Curious to know what the top 25 design blogs make from ad sales?
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 10 seconds
Any person reading this blog right now that is in the design field has probably wondered this very exact question: What do these design blogs actually make in ad revenue and is it possible for me to make money with my own design blog? Hopefully, by the end of this article you will walk away with answers to that question.
I’ve been pushing around the idea of starting my own design blog for months now and decided to do a bit of research to see what the top design blogs actually make in revenue. Since I know that the blog will be focused on ad revenue and not just pushing my web design business, I wanted to gauge what types of money could be made with the blog and how much traffic I’d have to hit in order to get to certain cash milestones.
The trend I see in a lot of the top design blogs out there are the use of the service Buy Sell Ads – we even use it here on Guerrilla Freelancing (our listing is here). It’s a great service and it allows advertisers to find the sites they’d like to buy ads from, get approved and placed in front of millions of people.
The beauty of it for the site owners is that they don’t have to manually ad the codes in each time a new ad is purchased and remove them once the month is up. As a publisher, you earn 75% of the ad revenue, so you’re getting a great deal (in my opinion) because you no longer have to focus on selling the ads, managing them and so on.
Please bare in mind that these stats are only for the publicly sold ads on their sites and do not reflect their earnings from private advertising purchases, reviews and other forms of advertisements like feedburner links/ads, google adsense, and so on. So, lets get to it – what do these blogs actually make in revenue?
PSDTuts+
- Estimated Impressions: 6,230,000
- How many ad spaces?: 12
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 9
- Revenue: $9,893.25
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
Abduzeedo
- Estimated Impressions: 5,999,000
- How many ad spaces?: 46
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 38
- Revenue: $4,650
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
Hongkiat
- Estimated Impressions: 3,395,000
- How many ad spaces?: 12
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 12
- Revenue: $2,475
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
Nettuts+
- Estimated Impressions: 2,225,000
- How many ad spaces?: 13
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 10
- Revenue: $4,785.25
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
Creattica
- Estimated Impressions: 2,025,000
- How many ad spaces?: 10
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 9
- Revenue: $1,987.50
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
Vectortuts+
- Estimated Impressions: 1,830,000
- How many ad spaces?: 11
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 10
- Revenue: $3,940.50
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
Web Designer Depot
- Estimated Impressions: 1,660,000
- How many ad spaces?: 13
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 11
- Revenue: $4,181.25
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
Smashing Apps
- Estimated Impressions: 1,630,000
- How many ad spaces?: 30
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 23
- Revenue: $1,991.25
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
Six Revisions
- Estimated Impressions: 1,505,000
- How many ad spaces?: 12
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 9
- Revenue: $4,357.50
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
Web Design Ledger
- Estimated Impressions: 1,415,000
- How many ad spaces?: 14
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 13
- Revenue: $3,225
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
Instant Shift
- Estimated Impressions: 1,305,000
- How many ad spaces?: 11
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 10
- Revenue: $1,275.00
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
Vandelay Website Design
- Estimated Impressions: 1,135,000
- How many ad spaces?: 12
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 12
- Revenue: $2,512.50
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
CSS Tricks
- Estimated Impressions: 1,105,000
- How many ad spaces?: 12
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 11
- Revenue: $2,887.50
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
1st Web Designer
- Estimated Impressions: 1,085,000
- How many ad spaces?: 21
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 14
- Revenue: $2,287.50
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
Speckyboy Design Magazine
- Estimated Impressions: 1,080,000
- How many ad spaces?: 46
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 18
- Revenue: $2,251.50
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
Tutorial9
- Estimated Impressions: 1,050,000
- How many ad spaces?: 21
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 19
- Revenue: $2,647.50
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
Bittbox
- Estimated Impressions: 1,025,000
- How many ad spaces?: 6
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 6
- Revenue: $2,193.75
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
DesignM.ag
- Estimated Impressions: 855,000
- How many ad spaces?: 10
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 10
- Revenue: $1,275.00
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
Web Resources Depot
- Estimated Impressions: 820,000
- How many ad spaces?: 4
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 3
- Revenue: $618.75
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
Web Designer Wall
- Estimated Impressions: 815,000
- How many ad spaces?: 10
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 8
- Revenue: $2,775.00
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
Blog.SpoonGraphics
- Estimated Impressions: 815,000
- How many ad spaces?: 9
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 7
- Revenue: $1,912.50
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
Naldz Graphics
- Estimated Impressions: 520,000
- How many ad spaces?: 13
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 8
- Revenue: $693.75
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
Marcofolio
- Estimated Impressions: 440,000
- How many ad spaces?: 9
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 8
- Revenue: $352.50
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
GoMediaZine
- Estimated Impressions:
- How many ad spaces?: 32
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 14
- Revenue: $903.75
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
Spyre Studios
- Estimated Impressions: 300,000
- How many ad spaces?: 8
- Total ads sold (as of 01/28/10): 7
- Revenue: $480.00
Website Link | BuySellAds Listing
What are you waiting for?
There’s a world of advertisers out there who are just waiting to place their ads on your site. Build it, put all of the passion you have into it and watch it grow. Do not expect to hit these numbers overnight – but in time, you can definitely top this list.
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awesome statistics! good job and thanks for share
Are these revenue figures per month?
Yes, from the buysellads platform. This doesn’t include private sales, ect.
So basically you can make at least $300 from a blog.
Not bad at all.
Nice stats! Too bad my own sites don’t generate half that – in a year!
Interesting stats. It really gives me something to look forward to and work towards. Some of those stats don’t seem that far fetched at all.
Yeah, that’s what I was noticing too, with some hard work, these results are definitely achievable.
I was browsing buysellads figuring out a couple of them also good job finding the top ones
Dude, I don’t understand how they make so much. I mean I understand how and why, but I could never see myself in their position. It blows my mind and I am completely jealous. More power to ‘em. Good job and very nice post. Inspiring for sure!
Hey Kevin, you’ve got to get a more positive outlook on things. Everyone on this list started out without any revenue coming in, so it’s not as hard as you might think
WOW! Collis is simply crushing it. 4 of the sites above are owned by him, not to mention his marketplaces.
Yeah, the Envato team are so inspiring to me. it’s crazy. Thanks for the comment.
I think they make much more that the figures listed especially the blogs, abduzeedo, WDD as you can see on the buysellads.com ads purchases.
Thanks
Rafi
These results are pulled directly from buysellads. I took the 25% off of the pricing that is the total, since BSA takes 25% of the money made, and that’s the number I posted.
Thanks for doing all this research. I checked this kind of info out myself already several times, but it’s quite nice to have it all in one place.
It’s really amazing what some of these blogs achieved and how much they earn each month (but they really deserve it).
Many of these blogs are also heavily investing in advertisements (WDD) or new writers (tuts+ sites) on their own.
Now I’m thinking about the amount of money buysellads makes…
Also a nice blog you created here, definitely following it on twitter+rss.
I’d be interested to see if the time spent in making and updating the blog offets the money you could make doing freelance / consultant work over the same time! Paul http://1daylater.com – Activity tracking for freelancers
Nice post thanks. Would be interesting to know what the actual monthly revenues would be rather then just the buysellads.com aspect, but regardless still interesting.
Thanx for sharing man! Thou i did figure that out a while ago, exactly the same way as you did
But it was good to see a roundup of all sorts of different places.