For the love of money -- or just for the love?

All this blogging has gotten me thinking...

What's my goal in this anyway? To share personal stories as an adoptive mom? To encourage the sharing of stories within the broader adoption community (families touched by adoption, adult adoptees, etc.) To entertain? To publish and feel the love? Or -- to make a butt-load of money?

I emailed Ben to ask him about the economics of blogging and here's the reality:

Assume a $.50 CPM for impressions to your blog. Then, ask yourself how many monthly impressions would it take to generate the minimum income you hope for. Let's say, for starters, you'd like to aim for $48K per year or $4K per month. For the purposes of rough ballpark calculation, assume advertisers realize a CTR of ~2%.

Here's how to think about it (with thanks and credit to Ben):

At $.50 per 1000 impressions, you'd have to sell 8M impressions per month to clear $4K per month. ($4K / $.50 = 8000 CPM's or 8M impressions)

But with a CTR of 2%, advertisers are hoping those 8M impressions a month will yield (8M x .02 =)160K visitors to their sites each month. That means you, as the publisher, need to prove you can generate minimum regular traffic of 160K users each month -- if you want to attract that kind of commitment from advertisers.

In other words, if you're not serious about this blogging stuff, don't quit your day job.

Lisa