Big L (Loren Baker) has a great article profiling a blogger earning 40k per year on his Diabetes blogthrough various monetization methods. In a world where everyone wants to keep all there methods guarded its cool to hear stories like this guys.
You can read the full article here
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2416 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 43 comments… read them below or add one }
So he has 21 RSS readers, receives 7k to 9k page views a day, gets almost no comments on his news and makes $40k/year?
Not buying it.
I’m not buying it either. Alexa rank of 287,859. Only 21 feedreaders. Shoe, I personally don’t believe this guy.
For a minute there I thought you had turned of full feeds. I was like OH NOES. Thank God you didn’t. Interesting article though.
Great article…Loren is Da Man!
Kind of odd, though, with the 21 readers, though.
Maybe he’s trying to make news by saying he makes $40k per year?
Ok, I’ll add a bit of explanation here.
According to the article and my conversations with Ken, the majority of his site’s traffic comes from organic search listings, for diabetes related terms and *products*, like the Nano Insulin Pump. He also does a considerable amount of promoting on StumbleUpon and Netscape health channels, but search is the primary referrer.
He never said he has a large amount of RSS driven traffic, which is something he has to improve upon tremendously. Keep in mind, a site like this is not going to attract RSS & tech savvy readers … as the majority of his audience, in my professional opinion; are above 50 & lower to middle income – not the Digg, Shoemoney, Search Engine Journal types who have been blogging for years or opinion leaders in the site monetization markets (except for maybe the SU referrals, Netscape referrals are probably AOL dependents or old Netscape ISP customers).
Given his current revenue generation via the traffic from search and social media, along with other targeted traffic generation methods, he’s on pace to earn about $40K a year, or $3,300 per month / $107 per day.
Which amounts to an estimated $17 per day from link slot selling, $45 a day from AdSense and $45 a day from AuctionAds. He also does some sponsored reviews.
I do not think that these are unreachable numbers by any means.
One thought is that diabetes is a good Adsense click keyword. If he is getting a lot of Google targeted traffic, it’s possible he is getting a lot from that keyword.
Thats certainly turning a negative into a positive.
I don’t see that there are many secrets revealed here. AuctionAds promo? :p
I’m wondering about the traffic BUT alot of people are getting Type 2 diabetes in America. Its going up everyday (high fructose corn syrup is the killer).
Tha’ts what I thought Scot Smith
ya know business kind. AuctionAds pays him to write a review and promote his blog as well.
dang i need to get on these auction ads
Auction Ads are really only good on product specific sites. They don’t convert well on sites with a more general audience.
This is a prime example of someone turning lemons into lemonade.
Sorry, I had to say it.
Seems like he is just trying to attract readers to his $4k a year blog in hopes of making it to $40k some day lol
Good explanation, its doable but im not convinced.
Wow lots of haters here. thx for the backup Loren. I’m surprised that people find it hard to believe that $100/day is not possible from a website. I got 2 other blogs that make the same but this one has the higher per-click revenue. My other blogs are like
…My other blogs are like less than $0.10 click. I get emails from people often asking where to buy the products I’ve taken myself and blog about. Also people looking for weight loss pills and they’ve clicked on Hoodia ads. Some of those can pay $20 per signup. I don’t need to defend what my sites do.
Loren did the story on this site because my wife and I research and write plenty not about diabetes and we’ve learned lots about a disease I have and we’ve been able to help out others too. NOT how much money we can suck from people and our traffic.
I’ve been blogging for many years and I think this is the first time I talked about what I do and maybe that can help out other people too.
sure that’s it. Although AuctionAds hasn’t paid a whole lot yet it is increasing. Sorry no paid promo here.
I’ll agree TheHostHunter. I got diagnosed a few years ago with Type2 diabetes and my wife cried when the Dr told us. We were told that I need to eat better and exercise more. Loose some weight.
Well I did and the medication that I take 3 times a day had to change too. It balanced out my blood sugars and lowered my A1C below 6 but it also made me gain weight as a side effect. So then I was hooked on a medicine that relieved the symptoms but didn’t help with controlling the disease. So we decided to do our own research and that’s when I started to write the blog to share what we learned.
