How Top Bloggers Earn Money

Business Week has posted an article (really more of a slide show) profiling 13 big blog money makers. However, it looked like they never told the featured bloggers about it. Shoemoney found out he was on the list from a flood of congratulation emails. Problogger found out he was on the list by reading Shoemoney. I found out I wasn’t on the list when Zac Johnson made a post asking why I wasn’t on the list?

There were a few bloggers on the list I’ve never even heard of… but where is the almighty and highly controversial John Chow? With so much secrecy on how much bloggers make, sometimes it’s a complete guessing game… why not feature John Chow, who gives a full revenue statement each month on much his blogging is generating. It could just be the writers of Business Week never heard of him, or his blog. It’s all too common that the people working in the industry (like myself) know a lot more than the people writing these articles… which is why bloggers are making a ton more than writers for these main stream magazines.

The list contain some well known (like TechCrunch at $200,000 per month) and some not as well known blogs (like Kottke.org at $5,300 a month). Revenue figures range from $5,300 to $166,000 a month (based on stated ad rates and before ad network cut). The article references the Technorati Top 100 a few times so the answer to Zac’s question maybe due to the fact that Technorati doesn’t have me in their official Top 100 list. However, I doubt that was the real reason for not including me. I think the reason was I’m too evil for Business Week to handle. 😈