There's (NOT) Gold In Them Hills - The Challenge of Blogging for Dollars

Guy Kawasaki provides us with some insight into his first year blogging:

1. 2,436,117 page views for an average of approximately 6,200/day.
2. 262 posts generated 6,961 comments and 1,937 trackbacks. That’s 25 comments/post and 7 trackbacks/post.
3. 21,000 people receive RSS feeds via Feedburner and 1,457 receive emails via FeedBlitz.
4. Total advertising revenue: approximately $3,350 = $1.39 cpm. (This assumes that I can get Google to pay me. I’ve tried several times during the year to get my snail mail PIN so that I can get paid, butI’ve never received it. I don’t mind Google getting the float...)

How to Change the World: A Review of My First Year of Blogging

Over the past year, when asked why the SocialRoots Marketplace was needed, I've often used Guy Kawasaki as a prime example of just what's wrong with our advertising-only centric view of social media monetization. Consider Guy's example: a regularly udated, top 50 blog with significant traffic by a well know speaker and author squeezes out a slim $280 a month. Sounds lovely, no? Sign me up.

Some will be quick to point out that many people are able to monetize their online publications with less traffic and notoriety. I might counter that I am not interested in writing about home theatre, HDTV, mortgages, or other gadgets, but that would just be me making a point.

Chris Anderson points out on his Long Tail Blog:

Just another reminder that the reason to be a Long Tail producer is not direct revenues. Instead, it's exactly what Guy uses it for: marketing for his books, VC firm, speeches and consulting. For which he's exceedingly well paid. Indirect revenues rule!

The Long Tail: Don't quit your day job

Lead generation and referals are definitely another viable option for extracting value from your personal publication. Of course, we're not all consultants either, but it's a step in the right direction.

If all goes well, we’ll share another interesting model with the world in the next couple of months.

technorati tags:long+tail, chris+anderson, guy+kawasaki, blogging, monetization