Estimate the profitability of a blog is important
At the very beginning, blogs were only thought for the purpose of sharing a passion or knowledge with the world. There was no question of money or profitability, but simply the pleasure of being able to offer the rest of the world a small sample of his life, and to feel connected to the entire planet. Nowadays, if the primary joy and motivation of wanting to share with others still exists, it would be naïve to believe that the financial notion has not become one of the reasons that the number of blogs on the internet continues to explode over the years.
But, ironically, this exponential growth in the number of blogs on the internet for the purpose of financial profit has also made it more difficult to get out of real gains from these same blogs because, faced with the overabundance of these, the user has Spoiled for choice and traffic for some of the blogs will never be enough to become profitable.
Creating and maintaining a blog is not a profession in the true sense of the word, it is done autonomously, without real rules, without schedules, without financial grid, without specific objectives to achieve. It's usually a good dose of luck and motivation, in addition to knowledge in both web techniques and the specific subject of the blog, which make it successful. Thus, it becomes difficult to define whether a blog is profitable or not, because it is not easy to quantify the efforts made in the creation of it compared to the gains they report, but there are still several attempts to estimate that.
There are plenty of ways to generate income with a blog, as you can see in any our Monetization section. You can earn money simply through advertising on your site, but also through product placements, through brand-sponsored items or through the direct sale of your own products to the site. By summing all these cash inflows, we can thus arrive at a gross gain figure, but it ultimately offers no idea if this blog is a good financial deal or not, because it does not take into account all the expenses made for the creation of it or the time spent on it.
The best calculation method inspired by poker
To be as accurate and serious as possible, it is good to be inspired by the poker ROI technique. This calculation developed especially for this discipline (not applicable to online poker), where it is also impossible to define whether one derives a profit from it or not with the only analysis of gross earnings, makes it possible to arrive at a clear percentage on the profit drawn with each euro spent, hoping that it is not negative. In poker, it is estimated that a ROI of 10% is already good, that is to say that for each euro spent, we get a gross profit of 1,10 euros, a net profit of 10 cents.
Complicated to estimate a percentage rule for the blogging, even if a gain of 10% already seems a profit more than reasonable. But where the expenses are clear and clear in poker (the costs of registration for tournaments or the amount won on a game on the internet, such as Texas Hold'em or the other poker variant Omaha Hi-lo), they are more difficult to estimate for a blog, and are especially less regular.
Indeed, it is completely superfluous to want to estimate the profitability of a blog at the beginning of this one, because it is at this moment that you will spend the most for its creation, but also the one where you will gain the least because it n will be in its infancy, without a basic clientele and with probably still some errors that will be corrected only with the time. We must wait for an average of 6 months after the launch of your site to launch an initial analysis of it and see if it has the potential to turn into a good deal, or will ultimately be a mere means of expression for you without financial counterparts .
All expenses, even the most innocuous
It will then be a question of making a table of all your expenses started since your initial idea of creating a blog. Did you have to buy better quality computer hardware to make this one? Did you hire a journalist, a web designer or an artist for the writing and architecture of it? Did you use a free blog host or did you buy your own domain? Have you made various trips or purchases to improve your skills in the subject of your blog in order to be as relevant as possible? It is essential to take into account each of these minor expenses in order to ultimately be as accurate as possible.
The other work, even more delicate, is to estimate the time spent creating this blog because, as everyone knows, time is money. If we will never judge the hourly rate to that of the SMIC for writing blog because it is done under conditions different from normal work, a calculation of 5 euros for every hour spent on the blog seems more reasonable. However, some pragmatic people will think that this time can not be counted as a real expense and will not take it into account in their final count. This is up to you (it's true that poker players do not count their time sitting at tables in their ROI calculation).
Gain or not, the quality of a blog does not pass that way
Once this long list has been made, knowing that most of these expenses will have been made before the blog, simply divide them by all your gross earnings over the last 6 months. If you already arrive at a positive percentage, there is no longer any need to worry and your blog is well underway on the road to success. But if, more likely, it is negative, there is no reason to be alarmed because only time can allow a blog to take off. However, the world of the Web is ruthless and if, after 2 years, despite all your efforts and improvements, you still cannot make a profit, you will have to face the facts that the subject of your blog is not strong enough to attract enough people and therefore potential business.
No reason to make a drama so far, because the important thing in a blog will always be take pleasure in doing it and that your visiteurs take pleasure in the browse.