So yea I guess I did turn lemons into lemonade. No sugar added of course. Also learned how to monetize my blog (with the help of Jeremy and other blogs). Now my wife can stay home with out 5 year old and write for our sites.
Fake it before you make it… it’s been said here before. Fishy fishy fishy
Not really sure that was the point…
Anyone claiming that $40k/year for a highly specific niche blog is not possible is a clueless newbie “webmaster”. You go off Alexa rankings? Cut me a break.
Ok, I’ll add a bit of explanation here. It can’t be done
Nice coverage Ken. For those of you that don’t know this guy he’s solid in my book. I’ve known him and his wife for a while now and can verify that he shared some of this info with me before he decided to publicly disclose it. This wasn’t dreamt up as a publicity stunt. If they did, then they started fluffing me into believing it in private conversations quite a while ago. That’s pretty deep if they did…..chaaaaaa.
ANyways, again, congrats on the coverage man. And say HEY to the woman for meh.
it’s funny when you really put yourself out there like a pinata (sp?). You just dangle and people take swipes at you with their broomsticks. You can’t blame the people with the sticks looking at the numbers. Though I hope you do well with your blogs bro. I’m sure a lot of other people here do too.
good lookin out there Sean. Thx.
I belive it is possible, if there is SE traffic comming to his site than it is easy to sell pills and make even more.
He has a very specific niche and the payout on the niche on adwords is pretty high. So I think he is telling the truth.
It’s entirely possible
– and not every blog encourages commenting like SM, PB, and CW.
A lot of outbound links to AuctionAds the other day! But no, not a promo.
If it was a promo, I would have used my affiliate code
Were you on webmaster radio about a year ago? I remember listening to a person talk about making money and you just need to find the right niche, and I think that guy had a diabetes site. If you’re the same guy, have you expanded to any additional topics and found success?
I think that passion is a key for success and your situation sure does gear itself towards success.
Hmm, PR 3 and gets all those visitors. Also, looked in to auction ads. This is not a payment per click. This is a payment per placing a winning bid or buy now.
No way.
Despite the detractors, i think it is great you found an area of interest and write about it regularly. If you are passionate about what you write about, take the time for proper SEO and use some Web 2.0 traffic tips, you can potentially build this sort of reasonable revenue.
Using Adsense, Kontera, AuctionAds and Amazon, I have blogs which routinely do 40-50 bucks a week. With 10 producers and an hour a week, I potentially can pull in an extra 20K a year. Not “living” money, but definately get out of debt change.
This is one of those articles everyone needs to read.
Really, making great money is about thinking outside of the box, if even just a litte bit.
This case study is about (solving) a problem: diabetes. You need to think oudside the box and yet be able to find a huge audience. This guy has done a great job.
Taking in account that this niche has a high PPC payout it’s indeed possible to earn $40 000 a year.
Wow, I’m actually surprised about all of the negative feedback for this guy! I would just like to say congrats Ken, and keep up the good work!
Who ever said that RSS subscribers is the only way to get money from a site? It looks to me like Ken is getting some good diversified traffic and that’s what’s maintaining him. Again, good work Ken!
Is Sucanon a good deal? Does it work? Selling thru internet now…
Using the google adwords keyword tool, there are several “diabetes” related terms that have average payouts in excess of $10 per click. It doesn’t take many of those to do $100 per day. Sure “hosting” has some better paying keywords, but there is a ton more intelligent competition. How much SEO savvy competition can there be in the field of diabetes?
For niche sites using adsense and affiliate programs, making $1/month/daily visitor is normal–e.g. 1000 daily visitors = $1,000/month. He claims 7-9k dailies, so at $3,300/mth, he’s actually undermonetising (should be at 7-9k per month).
Is it true? if he really make 40k a year.. congrats!
I think it is absolutely possible. 40k per years makes it approximately $3,334 per month, when divided by 12. IMO, any good site can earn $3k easily from Adsense, Affiliates and other income sources. Some sites do better than that, earning upto $10,000 every month!
You can’t trust Alexa only. Alexa is skewed due to it only recording based on folks with the Alexa toolbar. It is possible I think to pull 40K from one site if you baby it, or get lucky with a good topic.
To be honest I don’t really believe that they are making so much money – it looks like it has been monetized well, but don’t believe 40k a year from that blog alone.