Blogging revenue: are you seeing recovery?

Many online publishers have seen a downturn in revenue over the past couple of quarters, with some niches more badly hit than others.

Advertisers are either scarcer, or they’re not paying as much for advertising space.

Yet I’m noticing that some “set and forget” advertising models (such as Google AdSense and Chitika’s Premium ads) are showing some positive growth.

Growth isn’t explosive, but it does appear to be happening. Though the current economic climate is still challenging, the new financial year may well be encouraging advertisers to spend budget and seek sponsorship deals.

Do you generate revenue from your blog, and if so have you noticed any signs of recovery? I’d be interested to hear your experiences.

11 thoughts on “Blogging revenue: are you seeing recovery?

  1. I’m seeing a downturn on one of my Blogs but many of the others are bringing in the same revenue. It definitely depends on the topic you were writing about.

  2. To be honest I’ve seen a drop in the past few months, the volume of clicks has increased but the revenue is actually down.

  3. It is quite natural that in economic downturns advertisers would curtail their ad budget (though theoretically they should act anti-cyclical, they can’t afford to) and therefore bloggers would feel a drop in DIRECT advertisement placement. But
    – since the Internet as such is still growing, even in a depression,
    – since within the growing segment the business part of it is growing still and
    – since the OVERALL ad spending is still growing
    services such as adsense which pool advertisement interest and target it precisely via adwords will still drive up revenue in individual blogs, esp. since the older the blog the more pages it has which necessarily translates into more places where adsense ads linger. (Dabbling a bit in marketing metrics I suggest one needs to divide ad revenue by pages and further correct for a few other factors, such as a “novelty parameter” in order to distinguish between ad revenue growth caused by one’s own growth, like growing archives, and caused by genuine increased interest or varying Cost-Per-Click rates. That is all a science in its own right.)
    There is at least one more reason for tentative growth: if a company has to freeze or cut its marketing budget it will try to optimise it at the same time. Since Pay-Per-Click or any Internet marketing is cheaper per viewer than print ads or billboards and computer literacy is still growing it will mean that companies will have even more incentive during an economic contraction to shift what little they may have left into Internet marketing.

  4. I’m seeing a downturn on one of my Blogs but many of the others are bringing in the same revenue. It definitely depends on the topic you were writing about.

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