Do you really care what others are doing?
A few weeks ago I created a survey on advertising prices for Travel Bloggers linked mostly to Page Rank. The idea was to collect (anonymously) data related to common rates in the industry and to see not only where the current market stands but also if selling ads was a viable way to earn sustainable income.
Before we get into some of the details of the results I have been notified by my team of monkey lawyers that I should add a few disclaimers.
1) The information here is for entertainment purposes only. The data should be consumed with a nice scotch or a cold beer, dancing is fine, but only if you really throw yourself into it.
2) The data here was gathered from 44 individuals and does not even come close to representing the thousands of travel bloggers out there, let along the hundreds of thousands of bloggers struggling to be noticed by more than their Moms.
3) I will present data as is or in some cases as scales so that I don’t run into any anti trust issues.
4) This survey was open to anyone who wanted to participate.
5) The format of the answers is less than ideal because I’m too cheap to splurge for the pro features of Survey Monkey. Plus I’m heading out on a trip very shortly. I’ll make it prettier in upcoming posts where I will also link the answers to specific PR values. This is just to get the gross information out to you fine, handsome and fun people.
The Advertising Survey Results
I am going to just give the basic results here and leave a more in depth analysis for a later post. If you are the type of person who likes to read ahead, and think for yourself, please feel free to analyze them yourselves 
All numbers are in USD.
1. What is your Website’s Google Page Rank (PR)?
| PR | Response Percent |
Response Count |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 2.3% | 1 | |
| 1 | 4.5% | 2 | |
| 2 | 4.5% | 2 | |
| 3 | 36.4% | 16 | |
| 4 | 36.4% | 16 | |
| 5 | 15.9% | 7 | |
| 6 | 0.0% | 0 | |
| 7 (seriously?) | 0.0% | 0 | |
| 8 (now I know you are lying) | 0.0% | 0 | |
Total answered 44
2. How much does your blog earn on average per month?
Note-only 29 people answered this question as it was added later.
 |
Response Percent |
Response Count |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| $0 | 10.3% | 3 | |
| $1-$50 | 24.1% | 7 | |
| $51-$200 | 17.2% | 5 | |
| $201-$500 | 24.1% | 7 | |
| $501-$1000 | 3.4% | 1 | |
| $1,000 + | 13.8% | 4 | |
| $2,000 + | 6.9% | 2 | |
| $5,0000 + | 0.0% | 0 | |
| $7,5000 + | 0.0% | 0 | |
| $10,000 + | 0.0% | 0 | |
3. How much do you charge for a Sponsored Post – written by advertiser?
There was a wide variety of answers here. We will compile the relationships to PR in a future example rate card. Presented here are the answers themselves only.
One Off Fee
$50 (2), $100 (4), $140 (3), $150 (2), $180, 200, $250 (3), $300 (2), $350 (4), $500 (3), $1000
$100 (link stays live for 1 year)
Monthly Fee (fewer people offered this type)
$14, $25, $30 (2), $40, $100, $125, $200, $500
4. How much do you charge for a Text Link as part of an existing post written by you?
There was a wide variety of answers here. We will compile the relationships to PR in a future example rate card. Presented here are the answers themselves only.
One Off Fee
$15, 25 (2), 50, 100, 125, 150 (3), 155, 160, 200 (2), 300 (3), 350 (2) 400 (2), 500
Monthly Fee (fewer people offered this type)
$15 (2), 20 (4), 25 (4), 30, 50 (2), 60 (2), 75, 90, 100, 200
5. How much do you charge for a Text link with additional surrounding text as part of an existing post written by you?
One Off Fee
$15, 25, 50, 80, 100, 120, 150 (2), 155, 160, 200, 250, 300 (3), 350, 500
Monthly Fee (fewer people offered this type)
$10, 15, 20 (3), 25 (3), 30, 50 (3), 75, 150
6. How much do you charge for a Post reviewing a product or service written by you?
One Off Fee (link live forever)
Don’t charge anything for reviews, $50, 125, 150, 160, 200 (2), 250 (3), 500
Monthly Fee (very few people offered this type)
$20, 50 (2), 500
Initial Fee and then Monthly fee to keep link live
$200 for the first year. The same thereafter (I haven’t had many takers)
