Stunning Stats from the State of the Blogosphere: Who’s Making the Moolah & How?

So on and off for a week or so, I’ve been mining the September 2008 Technorati Report for stunning stats about the State of the Blogosphere: who, what, how, branding, and today, making money, aka “Blogging For Profit.”

Blogs are an increasingly attractive platform for advertisers. The majority of bloggers we surveyed have advertising on their blogs. Marketers realize that bloggers are creating high quality content and attracting growing, loyal audiences.

Bloggers with advertising are more sophisticated in terms of their use of tools, advertising platforms and even events to build reader loyalty. They also invest more resources (both time and money) in their blogs. We also analyzed the differences between the top 10% of bloggers in terms of ad revenue compared to the average blogger. Overall, this group exhibits the above behaviors but to a much higher degree.

Among the bloggers who currently do not have advertising on their site, the most common reason is lack of interest. Very few said that not knowing how to set up advertising was a barrier to accepting ads on their blog. Bloggers are savvy and self sufficient, so when they are ready to accept advertising they will have no problems figuring out how to best approach it for their blog.

Why don’t YOU (dear reader) have ads on your blog? Are you interested in monetization? or making money from blogging in one way or another?

Back to the Technorati Report–here’s someone who’s making enough money to be “financially” independent and sounds like he’s having a great time too:

BLOGGER PROFILE

“Chuckmonster”

• Blogs:

  VegasTripping.com, AtlanticCityTripping.com, RenoTripping.com, MacauTripping.com, FeltJungle

• Age:

  39

• What I do:

  Blogger / 15 North Inc. Travel & Tourism

• Me at home:

  Married (not by Elvis)

• Launching new blogs:

  I live-blogged an extensive research trip to Macau in September 2007, after which we launched MacauTripping.com, the first English language travel guide to Asia’s Las Vegas.

• On the blogging lifestyle:

  I have become financially and spiritually independent, made friends all over the world, and lived life on my own terms.

Blog-bit:

Monthly Visitors*:

12,600 (vegastripping.com)

Types of Advertising:

Contextual ads, affiliate advertising

Number tools used on site:

: 8
*Source: Quantcast, July 2008

The majority of bloggers have advertising or another method of revenue generation on their blogs. On average, professional and corporate bloggers are more likely to include search ads, display ads, and affiliate marketing. One in four bloggers uses three or more means of advertising.

Among bloggers who have advertising on their blogs, two in three have contextual ads (such as Google AdSense). One-third of bloggers have affiliate advertising on their blog. One in five negotiate directly with advertisers and one in ten sell advertising through a blog ad network.

Ad clutter, lack of interest, and low traffic numbers are the top reasons why bloggers do not have advertising on their blogs. Among the 48% of bloggers who currently do not have advertising on their site, the most common reason is lack of interest. One in five bloggers don’t feel like they have a critical mass of traffic to their blog. Other reasons that bloggers do not have any advertising on their blogs include:

Other (12%) reasons why bloggers did not have any advertising on their blogs included:
• “I could only endorse something I was really passionate about that might benefit one of my causes.”
• “I haven’t made much from it in the past.”
• “I live in a country which has impossible tax rules.”

Average Annual Revenue is more than $6,000

The average annual blogger revenue is more than $6,000. However, this is skewed by the top 1% of bloggers who earn $200k+. Among active bloggers that we surveyed, the average income was $75,000 for those who had 100,000 or more unique visitors per month (some of whom had more than one million visitors each month). The median annual income for this group is significantly lower — $22,000.

Bloggers with advertising invest an average of $1,800 annually in their blogs. U.S. bloggers earn an average of $5,000, though bloggers in Asia earn 50% more on average and European bloggers earn an average of 75% more than U.S. bloggers. High revenue bloggers skew the mean revenue. The median revenue for U.S. bloggers is $200 annually (and the median annual investment is only $50).

Bloggers are enjoying CPMs on parity with large publishers

Active bloggers receive CPMs for advertising on their site on par with large online media publishers (although the median is considerably lower). Some very targeted blogs are enjoying double-digit CPMs.

High Revenue Bloggers

The top 10 percent of blogger respondents earned an average of $19,000 annually. Three-quarters of these successful bloggers are male, and four in ten are self employed (twice as high as the average blogger). They are also more likely to be professional or corporate bloggers. Overall, the high revenue bloggers are more sophisticated in terms of the tools that they use, their usage of readership events, and advertising platforms. They also invest far more resources (both time and money) in their blogs.

Well that’s it for the State of the Blogosphere September 2008 according to Technorati’s survey!!

How do their findings compate to YOUR experience?