many of them deemed link-worthy by many fellow bloggers is perhaps the best measure of quality though Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba say the best measure of quality is number of subscribers.

I'm a proud subscriber and put Guy in my blogroll even before he started encouraging people to. ;-)

[Toby Getsch]

Your daily traffic is about my 6 month's worth. Nice work! I think the biggest reason for that is work experience and exposure. It's more interesting to read your posts because you've got insight in different ways and can incorporate that into simple reads. That's why I subscribe.

[Patrick Havens]

As one who has only stumbled upon your posts at random times a few things I could suggest about your article.

It's been mentioned before but disappearing posts can be "fixed" a couple of ways. One is to have related posts linked. With wordpress it's very easy to have that. Another would be have an Archives page. You have a Top Ten postings, which I assume are posts that have the top ten amount of comments. But how about adding your Top 10 Favorite articles. Also I get a lot of action from Google sending people searching for particular articles. So I'd have a guy look at your keywords, and perhaps either have customer keywords for each post, or at least make sure the blog posts are tagged in some way. I use categories as tags of sorts, and it works out pretty well on the search front as well as someone who is interested could find related stories that way... but that's sort of built into Wordpress so it's easy. It also helps the search engines find and list each of the articles.

As for amount you earn on adsense... I don't see any ads in this article and truthfully on the front page. So it may be a case of placement. Not seen means not clicked. You don't need to clutter an interface, but make it blend in some and be part of the template helps. I get hirer CPM (don't make as much though) and though I try to keep it out of the way, I make sure it fits. And if you are doing this for fun, then sure throw it off to the side, and ignore it. But I suggest having it as part of the template, not as an addition.

****************

Patrick,

Thanks for the thoughts and suggestions. Appreciate you sending me these!

Guy

[alek]

I'd suggest one thing missing from your year-end review is how much "fun" and/or personal enjoyment you got out of blogging.

Yea, hard thing to quantify, but my guess is this is a significant reason you do it besides the $$$/exposure.

[Beren]

Hi Guy,

It would be interesting for you to work with Joel Comm (aka Dr AdSense) to see if he thinks he can help lift your AdSense revenue. Obviously, you would need to report on wether AdSense is a waste of time!!

Another point is that people who read your blog are probably smart enough to skip the ads. . .

Beren
(my AdSense tips are at AdSenseInsanity.com)

[Guy Mc Paul]

Hello Guy,
I think that your analysis is – in so far as cost/revenues are concerned - incomplete and somewhat too simplified. I deem that you should take into consideration this blogging activity into a wider perspective i.e. altogether with you other activities: principally writing books as well as being a speaker/evangelist, IT consultant etc. Your great success as a professional is the result of the combination of all these activities and therefore it is pointless to enucleate only the costs and revenues of the blogging in order to check its convenience. Moreover, instead, you should ponder that likely also – obviously not exclusively - thank to the efforts you put in blogging you might probably sell more books, or being invited to give more speeches or getting some new professional assignments or corporate appointments. For example in your tiny “cost/revenues” statement among the revenues you should probably put “advertising savings”, since your blogging activity most certainly markets you better that an outrageously expensive marketing/image consulting company…
Even though I presume that your eclectic personality would be able to perform and obtain great results in any other adventure, I would not terminate you blog. Besides not everything ought to be done for the sake of money – you are getting so much feedback, and that is in my opinion the greatest revenue.
However, ultimately, I personally believe that life is a matter of priorities and choices.
All the best,
Guy Mc Paul

[C. Enrique Ortiz]

Guy, write for the love of writing, write to teach, educate, and help others. The rest will fall into place.

CPM is not the true measure of your blog success; I'm sure you are doing blogging for money, covering hosting expenses (my goal on my blog) is should be sufficient. But look at the count of visitors and technorati rank; that is great! We all love you and what you write; keep it up...

Oh, if you don't have this, try it: 1) keep a list that is easily accessible (on the sidebar) of the top referenced articles, and 2) a second similar list but of what YOU believe are the most important pieces.

BTW, I just voted above for "Whenever the muse strikes"... I'm looking forward to your next book.

ceo

[Steve Weber]

I earned a bit more ad revenue in '06 with one-tenth your page views. I learned early on to make AdSense the last priority.