$350 then 25/month after 6 months
7. How much do you charge for an Advertising text link on your home page?
One Off Fee (link live forever)
Many people indicated they would not do this. Other gave the following responses:
$150, 200-400, 300-500, 450, 600, 700
Monthly Fee (this option was more popular but with a wide variety of answers)
$25 (3), 30 (2), 35 (3), 40 (2), 45, 50 (5), 60 (4), 70, 75, 100, 150, 200,
8. How much do you charge for an Advertising Text Link on your home page surrounded by additional text?
One Off Fee (link live forever)
$200, 300, 400, 450, 600, 700
Monthly Fee
$30 (2), 35, 40, 50 (6), 60 (2), 75, 100 (2), 150, 200,
9. How much do you charge for an image advertisement on your homepage?
Monthly 125 x 125 button
$25, 30 (3), 35, 40 (2), 50 (3), 60 (2), 65, 75, 80, 85 (3), 100, 125, 150, 200
Monthly 120×600 skyscraper
$50 (2), 60 (2), 80, 120, 150 (2), 160, 175, 600
Monthly 300×250 rectangle
$50 (1), 60 (2), 75 (2), 80 (3), 100 (2), 120, 140, 250, 350 500
Monthly 728×90 leaderboard
$120, 140, 150, 250, 800
First Impressions of the Data
I know I said that I wasn’t going to analyze the data, but I just can’t help myself. I’ll just note a few things here, and then I’ll crunch the numbers according to their respective PR values in a future post.
1) It is clear to me that people are not making that much money from their blogs. If we follow this to its logical conclusion, either there are not enough advertisers who will pay these rates, or there is not enough room on a blog to scale these earnings high enough.
2) There could be a ton of other factors besides PR that go into pricing models like these. This is just one example. We also do not know how many links each person sells per month.
3) I was surprised that people dealt more (on average) with one off fees rather than charging by the month. I’m not sure if this is due to insistence by advertisers, or if it is easier for people to deal with. Either way, I advocate against selling permanent links.
I can’t get away from the thought that this type of advertising is just not sufficient to sustain a consistent income. It may be fine as an income stream, but the risks associated with being sandbox google and loosing traffic or being moved down in the SERPs just does not seem to pay off. If you are just looking for beer money than this might be fine.
The question is whether this type of advertising can help us to consistently meet the 1000-1000 challenge. It has for me, but not consistently, and after 1000/month it is almost to scale it higher without starting other blogs.
What are your impressions on the data?
About Todd Wassel
I am meeting the 1000-1000 challenge. But that is after nearly 2 years of blogging and actively seeking advertisers. But I agree that making a living off selling advertising/text links is not going to happen.
Even if I am living in a country that I only need 1000/month (and there are many) I don’t think selling links is a long-term approach to making a living. I’ll take the money now while I’m building to something more stable.
Hey Ayngelina,
I agree that it is not sustainable in the long term. Although as you say the money is nice for now, but we all need to have a plan for the future. Congrats by the way on meeting the 1000-1000 challenge. I think a review post is in order to see where everyone stands!
Interesting data… though I’d like to see it correlated to PR like you talked about because there are huge differences in these numbers. It’d also be interestingly to add to the mix how long people have had their blog and then maybe open up another section to see how else they earn a living on the road or what percentage of people rely solely on their travel blog for income.
Wow, you are asking a lot Jasmine
I’ll get things correlated to PR but the rest might need to be a different survey. Now, I’m off to the mountains for a week of being unplugged.
Have fun
We are in the $500 – $600/month range after a little less than a year of blogging. We have actually started saying no to advertisers because we don’t want to get too crazy with advertising on our site. I would rather get traffic from Google than sell a few more ads. We have many other ideas on making money online which don’t include advertising. Like Ayngelina said, it’s nice to have in the beginning, but I never intended it to be my main source of income.
Thanks for sharing Christy, it seems that many people (myself included) are using it as a means to an end as we progress in our blogging journey.
Thanks for putting this together Todd – it’s interesting to see that there really is no silver bullet on pricing. We seem to price ourselves in the middle, at times we kick ourselves when we find out we could have charged more, but this strategy has resulted in always having advertisers ready and willing.
