I am very excited to introduce my latest "Ask A Pro" feature, which has gotten an amazing responses from some very well known "A-List" bloggers. For those who are not already familiar, my Ask A Pro category is devoted to learning from the best - bloggers who have already made a mark for themselves and earned a few dollars along the way. In addition to direct comments and feedback from influential bloggers and entrepreneurs, I also like to put a twist on the typical blog interview. Instead of asking one person a lot of boring questions, I like to ask many of the top bloggers one good question.

The question I asked A-Listers this time was:

What was the first form of income you earned from your blog and how long did it take before it was a decent amount?

I purposely like to leave the question somewhat vague, encouraging the interviewee to focus on what they think is most important. For example, in the above question I asked them to feel free to interpret "decent amount" however they saw fit. The responses so far have been very positive. I wish to thank these influential bloggers for taking time out of their busy schedule to help us learn from their experiences.

Zac Johnson - "I would say that my first "decent" income earned from my blog would be from referring active affiliates to networks. Since I've worked with many affiliate networks, I like to review and recommend them to my blog readers. Any active referrals would earn a referral commission. While the kickback from referring affiliates is quite minimal, I am happy to report that my blog readers have produced well over $100,000 in new commissions for themselves, from network reviews and recommendations off my blog. Whenever I find that I am making money with a new network or happy with a service, I always try and recommend them to my blog readers. Seeing that my readers have earned over $100,000 in commissions from reading my blog and joining the networks I recommend, is an amazing accomplishment, as the blog is still quite young and just starting to flourish." 

Maki -  "The first form of income I've earned from my blog was Google Adsense. I've never really optimized it for Dosh Dosh because I don't use the blog as a main income generator. I would say that it brought in a decent amount of money 7 months of so after it was put up although its still operating well below its potential. Instead, most of my current ad revenue is currently derived through private ad arrangements." 

ShoeMoney - "From my blog...That is a good question.  I actually was never going to put up ads on this blog and didn't the first 2 years then in January of 2007 decided to sell ads after being solicited all the time. The first month we did about $8,000 ballpark. I could justify putting up ads for that much. "

Darren Rowse - "The first income that I earned online from blogs was with AdSense. I also experimented with Amazon Affiliate program around the same time but AdSense brought in the first income. At first it was a dollar or two a day which I considered decent at the time because it paid for my internet access costs - but it was a good 18 months before it enabled me to go full time."

Like most of us, it appears that many of top bloggers started with Google Adsense and made some decent money. As their blog started to grow, they found more lucrative sources of income like private ads or affiliate referrals. The most important thing to point out here is that no one has gotten rich over night. It takes many months of hard work and persistence before the money becomes substantial.

Thanks again to Darren, Jeremy, Maki, and Zac for their comments.

Have a question for A-List bloggers? Want me to include anyone else in my persistent nagging? Leave me a comment below. Be sure to sign up for my feed so you don't miss the next edition of Ask A Pro.

Jeff

My last blog post boldly questioned the future of EntreCard. My intention was to encourage us to take a look at the amazing growth EntreCard has experience thus far, and question if such growth can be sustained (economically, not technologically). It has sparked some excellent discussion and I thank you all for your comments and emails. I was especially delighted to receive an amazing and brilliantly articulated response from non other than EntreCard's founder, Graham Langdon. Instead of leaving it as a comment on the previous post, I felt it deserved its own post so I could share it with all of you.

Below is Graham Langdon's response to my post entitled "Warning! This Information Could Destroy EntreCard!"

To fully understand this debate, it must be understood that the EntreCard economy is based on an age old concept of backing your currency in something that has value.

A long time ago, the US backed every dollar in its economy with gold. It was called the gold standard, and as you can see, the second this backing was removed, and the Fed was granted the ability to print dollars out of thin air, the us dollar tanked in value:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d7/Value_of_US_dollar.gif

Now, right now, every credit in the Entrecard economy is backed in something that has value: a visit (or a click). Credits can not be earned without people visiting each others sites. And that simple action of visiting someone's site will ALWAYS have value, because in the grand internet economy, traffic and visits translate into money. Traffic is the reason why TechCrunch makes $200k per month. Traffic is the reason John Chow makes $30k per month etc. And the unit of traffic is the visit which, to come full circle, is what Entrecard Credits are backed in.

Now, considering that our chief domestic product is advertising (on over 5000 blogs), most of the credits in the economy get spend here. Well, this advertising is "taxed" at a rate of 75%. So 75% of all the credits that are spent on advertising simply get cleared out of the system, leaving the publisher with 25%, which he or she will then take, and spend on advertising yet again.

Now we throw into the mix our growing shop. A year down the road, there will be many times more items available in the shop than you see today. Most likely, there will be thousands as we are going to focus on this area of the site to grow moving forward.

