The Value of the Long Tail
Jan 6th, 2007 by Dan Blank
Chris Anderson takes a look at the revenue of one prominent blogger, and dissects the real value of blogging and the long tail itself.
His focus is on Guy Kawasaki, who recently gave an end of year wrap-up on his first year of blogging.
Here are some stat’s on Guy’s blog:
- His blog has been consistently between the 35th and 45th most popular in the world.
- 2,436,117 page views for an average of approximately 6,200/day.
- 262 posts generated 6,961 comments and 1,937 trackbacks. That’s 25 comments/post and 7 trackbacks/post.
- 21,000 people receive RSS feeds via Feedburner and 1,457 receive emails via FeedBlitz.
Total revenue via Google AdSense: $3,350 = $1.39 cpm.
Chris’s conclusion:
“Just another reminder that the reason to be a Long Tail producer is not direct revenues. Instead, it’s exactly what Guy uses it for: marketing for his books, VC firm, speeches and consulting. For which he’s exceedingly well paid. Indirect revenues rule!”
Scott Karp adds further thoughts:
“The reality is that, despite the efficiencies that Google has brought, the online ad market is still rife with imbalances and inefficiencies, which means there’s a significant opportunity for anyone who can correct them.”