Our online revenues have exceeded the $1,000 challenge for a while now, but as you say, it will never take over our primary income. It’s a nice additional income stream, but in order to make a “western lifestyle income” we would need to be running 3-4 sites with similar success.
We never thought we would have this kind of success with the site, and have decided to capitalize on it right now rather than worry about google indexing and long term SEO strategies. We know that we are playing with google fire with our text link advertising, but we also understand that the online game changes every month. That said, we’ve got another project on the go that we will be releasing at the end of the month
Thanks for adding your input her Cam. It is really encouraging to see how many 1000-1000 challengers or meeting the monetary goal. Hopefully we can all start meeting the traffic goal as well. Interesting idea that you are capitalizing on it now, rather than waiting for the gravy train to end. My suspicion is that many travel bloggers are doing this as well. I think it makes sense as long as you are not hoping your site will earn revenue a different way in the future as text links can but those earning in jeopardy.
I’m excited to see what your new project is!
Great chunk of info to compile. It is certainly a challenge setting rates when there is always someone with the same PR as you willing to go lower so its nice to have a ballpark to aim in.
Looking forward to the more detailed post down the road.
More detail is coming on Monday Brock. Thanks for being patient.
I completely agree with your opinion on NOT selling permanent links. I prefer monthly fees and always limit link terms. Even sponsored posts have a 3yr expiration date on them. Sorry I missed the survey, but you can view my rates here –> http://2backpackers.com/advertising-public-relations. I prefer them to be public, so we all can raise the bar. We make between $1k – 2k per month at PR4, 2yrs old. I don’t see us making much more than $2k, therefor I am looking to other online ventures to bring in more income.
From a pure money making perspective, I think Sponsored Posts are benefiting us bloggers. It seems now, we can charge a lot for a link (since it’s a post) versus having to scrounge for some $$ on homepage links.
Hey Jason, thanks for posting your rates AND your income here. Very transparent. Don’t worry you can hit up the next survey. I plan to do a more comprehensive one now that we got the kinks out of this one. I agree that sponsored posts are opening up many more possibilities for us as bloggers. We just need to be careful not to lose the trust of our readers.
Really informative! I’m definitely in the middle of the bell curve here.
The medians are pretty interesting. Average PR of 3.5 (kind of like 2.7 kids). What surprises me the most is the varied rate of income. I suppose that is do to the many goals we all have as bloggers.
For anyone wanting revenue for links send me an email at mikecollins [at] Australia.edu with your rate for 3, 6 and 12 months. Must be a PR3 or above though. I am brokering for a big agency right now so I can probably get you some links.
Thanks for the tip Mike and for helping other travel bloggers here out.
I don’t think advertising is the end all to income online unless you’re Perez Hilton who gets $54,000 to skin his site per day. He’s a sell out, but that’s what he’s all about and he totally gets away with it.
For other bloggers like us, I believe the other benefits we get, via press trips, products, etc… that can also be calculated to some degree. I mean, I’ve gone on trips with my family that I was going to take anyway and saved a bundle due to free places to stay in return for reviews, that should be counted in as well, considering we’re travel bloggers and travelers.
It’s a hard list to compile, for sure! But interesting to see the data nonetheless.
Hi Marian, I agree that we can find value in a number of other ways. Actually I think it is essential to find more income streams than just advertising. As you can see from the results and by crunching the numbers, this is not going to make anyone rich.
Thanks for putting together the information Todd. I’ve always wondered what the range of income was for travel bloggers but have always thought it rude to ask directly!
No worries Kyle. I don’t think it is rude, but I think there is a tendency for people not to want to share. Money does strange things to people
That’s really useful to get a feel for whether you are in the right ballpark with pricing – I use the law of supply and demand – if I have more ads than I feel comfortable with in my sidebar I ease the price up by another 10-20%. I think your data would be more useful if you had traffic numbers. when I do a price comparison I always judge by unique visitors rather than Page rank – I don’t believe there is always a correlation with traffic and page rank.
Hi Heather, that is also a great way to go about it. Once I start getting filled up that last few spots tend to become more expensive
You are right that there is not a correlation with PR and traffic numbers, but is the main value marker for anyone buying and selling text links. And let’s face it, the majority of travel bloggers will earn their money from text link advertising which is more interested in Google juice than visitors. I hope this will change as the bigger companies look to extend their brand through bloggers.
