This post was written by Deb
What Do the Top Bloggers Earn? It’s a Lot More Than $5 per Post!
Read/Write Web posted some interesting statistics about some top tier bloggers and their earnings. The results were surprising to many. No, they’re not earning $5 a post or $100 a month plus traffic bonuses, many bloggers are bringing in pay ranging from $25 a post to $75, 000 a year plus bennies.
Surprising? It shouldn’t be. Even though most network bloggers start out low, the job boards tell us there is life beyond the networks. Blog posts paying upwards of $20 a post are becoming more common place and many of us have stopped freelancing to earn a much higher salary doing what we love.
While the Read/Write web article states gigs like these are difficult to find, I’m not so sure I agree. We look at several different job boards a day and there are always a couple of choice, high paying gigs on at least one of the boards on a given day. Moreover, by browsing certain sites one can also find full time opportunities for bloggers, Community Managers, Social Networkers and more. Like all good things, you have to to be patient to find these jobs but they’re there, I promise. Granted, the competition for these is no doubt fierce, but that’s just more incentive to be the best blogger possible.
I wonder, if earnings like this DO become commonplace, will bloggers leave networks for greener pastures or will networks begin raising their rates? It’ll be interesting to watch for sure.
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9 Responses to “What Do the Top Bloggers Earn? It’s a Lot More Than $5 per Post!”
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Great post Deb!
Though some of those advertised gigs never respond to you…
[...] read a very interesting post at Read/Write Web the other day. I wrote my thoughts about it at Network Blogging Tips and I won’t rehash here, but I did want to bring it to everyone’s [...]
I’m surprised that this information would be surprising to people. I haven’t written blog posts at less than $25 each (and very often more) in ages. (Except one gig, and the person is a personal friend.)
Is it really that surprising that blogging pays more than $5?
@Peggy - It’s frustrating not to hear back. I wish employers would set up an automated email thingy so we would at least know they received our applications.
@James - I live by the work smarter not harder philosophy. More work for less money? Wait a minute, who is really benefiting here?
Up until last year I didn’t apply for many blogging gigs because of the low per post rate. But after finding two higher paying blogging gigs in 2008, I’ve had a change of heart. Higher paying gigs are far in between, but they do exist. My higher paying blogging gigs were for companies and organizations, not blogging networks. Maybe that’s the difference.
I didn`t think it was possible to get that much for a blog post, but recently, I applied to a job (through FWJ) and ended up getting it. The pay? $40 per post! I`m so used to ghostwriting and having nothing to do with my writing afterwards that I was amazed when the guy put my byline on it and asked for my opinion on how he`d placed the photos that I`d provided. So, not only do higher paying jobs exist, there are also some really decent bosses.
I think people will leave networks for higher paying blog gigs. My highest paying gigs - if you work it out per post or hour have been with corporate, or stand alone blogs, not networks. With networks disbanding, and lowering pay, I’m sure folks will be walking away, although there are always writers who think they’re worth only 2-5 an hour or post, so it’s not as if the networks will have issues filling positions. That’s too bad.
I’ve found this to be a very tough year. In 2006-7, when I was earning very little per post but had lots and lots of work offered to me (over $7000/m, sometimes more), I couldn’t do it all. This year, when I started getting paid much more per post and having to drop the lower-paying work, it felt good. Well, at least until I started losing contracts because of the economy. So that’s the downside of getting paid more: it hurts when you “fall”.
Regardless, i’m getting married in the near future and going back to technical writing/ coding work. If there’s time in the week, I’ll continue to blog, with more emphasis on my own projects.
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