February 23, 2009

Profits small for bloggers in Taiwan

There was an article about making money from blogging in the Liberty Times today. Here are some of the key points:
  • There are over 10 million people with broadband in Taiwan.
  • Advertisers pay bloggers NT$10,000-20,0000 to sample and talk about products.
  • Advertisers have worked with bloggers whose web pages draw from 500-50,000 visits per day.
  • Pay ranges from NT$2,000-$20,000 based on popularity of blog. More involved assignments can pay more.
  • A blog that draws 30,000-40,000 visitors per day earns about NT$20,000 per assignment.
Lazymeg.com is a Taiwanese blog with about 8,000-9,000 visitors per day. Through Adsense, product reviews, and other advertisements. The author earns NT$10,000-15,000 per month. At 8,500 visitors per day to earn NT$15,000, that's only about US$1.70 per 1000 visitors. The blogger currently doesn't have any other job, and it looks like she posts about twice a day and she does paid blogging assignments pretty often. If the numbers are accurate, then she is making peanuts. That level of pay would be low if it were only based on Adsense, but Meg must spend a lot of time to make a very humble income.
at

3 comments:

  1. AnonymousFebruary 27, 2009 10:35 PM

    Nice, I like her comment at the end: "It works best if you don't say that the post is really a paid advertisement. But no matter what, the honest truth is what will get the most support from fans."

    Great ethics there. Contrast that with the cojones of Portnoy (龜趣來嘻), who doesn't post often enough, but when he does, always has something interesting to say.

    I probably have a lot of thoughts on why the Internet in Taiwan is as well developed as it could be; it's an interesting question and the low profits of bloggers is just a symptom of the problem.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousFebruary 27, 2009 10:37 PM

    Eh, I should link to this Portnoy post on blogger ethics, since it's what I was really talking about. He's temporarily stopped blogging because he doesn't think he can live up to those principles right now.

    ReplyDelete
  3. TaiwanonymousFebruary 28, 2009 11:44 AM

    I liked that comment too. Maybe advertisers aren't the best source of ethical advice. On the other hand, it sounds like Portnoy is too hard on himself.

    ReplyDelete