08 February, 2007

Blogging for Bucks?

Out of curiosity - is anyone on the UAE scene doing this?
Posted by Sex and Dubai at 11:22 pm
Labels: , ,

7 comments:

secretdubai said...

Yeah - I have Google ads on, they are very easy to integrate into Blogger - however the money is crapola. I make about US$20 a month. They don't seem to offer bank transfer here, and when they sent a cheque it was a crappy American one for about US$100, which costs US$25 to cash and takes over a month.

Also Google apparently take about 80% of the revenue, which is a bit shite. There are other ad schemes around that offer a fairer revevnue split. There is also a UAE/regional one, but it's currently invite only - I think samuraisam got invited on that, or was trying to.

The problem is that online advertising in the Middle East is so behind: the kind of local companies that should be buying banners on our blogs just aren't. I expect they're barely even aware of blogging.

Then there's the issue of censorship/fear - a lot of advertisers here would be too nervous to put ads on anything remotely contentious (which includes pretty much every blog going).

Finally the stats on most blogs here are still miniscule, I get around 800 uniques a day which in international terms is not even a trace. And I would guess - just through volume and longevity more than anything else - that I am among the UAE's top ten biggest blogs in terms of audience. Why are stats so low? Because internet pentetration is negligible in the wider region, the UAE is a tiny country and there are only a few hundred thousand people at most that would read English as a first choice. So while America has 200 million web users, the vast majority of whom are English speaking, the UAE is barely a blip on the radar.

If you want to weep with envy, Google how much Perez Hilton currently earns. Tens of thousands of dollars a week, apparently.

09 February, 2007 01:52
Anonymous said...

I am very thankful that some one else explained exactly the situation and would put all jealous souls to rest.

09 February, 2007 09:43
Anonymous said...

Is someone jealous over some Google ads on a site? Well, then I'd suggest put up your own site and see if you can make any money from it. Getting any significant money from Google requires a heck of a lot of traffic or a very focused site with an homogenenous audience. Either way you have to work your a** off to make it happen, and most people wouldn't think it's worth it. Unless you're extremely fortunate somehow with a story that gets big attention or something, making money out of blogging is just plain hard work, harder than most would realize, I think.

09 February, 2007 11:05
samuraisam said...

secretdubai yeah, it was the toot service I was invited to.

It's great compared to google; they pay based upon impressions rather than clicks.

With google ads ages back I got about .20$-.30$ cents a week on my blog and with itoot 'tan' i got about 40 bucks in a month.

Still, a contract with a private company would garner way more moolah than using an ad agency; but you'd have to chase them up etc

09 February, 2007 15:28
Anonymous said...

Yep, people are jealous. Many think that you make mega bucks simply by having the Google ads on the site. Can even label you greedy gold digger etc. In fact the AdSense is exactly what it says i is Ad a bit of sense by displaying the URLs of related sites.

09 February, 2007 17:36
secretdubai said...

Lol@the jealousy, if you guys could see what my Google Adsense statement looks like. I can even post a screenshot of some of the stats/earnings if you like.

10 February, 2007 01:21
nzm said...

It's interesting where GN is sourcing some of their news from!

11 February, 2007 15:38

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