I’ve gotten some great questions, comments and email responses from my post yesterday. I started tapping out a very long response in the comments of yesterday’s post and decided to paste them here instead. So if you’re just catching up, you might want to read that post first.
And then read on!
If we’re talking about earning potential, I think $50/month is a very fair starting point for a blogger with some degree of reach. And by “reach” I mean 800-900 daily views.
Setting rates is a tricky business. I looked everywhere for this information but came up totally dry. There was (and continues to be) no real benchmark for personal bloggers. So I had to take a long hard look at who I am, what I’m doing, and where I’m going. Setting your worth is hard, because it can be perceived as immodest and braggy, isn’t it? And it’s hard to toot your own horn sometimes. Just like how it’s hard to write a resume. Same thing.
So here comes the tooting. I am fortunate that my blog and I have had some pretty good exposure on radio, TV, and have been featured in the paper. But I will never be a Dooce, who has an international audience and is estimated to earn $40,000/month from her blog. (I would love to hear her take on this, wouldn’t you?) So, if Dooce is, say, the New York Times of the blogging world, what does that make me? Well, I decided that I am the community newspaper. :)
The community newspaper might not be world-famous and flashy, but it’s solid. And reliable. It’s a good friend, the neighbour across the street. And people look to it for information about where they live (important stuff!) and (many of us) read it faithfully.
I think the analogy works. After all, my blog and our community paper are both published on a regular basis and our goal is to (a) entertain and inform people who (b) live in a certain geographic area … and (c) make money while doing so.
I liked this comparison, and that’s kind of what was stuck in my head when I started thinking more about recouping costs and, heck, if I was lucky, make enough to pay for my coffee habit. :)
Here’s something some of you might not know: a ¼ page ad in a weekly neighborhood newspaper costs around $350. This might be the same in your neighbourhood too, but it depends on where you live. So this was the number that was in my head when all this was all going down.
Newspaper advertising is broadcasting. Each ad carries a message, and the advertiser hopes that their target market happens to see it. Blog advertising is narrowcasting. Take for example a children’s boutique. If the boutique takes an ad out in the newspaper they’re reaching EVERYONE: seniors, childless people, beefy construction workers etc… but if that children’s boutique takes an ad out with me, they can be pretty certain that the audience is a mirror of who I am: married with younger children, a double-income family in Ottawa who likes pretty things, etc. The children’s boutique can also be sure that I will spread the word about them to my other networks – Facebook, Twitter etc.
On a niche blog like mine, advertisers are able to reach a very targeted market, much more so than through traditional media.
Anyway, that’s what I was thinking about when I came up with my original number. I think that what bloggers charge for their ad space should match their experience, exposure, and reach. FYI, I’ve been raising the cost of advertising bit by bit since I started.
In the spirit of sharing, I wanted to add a couple other points about blog advertising for anyone who chooses to go that route.
If you are hoping to land an advertiser or two I think you need…
Passion.
You need to be able to show that you love what you do, that you’ve been around, and that you’re going to continue to BE around.
Attitude.
If you’re going to turn your blog into a business (big or small) you have to look/be/act professional.
Numbers.
You need to be able to prove to your advertiser that you have cultivated an audience. Emphasize to your potential advertiser that word-of-mouth is an extremely valuable commodity (especially in a smaller market). I truly believe that many businesses would prefer quality engagement over masses of eyeballs that really don’t care. You need to know (and your advertisers need to know) that you can bring them the right kind of customer.
How much traffic is “enough”? I don’t think having huge numbers matters. I’m pretty happy being a small fish, but I think it’s safe to say that the best way of getting a potential advertiser to take you seriously is if you have at least 800-1000 views a day.
That being said, don’t ever ever ever inflate your numbers. I once visited a blog that had easily accessible stat info (it was available via an image on their home page). I was curious, so I clicked. I had just finished reading the information on that blog’s “I sell advertising” page. I clearly saw what kind of traffic the site was getting. Here’s the thing, it did not match the information on their advertising page… by a long shot.
If you fudge your numbers it will make you look bad. Your blog is your brand. The term “brand” is bandied around a lot. For my purposes, because I write a personal blog, I like to substitute the word “reputation” when the word “brand” comes up. You need to protect your reputation because you are nothing without it.
The other big thing about protecting your reputation, is that you have to know when to say no.
I’ve had various blogging gigs and blog-related deals offered to me. The money would have been welcome, but those gigs didn’t fit the kind of person I am and would have made me look like a giant hypocrite.
Every once in awhile Mark likes to spring things on me like “but what if McDonald’s gave you $10,000 to blog about them?” I don’t think he likes my answer, but he respects it. My readership is everything.
I have a keen understanding (and if you blog publicly, you should too) of the power and influence parenting bloggers wield. It’s cool, and scary, and I would never do anything to abuse the trust I have cultivated with the people who take time out of their day to come here.
Anyway, yes. There it is! Any questions? :)