The the eventual scenario in which the credit is used to purchase advertising on thousands of blogs, and buy thousands of products and services needed for bloggers, the credit will increase in value as it can be spent in more and more ways.

So, dropping 300 cards per day isn't any more detrimental to the system than working a full time job in any economy, and thus maximizing your earning potential. After all, you're still providing the core unit of value - the visit - to our members. Their posts still can catch your attention, draw you in, and turn you into a reader.

Now, on our end we have to create clever credit sinks to keep removing as many credits from the economy as possible. We're releasing two features that will serve us well. The first is a paid rank, where members simply bid for the top spots of the "paid rank" category. Another one is a classified board where members can post links and promotions by paying a flat credit fee.

In the end, if blogs become to expensive to advertise on, that actually is an indication of scarcity instead of weakness, and scarcity means your currency is valuable. Looking over all the priciest blogs, it seems there are long lines of members just waiting to pay their price. When people actually can't afford them, then we'll have something to worry about.

On a final note, think of everything like this. A coca cola used to cost a nickel back in yesteryear. Now it costs a dollar, but people make hundreds of dollars per week, instead of just 20. So maybe the prices of blogs will go up, but more people will be dropping cards on you in the meantime, increasing your passive income on the site.

EntreCard truly is a gift to us all. I want to thank Graham the time he spent crafting such an amazing response. He has definitely restored my faith in the future of EntreCard. How about yours?

Jeff

* Update #2 - Darren Rowse chimes in!

* Update #1 - Shoemoney provides his valuable insight.  

I thought I would put a little spin on your typical "Interview with a Blogger". Instead of asking one blogger a bunch of irrelevant questions, I thought it would be fun ask a BUNCH of high-profile bloggers ONE good question. In this first post of my new Ask A Pro feature, I reached out to some well known bloggers and asked them the following question:

What generates the most revenue from your blog?

I am still waiting for Shoemoney, Darren Rowse, Maki, and a few others to get back to me. I am sure I will be hearing from them at any moment. John Chow called me personally and gave me his insightful remarks. Ok...that's not totally true. John Chow's comments are from a recent post about his Blog Income Strategy (I hope he doesn't mind me quoting him). The remaining comments, however, truly are from the lips (keyboards) of some names you might recognize.

* Darren Rowse - "In terms of income stream it's private advertising/sponsorships. In the bigger picture - it's only possible to generate significant private advertising deals if you have a significant level of traffic and a brand that people want to align their brands with. In order to get this you need to offer your readers something that is unique and useful to them. This will mean something different for each blog - but for ProBlogger what I offer is daily posts on how to improve their blogs mixed with a little inspiration and news that is relevant to bloggers."

* Shoemoney - "I would say readers generate the most revenue from my blog." D'oh! I guess I should not have been so vague in my question. Luckily, he was kind enough to follow up with the these comments. "I have done some individual posts that have made thousands (and continue to make good money) in affiliate commissions.  As far as a average over the course of a year direct ad sales are by far the biggest form of revenue."

John Chow - "Today, private advertising accounts for half of the blog income. The future growth of the blog will come from its second biggest money maker; affiliate commissions. As times goes by, affiliate income should overtake direct advertising as the number one money maker. While there are limits on how much ad space I can sell on this blog, there are no limits on how many sites I can refer to other ad networks."

Carl "Kidblogger" Ocab - "Private advertising hits the top - And I'm happy about it. Less risky, no middleman, no chance of getting banned."

Dane Morgan - "ChainDrop.com has not been monetized YET. We will be monetizing it, but we are building a following and a membership first. Soon, we will start rolling out select affiliate campaigns from the blog, and then later we will be developing our own product line for it. From my little niche blogs scattered all over the place the primary earner is affiliate products followed by resale rights products. I've always sucked with adsense. I've had it on sites here and there, but never made any money with it. The MOST money I've made from any given single source would probably be click bank."

Dean Hunt - "My answer will be very different to most other people, but my blog is also very different to most others. My biggest revenue generator is actually my brand. I use the blog to build my brand (my name) and I provide services due to that reputation. I have no adverts on my blog, no adsense, no affiliate links etc... I make 6 figures from my services, so $10,000 a year from adsense has zero appeal to me, I prefer to keep my integrity.

To summarize, it seems like Private Ad placement is the most profitable initially. Once your blog grows large enough (and all of ours certainly will, right?) then Affiliate Marketing might become the big bread winner. The most important thing, of course, is building up your membership with good content. Thanks for your answers guys!! 

What questions would you like to see answered by the top bloggers? Leave them in a comment and I will use them in future Ask A Pro features. Is there anyone else you'd like to hear from? If so...I'll keep bugging them until they respond.

Jeff