The Short Tale: Much Ado About Not Much

Talk about unintended consequences, all I wanted to do with “A Review of My First Year of Blogging” was provide some factoids about my blog. However, this tidbit became quite the topic:

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...)

Things started to heat up because of Chris Anderson’s entry called “Don’t Quit Your Day Job.” Various reactions followed:

1. AdSense sucks for bloggers.

2. Nobody can make money blogging.

3. Guy’s clueless about AdSense and advertising.

4. What link bait! Guy is so sly... (I wish I was this clever.)

So here’s more info about my advertising revenue and this whole drama:

1. “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” This was one factoid in a list of ten. It wasn’t the focus of the posting. Certainly my intent was not to get sympathy, position myself as clueless, impugn AdSense, or find advertisers—all of which happened! Several kind people even offered me great advice about how to increase revenue—the blogosphere never ceases to amaze me.

2. The $3,350 is for all the revenue I got for the year (actually, the total is now about $4,000 because I found some checks) from all sources: AdSense, BlogAds, Federated Media, and Feedburner. I used AdSense for only a couple of months when I just started.

3. I don’t take advertising revenue very seriously. It’s one way to keep score in blogging (Technorati is another), and I’m all for making as much as I can (to pay for my hockey), but it’s not the reason I blog.

4. In case you’re interested, the reasons that I blog are:

   • To increase the likelihood that “two guys/gals in garage” with “the next Google” will come to Garage for funding.

   • To help companies and people that I (a) like, (b) have sometimes invested in, (c) am sometimes advising publicize their products and services. This is also known as “alignment of interest” as opposed to “conflict of interest.”

   • To be able to tell Web 2.0 entrepreneurs how full of shiitake they are if they think that advertising is a slam-dunk business model. Essentially, a Web 2.0 company would have to be 10,000 times better at selling advertising than me before it gets interesting.

   • To test ideas with “reality checks.” How many guys have 30,000-person focus groups?

   • To tap the “wisdom of the crowd.” For example, ideas for my next book. How many guys have 30,000 people providing new-product ideas?

   • To make meaning and fulfill my mantra of “empowering people.”

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Comments

[Timothy Chan]

Well Guy maybe you're too defensive, after all , we all know that you're not in for the checks. Talking about Adsense, I've just inserted the tags 4 days ago although my account was approved 3 months back. Fact is we must know our end game, and to each it's own. And for those whose aim is to make money from Ads, why not? It's a decency way of making money anyway. Go ahead and chase the clicks if this' your end game. But while you're busy chasing do have the decency, wisdom and courtesy to acknowledge that fact that not everyone is created equal.

[Valeria Maltoni]

Guy:

Alignment of interests is very powerful. It makes like-minded people more likely to do great work together. Mind you, we're saying like-minded not same-minded, it's an important distinction.

Blogs can be good places to have a *respectfully* divergent opinion and make something happen as a result of the ensuing discussion.

And you're right, 30,000 people make for many diverse perspectives for a knowledge base that can potentially change the way we operate in the world.

[Mark Bernstein]

While I agree entirely that the blogosphere places too much faith in advertising, this is a bad data point.

We're one of Guy's advertisers, and we were very happy with our ad. We'd have bought more. The agency told us that this blog's entire inventory was sold out.

My guess is that, if Guy were living in a garret and needed the ad revenue for groceries rather than hockey, that he'd have noticed this. So, your mileage may vary.

[ketyung]

Tech users don't click on ads at all. I myself is a tech users. Once i see adsense on a website, I always be careful and avoid accidentally clicking it! Somemore, tech users are too good, they can just click on the raw RSS feed and read the blog content, so there is no ads to click anyway!

[An Observer]

Your reality cheque must have bounced then, what with TechCrunch putting FilmLoop in the DeadPool?

[Rohit]

Ahem. Small typo I think -- "...Essentially, a Web 2.0 company would have to be 10,000 times better at selling advertising that me before it gets interesting..."

[Shefaly Yogendra]

Whatever various people think of the ad-revenues Guy makes or does not make, is there no way to monetise blogging apart from ad-revenues? Surely there is some Web 2.0 wisdom lurking on this blog which can show us the light.

[Josh]

I agree with the above comments.

However, today, with all the news this weekend, I was wondering if Guy could offer any insight into the FilmLoop situation? Why did it fail? Did the investors want to pull out?

I think entrepreneurs can learn lessons from the mistakes of others. Thoughts?

[oniijin]

Ditto the amen. As long as the blog is contributing to the world in some way, I feel that as reason enough to type the words. (as opposed to those that seek sympathy for a crappy day at work/school/sitting around)

Thanks for the insights

[Des Traynor]

Advertising only sucks depending on who your visitors are. My blog gets more traffic than my web application Bigulo. Yet, my blog earns about 1/10th of what Bigulo.com makes in Google Adsense revenue.

The reason (imho) is that Bigulo serves schoolkids, and college students who click on things like "Free Ringtones!!!" and "Free Insurance for Students". My blog serves tech nerds who couldn't care less about "Microsoft ISS Support, 24 hours" , or "Learn C++ in 2 hours on at xyz.com".

I think tech users just don't click ads all that much.

[Gerry Riskin]

Guy, I am a true fan of your blog and this post is validating.

[Fedafi]

I agree advertising is never a good model to build a big/substantial business, or a way to raise VC. But there are thousands of people who just want to 'sack the boss', for them getting $3000 a month from advertising would be enough to do that and so for them it is a viable model. Monetizing a blog is in a way the new 'mom and pop' business model.

[Vijay]

These are as good a reason as any to blog... in my view any business that starts out using Advertising as the ONLY revenue model has it all wrong... unless they are Google of course :-)

[IndianaYones]

Amen