28 ms·

Detailed revenue breakdown of a gadget blog ($61k in dec 2007)

33 points by elsewhen 18y ago

elsewhen 18y ago
its not too clear in the article, but the figures are for the coolest-gadgets.com blog.
- ComputerGuru 18y ago
  I upvoted you, tried the link, and found out it doesn't resolve?
  - arn 18y ago
    try http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/ http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/ works for me.
    - elsewhen 18y ago
      its not working for me either right now... you'd figure that someone making that kind of money would arrange for reliable web hosting.
      - icey 18y ago
        http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/coolest-gadgets.com http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/coolest-gadgets.com
jraines 18y ago
What's more likely: that you could have a startup generating revenue of $60K a month in 3 years or spend that time building traffic to some website for adsense and affiliate sales for the same? Every time I put down my coding manuals to read some guide to Making Money Online™ I feel a little dirty, but damn it seems tempting and more achievable than building and selling a tech startup.
- icey 18y ago
  I can't get into too many details, but in the past 5 years, I did some consulting for a small company that did nothing but affiliate sales. I don't know what their total revenue was, but I know that they were paying for 3 full-time consultants billing on the high-end, 1 graphic designer, a full-time accountant, a business manager, 3 SEO people (full time as well) and the owner. So, there is definitely some money to be made there, I just don't know the actual ratios of blood, sweat and tears vs. sheer luck.
- elsewhen 18y ago
  remember, this was for december 2007 which is probably the best revenue month for a gadget blog. i wouldnt be surprised if the average month was around half that.
  - apathy 18y ago
    That's still a lot of operating capital for whatever other ventures you wish to pursue. Figure $300K for the year... not bad, not bad at all.
- cedsav 18y ago
  What would really bother me with that business model is that you are highly dependent on your Google rank. You can lose all your revenues instantly if you are removed from the index or outranked by a competitor.
  - arn 18y ago
    I disagree with this. A site like this isn't getting the bulk of their search traffic to their homepage. They have thousands of minor pages indexed for search terms that only a handful of people search for. Multiply this by 10,000 and you get their search traffic (long tail, blah blah blah) There's no "one page" that if there's a large rank drop will affect. Note, this is very different than, for example, an e-commerce site that sells "widgets", and is ranking very well for the word "widgets". For them, a ranking drop could be devastating. Now, that being said, they are dependent on Google for the bulk of their income... but there are worse things than tying your fortunes to Google's financial well being.
wallflower 18y ago
Gem of an insight from the author in the comments: "I totally agree and I expect very few clicks from regular readers. I expect what happens is that less techy people are searching for gifts at this time of year, they find the site and then there is a fair chance of the click. I also find Adsense on CG is especially well targeted (as it should be really)." Lesson: Maybe technology-oriented sites can make money (but off of non-technology oriented people)
- chriskelley 18y ago
  Matt Mullenweg once said they only serve ads on wordpress.com if the referrer comes from a search engine or similar. They didn't want to "punish" regular blog readers by throwing ads in their face. Nice concept, though I can't vouch for whether or not they actually do this...
god 18y ago
Whats the url of the "gadget blog"?
- elsewhen 18y ago
  http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/ http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/
babul 18y ago
It would be very interesting to to see the yearly profile and time and effort invested to determine the effort/reward ratio for blogs like this. People are unlikely to provide such information on public sites (if at all), but it still would be nice to see. I ask this as I dare say you could scrape certain ecommerce sites to automatically feed a blog based on a theme e.g. gadgets, and for little/no effort thereafter get a supplementary income source if you so wished ...thinking about it, there are probably many already doing this?
- arn 18y ago
  This is why splogs exist to do exactly that. However, there's a big difference in building an actual site and a splog site, and this is reflected in traffic and search engine ranking. Getting that traffic is the trick.
- greyman 18y ago
  You can scrape, but the difference is that you will not get many natural links from other sites, so google will not rank you high, nor will you have many returning visitors.

33 points by elsewhen 18y ago

elsewhen 18y ago

its not too clear in the article, but the figures are for the coolest-gadgets.com blog.

ComputerGuru 18y ago
I upvoted you, tried the link, and found out it doesn't resolve?
- arn 18y ago
  try http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/ http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/ works for me.
  - elsewhen 18y ago
    its not working for me either right now... you'd figure that someone making that kind of money would arrange for reliable web hosting.
    - icey 18y ago
      http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/coolest-gadgets.com http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/coolest-gadgets.com

jraines 18y ago

What's more likely: that you could have a startup generating revenue of $60K a month in 3 years or spend that time building traffic to some website for adsense and affiliate sales for the same? Every time I put down my coding manuals to read some guide to Making Money Online™ I feel a little dirty, but damn it seems tempting and more achievable than building and selling a tech startup.

icey 18y ago
I can't get into too many details, but in the past 5 years, I did some consulting for a small company that did nothing but affiliate sales. I don't know what their total revenue was, but I know that they were paying for 3 full-time consultants billing on the high-end, 1 graphic designer, a full-time accountant, a business manager, 3 SEO people (full time as well) and the owner. So, there is definitely some money to be made there, I just don't know the actual ratios of blood, sweat and tears vs. sheer luck.
elsewhen 18y ago
remember, this was for december 2007 which is probably the best revenue month for a gadget blog. i wouldnt be surprised if the average month was around half that.
- apathy 18y ago
  That's still a lot of operating capital for whatever other ventures you wish to pursue. Figure $300K for the year... not bad, not bad at all.
cedsav 18y ago
What would really bother me with that business model is that you are highly dependent on your Google rank. You can lose all your revenues instantly if you are removed from the index or outranked by a competitor.
- arn 18y ago
  I disagree with this. A site like this isn't getting the bulk of their search traffic to their homepage. They have thousands of minor pages indexed for search terms that only a handful of people search for. Multiply this by 10,000 and you get their search traffic (long tail, blah blah blah) There's no "one page" that if there's a large rank drop will affect. Note, this is very different than, for example, an e-commerce site that sells "widgets", and is ranking very well for the word "widgets". For them, a ranking drop could be devastating. Now, that being said, they are dependent on Google for the bulk of their income... but there are worse things than tying your fortunes to Google's financial well being.

wallflower 18y ago

Gem of an insight from the author in the comments: "I totally agree and I expect very few clicks from regular readers. I expect what happens is that less techy people are searching for gifts at this time of year, they find the site and then there is a fair chance of the click. I also find Adsense on CG is especially well targeted (as it should be really)." Lesson: Maybe technology-oriented sites can make money (but off of non-technology oriented people)

chriskelley 18y ago
Matt Mullenweg once said they only serve ads on wordpress.com if the referrer comes from a search engine or similar. They didn't want to "punish" regular blog readers by throwing ads in their face. Nice concept, though I can't vouch for whether or not they actually do this...

god 18y ago

Whats the url of the "gadget blog"?

elsewhen 18y ago
http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/ http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/

babul 18y ago

It would be very interesting to to see the yearly profile and time and effort invested to determine the effort/reward ratio for blogs like this. People are unlikely to provide such information on public sites (if at all), but it still would be nice to see. I ask this as I dare say you could scrape certain ecommerce sites to automatically feed a blog based on a theme e.g. gadgets, and for little/no effort thereafter get a supplementary income source if you so wished ...thinking about it, there are probably many already doing this?

arn 18y ago
This is why splogs exist to do exactly that. However, there's a big difference in building an actual site and a splog site, and this is reflected in traffic and search engine ranking. Getting that traffic is the trick.
greyman 18y ago
You can scrape, but the difference is that you will not get many natural links from other sites, so google will not rank you high, nor will you have many returning visitors.