How Much Are Your Subscribers Worth?
We’re paying people to be our friends. Just by subscribing to our feed or leaving a message, you could win $25. But, is it worth it?
Mark Wielgus over at 45n5 had an interesting way of figuring how much your blog is worth.
Looking at the “buy it now” sale price of 4 recently sold blogs and how many subscribers they had, Mark figured out the going rate for a subscriber was $18.42 per person.
- bloggingexperiment.com $12,000, 1107 subscribers, $10.84 per subscriber
- onemansgoal.com $10,000, 617 subscribers, $16.21 per subscriber
- johncow.com $50,000, 1600 subscribers, $31.25 per subscriber
- shylockbloggin.com $4000, 260 subscribers, $15.38 per subscriber
WebDiggin, with only 13 subscribers at the time, was valued at $239.46, which is more than how much money we’ve made in our online adventures.
By offering a cash prize of $25, we’ve gone from 7 subscribers on April 11 to 19 readers on April 15, when this post was written. We’ve added 12 readers to our blog and at $18.42 per person that means, we’ve increased our blog’s paper value by $221.04.
But, of course, we know that blogs aren’t just based on the readership. Max Davis who recently purchased blogging experiment commented that they didn’t place any value on the RSS subscription count at the time.
They figured readers may or may not stick around because they signed on to read the original owner’s content. (Still, Max has been able to increase readership by 150 readers this week.)
Bottom Line: So, why are we paying people to be our friends? Do we have a business model in place where we’ll be able to recoup the investment through content ads or affiliate links on this site? Not really. We just like to reward people who participate on our site.
(Maybe giving away some of our PayPerPost money helps to people to put up with the sponsored posts we take on this blog. Although I’m often surprised with what I’m able to get away with in a sponsored post. Case in point: piss off)
Question: When we stop our contest, do you think the subscribers will stay or go?
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April 20th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
I find it very hard to increase subscibers… maybe I am not providing what people want or maybe I am not explaning the process (Which I am not right now!) but I am finding more and more people coming from search engines and I think for make money enterprises this is the biggest factor for value.
Forest Parks’s last blog post..When Bloggers Attack!
April 21st, 2008 at 1:49 am
I am having a hard time making more readers subscribe to my blog. Sometimes, it feels like technology is not a popular topic for every one, unlike movies or making money.
Maybe I should create another blog that will attract more people, like a blog about making money online. But isn’t there one too many blogs about that topic already?
Rai’s last blog post..Tip: Testing Your PHP/MySQL Connection
April 21st, 2008 at 4:38 am
@Forest - I agree. Increasing those subscribers is hard. I’m amazed when I hit a blog and see hundreds or thousands of subscribers. I think a lot of it has to do with unique content or insight. I imagine this blog doesn’t capture the eye of a lot of passer-bys because if you’re in the business, you already know this stuff, and if you’re not in the business, why would I listen to someone who hasn’t really made any income? (Thanks for listening by the way
)
At first, we adopted the idea of cash contests to build readership. (Along the lines of we’ll pay you to be our friend.) It’s worked a little (jumping from 7 readers to 23 readers), but whether people stay if the contest stops, who knows.
Now, our attitude is more that the $25 is just a thank you for people who participate in the blog anyways. So… thanks for commenting. Hope you win. (And bravo on getting natural search engine hits. We have maybe 4 or 5 hits per day so we need to work on that area.)
@Rai - If you’re thinking about blogging about making money online, go check out www.caroline-middlebrook.com (if you haven’t already.) She started in Sep 2007, has 2000+ subscribers, and made over $2000 last month. She’s obviously doing something right!
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:14 am
hey there, had a look at 45n5 to check out what you were referring to
I am way down in their ranking but have a lot more subscribers than the ones mentioned in the list, funny to see how the value of a blog could be, saw a post recently about all different evaluation sites to establish monthly values but forgot to bookmark it 
Anyways, I am off making some more money, take care!
Mirjam’s last blog post..Dare to Dream Big!
April 24th, 2008 at 3:26 am
Hey Mirjam - good luck with your projects. I love how casual we all are about our experiments to make money! Most of my friends in the real world sort of roll their eyes and say, what are you trying this time?… or they look at me skeptically.
One day, I’ll be making more than just coffee money. One day!
WebDiggin’s last blog post..PPC Affiliate Marketing - Learn from your competiton
April 24th, 2008 at 8:15 am
hi Mark,
I so know what you are saying there, I talked with my friend yesterday about the new project I have started after my break and which is really getting all my attention. Sorting out a few set-up issues at the moment, but I have already warned her that I will lock myself in at home over the course of next week, wanting to completely focus on just that project and give it a huge kickstart.
It is hard at times to explain to people what it is I am doing, and yes, many will roll their eyes, saying it is not a real job and that I should stop playing and get serious.
I don´t consider myself to be casual about what I do, since I am very dedicated to make things work, especially now that I have found this great house I really want to have LOL.
However, I don´t like to give too many details about running projects if they are not working the way I want them to. I mean, if I blog about a project or service on memyselfandiblog, it is because it is working for me and hopefully by the end of next time I can go into my current project a bit more
April 27th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Hey Mirjam,
It’s funny how we spend so much time on what we’re passionate about. The hours fly-by when you’re having fun (or engrossed in a problem). We’re working on one of our domain name projects, at the expense of some of our other projects. I guess its really about finding balance.
Good luck with your project - hope it turns out well enough that you can share what you’re doing. We’ve always had the attitude that this blog was our diary journaling all of the experiments we had tried to make money online.
(Dennis had commented that it’s a little embarassing to have made so little money… and it is, but then there’s that line about Edison failing so many time before inventing the lightbulb. I like Dennis’ attitude. He signs off on his posts with, “to our mutual success”)
April 28th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Thanks Mark,
(and he is right, it is so much nicer to deal with “people” vs “keywords”… )
just had a look at Dennis´ blog, before noticing this comment, and read a few posts and comments over there. Funny to see how you came to signing off with Mark at webdiggin
It is not just about finding balance in what we do, it is more a matter of setting priorities, first finishing the task you really have to do first thing in the morning and only then you can balance it with things we´d rather do….
May 1st, 2008 at 4:46 am
Sigh. I’d rather eat dessert first :), but you’re right.