Andrew D. Rosen asked an interesting question today over at the Blog Herald: how much do you earn per post?
Many people nowadays wonder how to make money from blogs, some still think we can get rich doing nothing, sitting at home naked.
The truth couldn’t be more different.
In my position at Splashpress Media I can tell you that there are huge differences in pay across the board and different networks have different payment structures. Often the fee is based on several different factors:
- Location of the blogger: someone who lives in the UK obviously has higher living costs than a Vietnamese citizen. Both have the same number of hours in a day to craft entries;
- Experience and ‘Rockstar level’ of the blogger: experienced bloggers and so-called A-listers tend to ask more for an entry because usually they have a following, a group of loyal readers who will also subscribe to their entries. Blog rockstars tend to get more trackbacks and comments than beginning, aspiring bloggers;
- Controversy and linkbait experience: Nowadays an often forgotten quality of bloggers is their ‘controversy’ strategy and capability to link bait. Blogging became popular because it was a personal and opinionated style of writing. Bloggers were online columnists. A controversial blogger will get many comments and generate traffic;
- Number of entries: Some bloggers only look for some gigs monthly. Often they are specialized in writing ‘feature entries’. These take a lot longer than your average blog post;
- Social media popularity: Many professional bloggers have a high popularity on the social bookmarking sites. An entry submitted by them will easily get more votes and hence generate lots of traffic;
- Credit crunch
Different networks apply different structures
At Splashpress Media we apply a flat fee per post based on many of the above mentioned factors.
Duncan Riley’s Inquisitr recently started looking in to a traffic-based payment system. Nick Denton’s Gawker network pays out a traffic based fee, with a small monthly fix. Michael Arrington’s Techcrunch‘s network pays the bloggers a flat monthly fee.
Due to the differences it is very hard to put a number on the earnings of a blogger. Lately many beginning bloggers are paid only USD 2.50 – USD 3.00 per entry. There are several reasons for this: credit crunch being one, the international open application market being the second reason. In a market with many Asian candidates ‘Western’ people always face more and more competition and often have to lower their rates to the actual average. Reading and reporting about blogger jobs on a regular level, I can confirm that being paid USD 0.05/word has become a great and only very seldom reached level. The reality is much closer to USD 0.01/word on your average blog.
Valuable advice for applicants
We receive daily applications from both beginning and professional bloggers. Some are downright hilarious and read like this:
I am a very good writer I have good knowledge .You can write
very good blogs and want to work with you.
Hilarious as this submission may be, generally perfect English is not the most important criterium to get a gig. Obviously an (open) application like this one will immediately be filed in drawer 13, not only because of the English(1) was below par but because there isn’t enough of information for us to decide. What do you need to mention in your application email?
- Full name and contact details: Under certain condition we will allow people to post under a pseudo, but usually we require complete details;
- Link to your OWN blog: Even in these times I can think of many bloggers/applicants who do not have an own blog. This is important as it allows us to discover everything you didn’t want us to know about you(2);
- Samples of your work: Link some of previous work in the email. Do NOT submit any attachments as we love to see the work published online and check out reactions on your work;
- Financial expectations: To avoid any further confusion, disappointment submit immediately what your financial expectations are. This is especially important when you filed an open application. If you reply to a public ad without financial specifications, also mention your expectations. This saves everyone time and because we just checked out your previous work, you might be more lucky than you expect;
- Other specialities: Mention what your other specialities are, especially if you are strong in web development, server administration or even SEM or Adsense optimization
- LINK to your CV: Feel free to submit your CV but LINK to your CV and do NOT add it as an attachment. Many companies have a no-attachment email policy and to be honest, I do not need your Resume as a local file. Your resume belongs on your personal site or on your Linkedin profile;
- Convince us, go out of your way to land a writing gig: Let’s be honest, we are dealing with a credit crunch and the online commercial situation needs pink glasses to be called colourful. If you like a site and want to convince the editors of your skills, feel free to offer 2 or 3 free entries. By now we will already have formed an opinion about whether to hire you or not. In case of doubt these entries can help you, if we would have hired you even without those, they will only serve you ass a bonus because we will think that you are motivated and absolutely want to post on site X.
Disclosure: These are general guidelines and might or might not always be applied by every site editor/owner. The main rule, especially when applying to an open position is to RTFM.
Other than above mentioned numbers, I will not be drawn in to list any number we pay to our bloggers as every situation is handled individually and differently.
- My English is far from perfect(↩)
- Such as your link to your Facebook profile. Kidding but the first site we will usually look at is your own blog(↩)
Most people who are paid to blog are paid per post.
I have deleted the link to your name, no one named ‘Blogging to make money’ by their parents should promote that name (certainly not if you’re a ghost commenter linking to John Chow). :)
very interesting n creative…..liked it!!
i admire John Chow because of his innovative ways to gain traffic both from whitehat and greyhat methods..`~
He might make good earnings from his sites but the problem is that one should not admire it. People like John are very much the epitome of what needs to be done and to be honest, I could not care less if they get blacklisted everywhere for their blackhat/greyhat behaviour.