[Jack]

I am amazed by the number of comments which focus on revenue.
This gives me my idea of the day:
That people who read blogs often write blogs and many would like to make some money (a living!) from writing their blog.
Either that or are all focused on "high web stats mean you ARE making money, AREN'T you?".
Who knows.
I am also reminded that I need to subscribe to your RSS.
Gracias,

[Joe Hunkins]

You can't live on $3350 a year? Budget man, budget!

See, you *should* have taken that Yahoo CEO job back in the 90's you turned down.

[Des Traynor]

Guy, I really like your blog, it's been some of the real good stuff this year. My favourite entry here was Hindsights.

Can I just ask 2 quick ones?

1) I don't see any google ads, did you give up on them?

2) Where the Google ads here all year?

Many thanks

Des

[Trader Mike]

I wouldn't come to any broad conclusions based off of Guy's ad revenue. My blog is currently ranked 6,306 in Technorati and I had just over 1.8 million pageviews in 2006. My monthly ad revenue is just about what Guy made for the whole year.

[David Carlson]

Guy, are you working on any changes of your blog to make older posts more available? Maybe a new post necessarily doesn't need to come up on the top?

[Shakespeare’s Fool]

Guy,
I agree completely with Tim McClintock | January 01, 2007 at 09:22 PM.
Post when you have something you are passionate about.
John

[Kimber]

Guy,
Sorry, can't help you.
Don't know where you were bragging either.
(But then, I might not be the best judge. I just landed a gig by stating that I was the best.)

My comment was merely a generic one on managing envy.

[Lani]

Hi Guy,

Your highest Technorati rating was #18 the day after your PubCon KeyNote. I remember this, because I tagged you that evening and woke up to check the rating.

************

Really? I had no idea. Success, like fame, is fleeting, I guess. I wish you had a screenshot of my 15 seconds of fame!

Guy

[Mike G]

$1.39 CPM? That barely pays for ice time for the year. You should tell that to the folks at sequoia - half of their web2 companies have Adsense as a big part of the revenue model...

******************

Mike,

When Sequoia talks, I listen. I do't talk. :-)

Guy

[Ken]

I found your blog over the summer, read every post, sometimes commented and told lots of people to read. I think you're very right about posts disappearing after a week. Writing a book is a great solution; after blogging for seven months or so myself I'm starting to see the thoughts and ideas focus (ok, not always).

In terms of Technorati: The rankings have been very odd recently. I've seen a few sites I do get links counted that shouldn't and a few links we should have not get counted. I'm not losing sleep over it any more because once I fall asleep, they'll come up with a new way to do the ranking.

Thanks for the interesting reading this past year. I hope to keep reading your stuff, here and in print.

[Eric Schmoyer]

If you don't mind sharing, how much time (hours) would you say you spent on the blog in 2007?

***********
I spend about 3-5 hours on each "significant" posting. My hourly wage from the blog is therefore about $1-2. :-)
***********
On a straight revenue to effort model it seems like a losing proposition. Obviously there are exposure, research and other benefits.

Tossing out a random comparison I have a site that has 6-10 year old content. It is never updated, the design, layout, style are all dated (think late 1990s).

We don't touch it or update it. The content is not dated so it doesn't go stale, it's more reference.

For 2006 we had 2,283,306 page views and $2,722.78 in revenue.

For 2005 we had 2,065,888 page view and $3,007.80 in revenue.

For 2004 (5 May-31 Dec) we had 1,175,715 page views and $2,096.86 in revenue.

Recently internally we've thought that spending time to update, redesign and add to the content may raise the revenues. Based on Guy's numbers, I don't think so. We don't really have any other side benefits except show it again in our design portfolio.

--eric
eric [ at ] schmoyer [dot ] com

[Pamela Slim]

Happy New Year Guy:

I concur with #9 "after a week, most postings are gone." I often assume that frequent blog readers remember my posts, but very often they seem forgotten as soon as they disappear off my front page. I have a totally sucky category list right now (I will fix it by end of Jan, come hell or high water - even I can't find my own posts in it!), but I did see a neat twist today in Joan Stewart's (The Publicity Hound)newsletter: Create a "best of blog" compilation each year as a downloadable PDF. That way you can choose from the posts you feel best represent the content you generated in a year, and you can organize them any way you like.

