Blogger Earnings Reports: Fact or Fiction
There are a lot of bloggers out there in the “Make Money Online” market and a few seemed to have started a habit that is catching on, Earnings Reports. These reports are most written every month in which the blogger discloses his or her basic earnings, but this brings me to the point are these earning figures fact or fiction?
For a long time now blogger have been keeping their traffic reports and earnings quite, until a selective few bloggers started this habit of disclosures and now more and more are joining the fad. If you are in the niche of “Making Money Online” it has been well known that it is a strong selling point to do what you preach, so in order to be an expert you have to be making money from your blog. Thus, it seems to be that most bloggers who disclose their earnings are inflating the amounts just to gain recognition.
Some examples of earnings disclosures are:
- Jim Karter – $45,000+ November earnings
- John Chow – $27,240 November earnings
- Everton – $9,705 November earnings
- ShoeMoney – $30,000+
- Yaro Starak – $10,000+
- Randy Brown – $7,000+
- Lilian – $5,000+
What is really missing from all of these reports is that the bloggers dont disclose if all the money was earned from their one site or from a group of sites that they own and operate. Personally, I think the group of bloggers listed above are only trying to push their own causes in disclosing earning and they should all be taken with a pinch of salt!
18 Comments
Hi Steven
I can’t speak for the other bloggers listed, but I most certainly do not inflate my earnings. If I did, why would I report a drop of $5k in November from over $15k in October??
As to where I make my money, a simple question on my site would have got you your answer. In fact, the question has as expected been asked before and yes, I do have a second site, but it is very small and accounts for less than 10% of my earnings.
Regards
Everton
I forgot about the connected forum and directory, which I actually consider part of the site and don’t make much cash anyway. The 10% includes the earnings from these ’sites’
http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/2007/10/01/myblogearnings-for-september-2007/all-comments/#comment-75442
Yes, I agree with that. I know many liars out there who bluffed their way through to earn referral fees from noobs who believe their story without questioning. However, where I come from, our income is not taxable *yet* as it is considered offshore earnings. So, I won’t dare to be too explicit with what I produced online or risk the IRD knocking on my door. BTW, the exchange rate I get is USD1 = my currency MYR3.3 so it is a lot of money.
And in case you wonder, no I didn’t bullshit. But the income comes from several blogs and methods like text link, adsense and paid posts.
Thanks for the mention!
Yes Steve, actually I’ve been planning to do a satirical piece on this issue for some time now. I thought I’m the only one having this nagging doubt as well. Because some of them don’t actually show you their detailed earnings. And they never reveal their many other “unmentionable” blogs. I’m sure many newbies are amazed as to how a single blog with that limited number of ads can make so much moolah. Plus they said they do paid reviews, but you don’t find them on that particular blog. If I’m not mistaken some of them do use free blog platform like Blogger for their many other “hidden” blogs.
Lilian: Thanks the comments. There are so many people out there inflating there own earnings, but really for what reward. Also thank you for clearing up that you have several sites that bring in your earnings.
Well in my case, i DO disclose that 99.9% of my earnings are from one website. i also disclose that no earnings come from my blog as it is free of any advertising.
it’s true though about taking earnings reports with a grain of salt, and only a few days before i posted my November earnings in my blog i made a post warning about how easy it is to fake online earnings.
It comes down to trust.. in my case, most readers have seen my pictures of me and my earnings at Shoemoney, and they also know that i am a published Adsense Success Story.. so you know you can trust ME ..
…great linkbait btw..
–Randy Brown
That’s a good point. When I did my September report (the one that was over $10K), I had received a few six month payments from sponsors. I could have put the total in for that month and brought my income over $12K, but instead I broke it down across the six months the sponsor had paid for.
Also, if you read back one of my earlier reports I note that the adsense and small amount of the sponsor money comes from minibike forums that I purchased with the money made from my blogging. I have a video in that report that goes through and shows how much each part of my blog makes (it’s in the Blog Profits Blueprint too).
What I think is at risk here is blind hero worship and valuing successful blogs on money alone. This is a formula for a dissatisfied blogosphere – you should never idolize people because of money, but that’s what our society values.
Yaro: great point about idolizing people because of money. I think you hit the nail on the head. I have long been reading your blogmastermind and seeing it advertised on a large number of sites, either for affiliate or through you actually advertising on there. Im glad you at least broke down your earning from the six month payments, but still why dont you disclosure your exact blogs in your portfolio??
@Steve;
My blog is http://success.grownupgeek.com (no advertising, $0 earnings)
My website is http://grownupgeek.com ($~7k/month)
My Adsense Success Story posted by Google:
https://www.google.com/adsense/static/en_US/Grownupgeek.html
Google also blogged about my site in the Adsense blog, and also use my site as an example in the Adsense support pages.. I would post those URL’s as well, but i dont want it to look like i’m bragging
Steven – if you read through some of the articles from earlier this year you will see all the sites I make money listed.
I openly state that I have two blogs – Entrepreneurs-Journey.com (I write) and SmallBusinessBranding.com (other small business experts write), plus I have a collection of mini bike related forum sites that I purchased with money from blogging.
I wrote an article about making $1600+ per month passive income from the bike sites I bought and break down exactly how I bought them, how much I paid and how I increased the earnings.
These sites are the only site I make money from outside of Blog Mastermind of course. Also, those advertisements you see everywhere are affiliates, I don’t spend a cent on marketing at the moment.
Good observation, Steven. There’s always a nagging doubt when blogs state their earnings. But when you analyse the site, you’ll be scratching your head wondering where that “large amount of moolah” is coming from. These bloggers will say they have “other sites” that are making the dough but not “this one” which is a “personal site.” It’s not that difficult to notice something is not right unless one is a real noob. If they want to be really transparent, let us know the “other sites” so we can visit them and poke our nose around! Because of these so-called “online earnings reports” that may not turn out to be true, many newbies will be given false hopes and, at worse, be retarded in their blogging progress in a negative way from the word go. It’s sad to see bloggers, most likely newbies, leaving comments at some of these blogs such as congratulating the owners, praising the wizardry of money-making by the owners, wanting to learn more from them, etc. Man, it really sucks!
Hi Stephen
Please do not call me a liar, particularly when I’ve taken the time to respond to your post. Given that a trackback hasn’t appeared please read this post
Everton: Thanks also for taking the time to reply. Nothing was meant to be a personal attack, im just trying to get a dialog happening and make everything a lot more transparent. What i wrote previously was based around my very limited knowledge of your site and as you know ad earnings is loosely based around your sites traffic. In which i had very limited idea on what that traffic was and now that you have cleared up the issue!
Overall, I really just wanted to get a dialog happening on this topic and im very happy the bloggers are coming on and defending their earnings as well as other bloggers going in the other direction.