Blogads

I've been reading Jeff Jarvis' article about Blogads today. I have to say that the concept of Blogads appeals to me. The idea of my blog becoming self-sufficient, or even profitable (excuse me while I stifle a laugh) is a great daydream.

I figure that Sortapundit costs me about $180 a month. Wait, wait, wait, let me explain. My job is heavily commission-based, and the time I spend blogging and surfing the net cuts into my worktime heavily (OK, stops me from working totally). Now it could be argued that I'm not really losing the money as If I didn't use the Internet at work I'd have to spend the time gained working really hard, and that ain't gonna happen, but you see my point.

Anyway, one of my favourite diversions at work is to find sites that run Blogads and work out how much the owners can expect to make in a year. For instance, Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit is running 5 Blogads today at a price of $1000/month. At that rate he'll earn $60,000 this year from the ads ($97,500 if he were to run 5 ads each renting space for a week at a time, as weekly costs more).

On the other end of the scale, there are sites that cost as little as $15/month. Running 5 ads for a year would bring in $900 (not to be sniffed at considering that blogs aren't usually run for financial gain). $900 should easily pay for any server costs, and leave enough to buy a few decent meals.

On the whole I think Blogads are a great idea. They usually look pretty good (better than a nasty block of Google text ads, anyway). I only hope that in time my readership will grow to the point at which I can make a little money off this. If this quote is an accurate appraisal of Blogads, then I'll put a little more effort into grabbing more readers:

"I don't think the bloggers realized how much these ads are worth," he says. "Next year it will be much more expensive."