Great wrap-up of data, thanks Todd! Very useful for those of us not sure where to pitch ourselves yet as far as advertising rates go.
What’s amazes me though is how little bloggers are making – only 6 responses for + $1000pm?
If you consider that there are a whole lot of travel bloggers out there who describe themselves as “full-time” bloggers, I can only assume that there are a whole lot of people living on very little cash. How is that possible? Do people have secret, full-time jobs they refuse to disclose to us?
I know several travel bloggers who make a full-time income- but not one that does it from one site – they often have multiple sites and often not all are in the travel niche
There are a number of people who make a full time living with only travel blogging, but “blogging” should be taken in the loosest sense. Also to be fair the people who are making a full time living probably did not participate in this survey.
Others make money a variety of ways on the internet with their travel blog being just an expression of their ability to travel the world (myself included).
But I think you hit on an important issue, there are ALOT of travel bloggers out there and not many are making very much money. The goal of TBC is to figure out if they are just doing things incorrectly OR if there is not enough room for us all. I believe that there is enough room but people have to treat their travel sites like a business. And of course making money takes time, patience and a lot of effort.
The other problem is that there are people SAYING they make a living through blogging but only do it to seem like they are more important than they are. Or they might want to sell a make money travel blogging product and cash in on the “dream of not working but getting paid”. That “dream” does not exist. You ALWAYS have to work hard to become successful. Once you became successful things do get easier. More results to come next week!
This was a highly informative post. I’ve started my blog on July 1st and my site is already a PR4 and my alexa (one month) is hovering just above the 100K mark. I realize I could start monetizing my blog right now but I’m actually going overseas to teach English and will not need to rely on it as a source of money. Thus, my plan for now is to focus on content and networking with an emphasis of monetizing it before the new year.
HI Samuel, I think that is a sound plan. Technically I don’t need the money from my sites either at the moment, BUT I have been able to invest the money back in my sites and it has helped me to make a number of mistakes that I have learned from.
Thanks so much for taking the time to compile all of this data, it’s really interesting to see what others are charging and how much they’re making. Like others, I make a nice side income from my website, but it would never be my only source of income.
Hi Andi, thanks and no worries. We have more data coming soon and i have more time to dedicate now that I’m settle a bit.
Todd – any plans to do this again, or on a regular basis? If I’m not mistaken, this was done before the recent PR adjustment, right?
Thanks for all the comments everyone. I`ll reply back to everyone when I get out of the mountains
In short, I would love to do more of these surveys, on a regular basis and with a higher response rate. I agree that the sample size is small…but than gain this was on a voluntary basis!
Interesting data – but also VERY mis-leading – I think it’s kinda funny to see people charging so much for sponsored posts and text links but then still not making much money from their site – if charging those kind of prices is right then shouldn’t they all should be earning over 2,000 a month?
I think you should value your site highly, but some of those prices are just ridiculous for what they offer, and that also shows in their ‘lack’ of monthly earnings – don’t they realize maybe they are scaring advertisers away?
Hi Nathan, very good point and it was what I was hinting at in my first point in the analysis section. I would have to make a much longer survey to be able to cross check all the variables involved. I included the how much do you make question halfway through the survey as I realized the prices would mean nothing if we didn’t know if people were actually earning money. We also don’t know how dedicated people are to monetizing, or if they are just starting out etc etc. I’m hoping to do a more indepth survey with refined questions and hopefully a bigger sample size after this one. in the mean time we are crunching the data more and should be able to related the rates to those who are earning money.
In general this survey was meant as a gut check to see the price scales and if they are a useful/sustainable income stream. Based on the results so far, they are working, for some people, providing beer money for most, but in general this will probably never be a major money income stream and thus bloggers should think about additional ways to monetize if they are focused on increasing revenue.
I don’t think the data is mis-leading, perhaps just based on the wrong pricing structure.
It seems most bloggers are basing their prices on PageRank. However, that method will not work with advertisers. A site can be a PR5 on the home page and PR0 for the rest of the site. So in that case they are not going to get any ad revenue if their prices reflect a PR5 rate. (unless it is a homepage link)
Advertisers look at the overall metrics of a site. That includes PageRank, Moz Rank, Domain Authority (that is a big one), indexed pages, outgoing links etc.
