The Numbers to $1,000,000: How is Your Blogging Progress?

My multimillionaire uncle told me to always have three projects: a short term source of income, a medium term project or two, and a long term goal that you are making a reality. And the only way to assess whether this work is making you good, sustainable income is to look at the numbers again and again.
In this post I want to look at the numbers to $1,000,000 and see how your blogging progress is going.

Why a million?

A million dollars is a large number that most people dream about. And while it seems far off and distant for many people, for others it is quite achievable. And as bloggers we have something that other generations did not. The Internet. Google. Facebook. These giants are capable of sending tens or hundreds of thousands of visitors to your blog every week. All you need is a domain and a host and you are on your way.
Compare that to the old days when you needed a railroad or a factory or an entire office building to make that kind of money and you will realize that we have a very unique opportunity right here and now. And if you think its not possible to make a million dollars from blogging alone then you might want to think again. Darren Rowse does it. So do a bunch of others.

The numbers to $1,000,000

Lets take a look at some figures to see whether you are on track for your goal. Remember, you don’t need to make a million to change your life and perhaps even change the lives of others. You might only need $40k or $50k a year to completely change things. That’s what this post is about.
Let’s say you start a blog and you are going to make money by selling an eBook. Here are some very rough, small and static numbers to think about:

• You write three posts a week aiming to grow email subscribers and build a community
• You do some light SEO work and begin to get traffic from Google as well as social media
• You get around 100 visitors a day after six months
• You convert 10% of those visitors into email subscribers
• In one year you have (182 x 10) 1820 subscribers assuming none were gathered in the first six months
• You sell an eBook at $49 to 50% of your list and make $44,590 in your first year (910 x $49).

Sure, the reality could be totally different. It could be better or it could be worse. Some factors will push the income up and others will push it down. On Blog Tyrant, for example, I have written only 20 posts and already get around 40 to 60 new email subscribers per day. So after a year I could have closer to 14,000 subscribers to sell an eBook to. And the above equation doesn’t take into account ongoing sales, affiliates, etc.
As a blogger you need to constantly assess your goals and your targets. If you want to get to a million dollars you need to adjust the numbers and set them as targets. There is absolutely no point blogging aimlessly and hoping that one day you might strike it rich. If you aren’t getting the 1000 or 2000 (or 10,000) daily visitors that you need, then you have to take a look at what is going wrong and fix it.

What is your plan?

I am really interested in hearing about your plan. Are you aiming for a certain level? Do you have the numbers and the strategy all worked out or are you kind of just floating through and hoping that it will all add up in the end? More importantly, are you growing? Please leave a comment and let me know.

Posted in: Blog Tunes,Earning Tunes