I imagine you are always getting new readers ... people will appreciate getting a taste of your best work to really get to know you and your topic.

Just a thought ... and knowing you are very busy, it would be a great thing to ask your devoted readers to take a stab at the "best of list" for you. Either that, or get yourself a sharp tack Virtual Assistant. You really shouldn't be answering all your own emails anyway. :)

-Pam

[Chris Baskind]

Guy raises an interesting issue here: how do we bloggers offer our best work to our readers? On most blogs, articles slip off the front page in days or weeks. Sure, there are category and chronological archives, but these are pretty user-unfriendly ways of presenting stories.

I sometimes think blogging has fallen to deeply into its own conventions.

[James from rainy Wales (UK)!]

I want to make 2007 a good blogging year for myself. I have played for a few months, but having been inspired by people like 'Amanda Congdon' I want to write and publish videoblogs this year.

And how did I discover 'Guy Kawasaki'? I don't hear you ask!

Well I was lucky enough to meet the page when I pressed the 'next blog' random blog button at the top of my blog page. How lucky was I?

OK, I know you think Guy is equally lucky to have some person from Wales commenting on his blog. (I can hear you now!)

The world is a much smaller place on here (the internet silly!), and knowledge and use of these new technologies really is power.

Anyway, I also want to say what a nice person Guy is. I imagine life is pretty busy for him, but he has taken time to send a quick message now and again. It is greatly appreciated.

Guy, when you are in Wales, pop in for a cup of tea and a 'Welsh cake'. Seriously.

Happy New Year everyone!

[Richard]

Congratulations Guy! I found your blog some time this year and I never let a new post go unread for long.

I'm not sure what you mean in your 9th point, but it reminds me of another blog I read, www.stevepavlina.com. You probably don't need most of his advice about blogging, but I believe a lot of people do go back to his older posts (I know I frequently do when he links to them). You might be able to find some good ideas there that would help people find the parts of your archive that are important to them.

[Decio]

About #7: speaking of Essayists vs. gossipers worth mentioning Joel Spolsky and Paul Graham:

Joel, currently Technorati #42, write mostly about technology and programming, in a very insightful way.

Paul, currently Technorati #208, is the best non-asian-american essayist :-) but his long (and deep) essays are hard to sell, and his site could hardly be considered a blog.

I read your blog not because you write about entrepreneurship, but even if you write about entrepreneurship. Maybe, next year, the question will be "Godin who?"

[Kimber]

"Bragging about it may not be such a good thing."

Todd, I find envy a great indicator that I'm not doing all I can to accomplish my own goals. It's my brain telling my butt to get moving. Very healthy.

******************

Kimber,

I still don't know where I was bragging. I'm not particularly proud of the fact that I can't get higher than #45 in Technorati. 2.4 million page views over a year? That's not that great.

These are "just facts." When I brag, it will be very, very obvious. :-)

Guy

[Kimber]

"My challenge is that I have three tasks: answering email, blogging, and writing a book, and I can only do two."

So compile a book from blog posts.
I prefer short little chapters anyway (like Jeffrey J. Fox's writing - I gobble up all his stuff). Don't worry about people not buying just because the info is posted on your blog. Look at Seth Godin. He gives away free eBook versions of his books and it helps sales rather than hurts them.

[Todd]

Guy.... I like reading most of what you write, and I think you have a lot to offer the business (particularly the start-up) world. Your honest and experienced insights are valuable to so many of us... thank you!

A little more humility wouldn't hurt, though. Being great at what you do, and being proud of your skills, talents, abilities, contributions, and accomplishments is a good thing. Bragging about it may not be such a good thing. It takes a little bit away from ones admiration of all those qualities.

************************

Todd,

Thanks for the feedback. What do you consider bragging in my blog?

Guy

[Steve Tylock]

I appreciate your letting us see your numbers - that's a great summary. It doesn't show the "whole" picture on the monetary benefit though - any comments as to the effect of the blog on other activities like book sales?-)

If you're looking for feedback on blogging, as an avid RSS reader, the #1 thing I would ask for is if you could stop re-feeding edited articles. With no indication as to what has changed (typo corrected, line inserted, etc), I'm not inclined to reread the entire article to find a minor correction.

