Written on December 28th, 2004 at 04:12 pm by Darren Rowse
Problogger earns in excess of $5000 a month
Fortune has a fantastic article on Google that features problogger Jon Gales from Mobile Tracker (a blog about cell phones) which is a fantastic example of a blog which is being used very effectively to earn its owner/editor a decent income. Jon has recently redesigned his blog, taking it to the next level in terms of professionalism. As the article says - the major income stream for Mobile Tracker is Adsense but runs some private banner/affiliate ads also. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
‘Jon Gales loves Google, but not for the reason you might think. It’s a terrific search engine, sure, but what Gales really likes is that Google is making him money. Gales’s website, Mobiletracker.net, is a compendium of news and reviews about cellphones that after a year and a half attracts about 200,000 users a month. Google supplies the ads for the site, visitors click on the ads, and because of the site’s popularity, Google sends Gales monthly checks of $5,000 or more. That’s a decent chunk of change for any sole proprietor. But for Gales, the numbers are eye-popping. He’s only 19 and lives expense-free at home with his parents in Tampa, posting four or five items in the course of the day while parked on the living room couch with his laptop. Says Gales: “If things keep going the way they are going, I’ll be making more money than my dad next year.”’
8 Responses to “Problogger earns in excess of $5000 a month”
Michael Moncur
December 29th, 2004 5:55 am
Wow! There are probably lots of bloggers like him out there, quietly making money while the rest of us debate whether it’s possible to make money with weblogs…
Darren
December 29th, 2004 8:03 am
yes michael,
the problem is that with Adsense you’re not supposed to tell how much you earn (Google seems to have made an exception for Jon in this article) and so its hard to prove how it is easily possible to earn an income from blogging.
I’ve been trying to say this for a while now - but Jon is just one of a number of bloggers that I know about who earn this type of money - in fact he’s on the lower end of what is possible.
Jon Gales
December 29th, 2004 8:53 am
A few things to note…
Fortune took a number from Business 2.0 (sister publication) that was approved by Google. I even had a chat with an AdSense employee about it on the phone, they are all OK about it.
The number is from a long time ago–August or so, and was then an average.
AdSense is also not the only source of income, right now there is a CPM ad on the site and Amazon does pretty well. Altogether it’s a six figure income.
Darren
December 29th, 2004 8:57 am
nice Jon,
I was actually thinking that the figure in the article was probably a bit conservative for the amount of traffic and keywords that you have.
Well done and keep it up!
Alexey Mahotkin
February 27th, 2005 4:55 am
Darren,
the link to mediatracker is broken (wwww instead of www).
Thanks for your content!
colbert
April 5th, 2005 10:57 pm
i want to grow up just like him
Aishmin
March 31st, 2006 3:49 am
I’m wondering, is there any copyright issues in doing the conpendium of news? since they come from various sources, and you merely put the details in your own words and publish them on your site. Do you need to inform your source owners? (similar to your review blogs) Thanks Darren..
Darren Rowse
March 31st, 2006 8:37 am
Aishmin - I think it’s fine as long as:
1. You link to and acknowledge your source
2. You only use a short segment of the other article as a quote
3. You provide useful content and not just rubbish just because it has the keywords
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