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Curious to know what the top 25 design blogs make from ad sales?

Curious to know what the top 25 design blogs make from ad sales?

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+

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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+

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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+

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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

freelance design blogs

  • 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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Author: Mike Smith
Mike Smith is a full time blog designer and blogger. You can view his design work at GUERRILLA and hire him for any design needs you may have.

21 Comments and Trackbacks add your own

Author comments are in a darker gray color for you to easily identify the posts author in the comments

  1. flashscope says:

    awesome statistics! good job and thanks for share

  2. Nathan says:

    Are these revenue figures per month?

  3. So basically you can make at least $300 from a blog.
    Not bad at all.

  4. Charlene says:

    Nice stats! Too bad my own sites don’t generate half that – in a year!

  5. Lucas Cobb says:

    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.

  6. Darren says:

    I was browsing buysellads figuring out a couple of them also good job finding the top ones

  7. 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!

    • Mike says:

      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 :)

  8. WOW! Collis is simply crushing it. 4 of the sites above are owned by him, not to mention his marketplaces.

  9. Rafi says:

    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

    • Mike says:

      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.

  10. DesignLovr says:

    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.

  11. Paul King says:

    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

  12. 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.

  13. 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.

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  2. [...] Curious to know what the top 25 design blogs make from ad sales? [...]

  3. [...] you and others, and if you think that this is no longer a financially viable check out this post on Guerilla Freelancing to see that there is still money to be made through ad space. Simply find new and creative ways to [...]

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