What I have started doing, is looking at every RSS entry and thinking about whether that is a republished article, or a new one - instead of thinking about how that article might interest me...

******************

Steve,

I wish I knew how I could do this. I will be constantly changing postings as I find errors, etc. I don't know if there is a way to stop re-feeding. If there is, I will do it.

Guy, relentlessly pursuing grammatical perfection...

[marc]

Guy, the Aziza Mohmmand post was your best, IMHO. I encourage you to interview more interesting people like her.

[Thomas Wenzl]

"After a week, most postings are “gone.”" - that's a real problem with blogs. Although your blog is one of the better ones because of tools like "Top 10 Postings", "Recent Posts", etc. That helps digging deeper. In a Web 1.0 world you would have launched a website called change-the-world.com where you post your articles to various sections (similar to your categories) and no one would care about when those articles were released. I think this is caused by so many blogs that just write about today's news.

When you go to a major news site you mainly read the recent news, too - you usually wouldn't care about news on a company having problems with their balance sheets if this company didn't exist anymore. :-)

But since you provide enough value I think many people are digging deeper into the various categories (I occassionally do). I second another commenter's suggestion on using something like "related posts" - what works for Amazon.com could work for a blog like this, too.

Some blogs are already using this gadget and I often find myself clicking on the follow-up links provided at the end of a posting.

Good luck for your blog year 2007! I hope you will find time for e-mail, blog and your book ;-)

[ggwfung]

Hi Guy, regards content disappearing into the void, a lot of blogs use the Related Posts feature, and have a list of 3 or 4 articles at the bottom of post.

It allows people to dig a bit deeper. It's a standard plugin for Wordpress, but I don't know what's available for Typepad. But it's something that's manually doable.

Cheers, and BTW, a top 50 blog in THE WORLD is a huge achievement!

[Michael Chui]

I linked that interview in two different places!

[John Dodds]

What do you mean by impractical people? Impractical in what ways? Majora is a good idea as a lead-in but I don't think she was ever remotely impractical.

[Deirdré Straughan]

"After a week, most postings are “gone.” "

I can think of two possible reasons:

1. I have occasionally wanted to read again or reference something read a while ago on a blog, and been unable to find it. Many (most?) blogs are not set up with any attention to long-run usability, so in effect anything older than a week disappears into the void. We have all become so used to this that we don't bother to look for older stuff even on the better-designed blogs.

2. Many blogs try to behave and therefore are treated like newspapers: everyone's frantic to talk about today's topics TODAY, knowing that the short public attention span will have moved on by tomorrow. Therefore, once an entry is past its sell-by date, we assume it has no further relevance.

"Live blogging" of events such as conferences exacerbates the trend: bloggers bang away on their laptops during speeches, giving their oh-so-important opinions while the speaker is still talking - time for reflection and synthesis? Nil.

[Mike Koss]

Typo on your CPM amount? You state:

Total advertising revenue: approximately $3,350 = $.014 cpm.

CPM = $3,350 / 2,436 M (thousand) pages
CPM = $1.39

[engtech]

That was one of my very disappointing realizations with blogging as well. Content "dies" very fast (unless it shows up on prominent search terms).

It's a beast you have to continually feed.

[Dimitry B.]

Nice summation! I can't believe I missed the 10/20/30 post. Nice insight and tip for the future.

Thanks and Happy New Year
Dimitry

[Tim McClintock]

Guy,

You asked, "How often would you like me write a new posting?"

Sure, I'd love to read something everyday, but I'd rather read something you are really passionate and excited about. Most of what you write falls into this category, but if that doesn't happen every day, I'm good to wait for it. Thanks for a great year!

Tim

[Jon]

What impresses me the most about your blog Guy is you are honest with the traffic vs revenues you generated. It stands as a stark reminder at how tough it actually is to try to make a living off blogging ;-) If a guy at #45 in techno makes less then 4K for a year of his efforts, it makes you wonder what the guys ahead/behind are at.

I think you have also discovered one more hard truth about blogging, few people look through "old posts" but I guess they do serve as good content for search indexing, so it isn't all a loss. Probably an advantage to you, anyhow, you can update all those old posts and release a book, generating easy sales ;-)

Jon
Founder of myfoodcount.com
Free & Anonymous Health Monitoring