For example: If your home page is PR5 and you post a link on the home page then that link gets 80% of the link juice. (it does not take away 80% it just gets that much). If you have another link then those two links each get 40%. So forth and so on. If you have a hundred links on a single page then there is very little SEO value to the ad rep. They will not pay for that.
If you have a PR2 site and agree to only put that single link on a PR2 page then you can charge much more than the PR5 site.
If you look at your overall metrics, what you are willing to offer the advertiser and then base your prices you will get much more revenue. Simply having a high PageRank site will not come with a promise of ad revenue. A low PR site can make much more if structured well.
It boils down to anyone can make money with their blog. But like anything else, you just have to know the business to do it. This site can be a great benefit for those wanting to learn the business of blogging. Getting involved in the forum and asking questions as well as sharing your knowledge will bring about a better blogging community for all.
Thanks for point this all out Mike. I wrote a post on here earlier about increasing the value of your blog by finding out what the PR of your other pages are. The key is to make it easy on the advertising agencies by suggesting them and knowing what they are upfront. When someone is interested in a German destination I pitch my highest PR pages first even if they ask for the lowest without knowing.
PageRank is probably one of the most important algorithms ever developed for the Web.
PageRank is not simply based upon the total number of inbound links.
The basic approach of PageRank is that a document is in fact considered the more important the more other documents link to it,
but those inbound links do not count equally.
good points here about Trust now being a major factor in search engine results,
that goes with what Rand and others have been saying too.
this also settles for me the value of a natural approach to gaining backlinks and not getting a huge bunch of them,
or a large # of high pr backlinks in a short period of time – it rather undermines the Trust factor.
I do wonder what you think of bing and how Trust does/will play a role in their results.
it seems to me from a rather preliminary and cursory look at some results and comparing those to over at google and yahoo,
that bing ofter relies more on the keyword/s being the actual url,
which seems to me a rather poor way to rank sites/pages.
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thanks for this information (loose and nonrepresentational as it may be). i’m still figuring out the intricacies of wordpress, but appreciate the effort put forth by you and all the people who participated. it’d be nice to monetize, so it’s good to see what others have got going for them. appreciate it.
Thanks Mack. I agree that it is loose, but it does give some interesting information and allows to at the very least have a discussion around the issues.
I’m glad to see there are many other bloggers meeting the $1000/mo goal of the challenge. I exceed this number as well most months but am trying to bring traffic up. I think getting to $1000 per month is easy because if you are a newer blog you can sell more space at a lower rate and a more established blog less sales at a higher rate and still meet the same middle ground.
I also agree with a lot of other bloggers that once you get to around $2000/mo (which is rare for me) you start reaching a plateau. I do not see any travel blogger getting to the 100,000/day visitor range like other sites do (and make tens of thousands per month in revenue), so making a solid income off of travel writing requires other endeavors.
I personally opened more sites, one of which I am going to sell in a couple years once I get it up to pr4 with several hundred active followers. Four websites at $1,000/mo would be more attractive, and more work. I’m also writing a book to start having something tangible to sell.
Hi Jeremy,
Yes, I have opened other sites as well (which is why you are on TBC
There are some people who are making 6 figure incomes from travel sites, but the key is that they are not “only travel blogs”. They have another hook to them and they are not a generic RTW travel experience. The more I get into this business the more I realize that the “blogging” aspect is more a content marketing strategy. Once you get a reader to engage then you need to figure out how you can add value to their lives. if you can figure out what that value is then you will have a profitable business. I buy things all the time that I need, why should travel blogging be any different.
Great article and awesome replies. As one you will be making the Jump soon and maybe I have missed this topic.
Once your ready to go, name is out there, web site up, page rank ready to go after intial articles, etc…
What is anyones experience as far as targeting your advertisers in the blogging world? The old fashion way, go get them at Sale’s & Marketing, are they seeking out bloggers, or is there a mix between these two methods? I know I made this kinda simple, just looking for additional tips.
Thanks,
Kevin
Thanks, this information is so helpful. Everyone says, “Well, the price depends on the site”; you actually give some hard figures that relate to what others have done. And breaking it down into categories makes it more useful (text link, image ad, etc.) Thank you!
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