another one of those silly "how much do you make" posts

[Satch_Reed]

If you take your monthly earnings, and divide by the number of hours you work on your site, what kind of hourly wage do you come up with?

I'm trying to establish some kind of relationship between income and actual time spent generating it.

[greatstart]

With the time I spend per month, it comes out to about $7.33 per hour. That is just above the minimum wage. The only problem is the self-employment tax and the expense of running the sites bring it down to a mere $5.50 per hour.

[jfodale]

Bout $5/hour, which is phenomenally better than I was expecting.

[buckworks]

If I did this calculation for the first year I was self-employed, it would have come out to less than the minimum wage.

But keep in mind that if you're doing the right things, work you do today will pay off over a long period, not just in this month's earnings. The rewards are cumulative, and the paychecks grow over time.

[incrediBILL]

Using the actual hours I work on my site a month, it's probably around $500/hour. ;)

[UserFriendly]

I'd have to say that my rate must be around $1 / hour.

I have a very low-traffic site, but I enjoy working on it and the hosting cost gets covered each month. I've had a personal site since 1998, so just seeing it pay for itself now is nice.

[Genuine1]

Infinite!

Since I get mid four figure $ per month and have not updated a website in 7 years...

The only work I did in the 4 that I have used adsense was adding the ads. That took all of 15 mins 4 years back... So maybe not actually infinite but close.

[edited by: Genuine1 at 12:07 pm (utc) on June 16, 2007]

[successlieswithme]

wooooooooow :O

is it a static content site?
or people dynamically adds content? like a forum?

[Genuine1]

Bunch of hobby pages hosted on free webspace.

Good content rules - posted way before adsense (and google in most cases).

[jetteroheller]

That's a very complicate question.

AdSense gives me the money for the tasks, I have to do.

So I drive to very interesting fairs and projects and write about it. Without AdSense, I would not have the time and money to do it.

All this brings me in the position, that I got a very interesting vehicle to test it. The test reaches now 5450km.

How much of my working hours should I assign to AdSense?

[Khensu]

$100 per hour now and I work a normal work week on it. If you factor in the 20 hours per week for 10 years to create the content that goes down a bit. It used to be a paid product now it's free, I would venture I made $10 per hour for those 10 years.

[edited by: Khensu at 3:25 pm (utc) on June 16, 2007]

[moTi]

mine is currently around 6$/hour net income. what does impress me is the HUGE range of wage per hour posted here.
hearing that others earn hundredfolds, some without even working on their websites rather frustrates than inspires me..
however, i love my job and i wouldn't want to do anything else as long as it's feasible in any sort.

[edited by: moTi at 4:24 pm (utc) on June 16, 2007]

[marcel]

About $20 an hour at the moment, which is much more than I ever could have imagined :)

Although when I first started the earnings less than $0.10 per hour for the first 6 months :(

I think that's what makes a lot of people give up, with a website the work you do now only seems to pay off 6 months later...

[nomis5]

I only care that I make enough money from the websites to earn a decent living from them. If I stop today, they will still be earning in two years time, I love that thought, illness is not a worry. The subjects are my passions so there really is no work, it's just hobbies. I truly believe that this is the best business model for an individual to earn a decent living form the internet. If you want top earn mega-bucks then a different path needs to be taken, but what damage to your soul...?

[darkmage]

Just remember something else... Even though people may earn $100-500 per hour (or even $5 per hour), it doesn't mean that if you worked extra hours that you would get the same rate. In fact, over the years I tried to greatly expand one site, but the extra income of adding significant amounts of content was only slightly more than adding a small amount of content.

For the sake of round numbers, lets say I earned $10 an hour for doing 10 hours a week ($100 per week). In my case, doing 20 hours week only ticked it up to the equivalent of $110 a week. Average hourly rate is now $5.50. What's worse: the extra 10 hours are paid at $1 per hour.

With a lot of experience, I have now worked out my own optimum time to spend on each site, but this is much easier to do if you have an established site.

[annej]

Sometimes when I've worked 3 or 4 days on a single article with related project instructions I wonder how much I am really making per hour. I tell my self it's probably way below minimum wage.

Your question inspired me to actually calculate it out and I realized it's more like 20 to 30 an hour.

But the fact is that I could quit adding anything at all to my websites and I would still make about the same amount per month. The work I do now simply adds to what I will be able to earn in the future.

And like some others here my topic is my passion so while I'm not getting rich with this I'm doing what I love.

[jetteroheller]

But the fact is that I could quit adding anything at all to my websites and I would still make about the same amount per month

I have several theme oriented sites.

I added nearly nothing to my earlier main theme.

40% less from 2006 to 2007

I added little new content to an other site

Income about the same, was last year best earing site, now second best

I added much new content to an other site

60% more income, is now best earning site

[timwestla]

Does logging into AdSense several times a day to check earnings count as work? :)

Really it's not easy to determine dollars per hour. I built 90% my site a long time ago and only spend a few hours per month working on it now. Do I count all the hours from the past, or just the few hours I spend on it now?

As an interesting (to me anyway) side note, last March I paid somone $125 to write five articles for me. I have been tracking those articles with channels, and so far they have made $350.97 during the past three months. Pretty cool, huh?

[PowerUp]

Hi Tim,

As an interesting (to me anyway) side note, last March I paid somone $125 to write five articles for me.

Where did you find people to write for you? Do you know this person personally? Or is there a website where all these freelance writers converge?

[sailorjwd]

I make just enough to make all income tax free.

So the Google check goes right to the IRS/State :(

[timwestla]

Powerup,

I use Elance, although there are other sites where you can find freelance authors.

[explorador]

Wow, seems confusing... what we earn today is because the days and nights before Adsense. In my case is only about 10 hours per month... so it would sound too good. But as any website, it works almost by itself only after some time.

My experience (on my niche) is that currently, updating frequently has little effect :( I have tried. I have high quality content but somethings are like this... mostly seasonal.

I remember the comments of friends saying "why do you waste time posting so useful information on the web?" well... guess what, now it pays for itself. :)

[Ducain]

It's about $15 per hour for me right now, and so far I've really only dabbled. Recently, I've bought a few domains and have started doing some serious code writing and SEO research, with hopes that the hours I sink into this now will allow me to come back here in 6 months or a year and report some good news.

I love threads like these. Guys like me really appreciate the encouragement.

[inactivist]

At least $150 an hour. If you include the three years' learning curve and content generation, about $0.75 an hour. :D

Please note that I don't spend much time these days. That's the whole point: work up front building the sites, then if it works, less work and more $.

[footballboy]

Did not do much work in May only 3 hours, so that would bring me around $1200/hour...

[Roseb44170]

Actually I think my calculations come out to about $10 per hour but I have to be honest though because when I first started thinking about this I started to get a headache - no calculator around you see and I didn't feel like using the one on the computer

[workingNOMAD]

Over $100 an hour. In the early days it would have been less than $1 an hour!

[nomis5]

One other thought on earnings, from a UK perspective anyway. When I go out to review a widget fair, I have lunch at that widget fair. I buy things for my hobbies that I want. I have a computer for my work. All these things, including mileage at 40p (80 cents a mile) are chargeable against tax. At the top tax rate of 40% plus NI this is a considerable saving. Without my website I would still be doing all these things but unable to charge them against tax.
Another benefit that needs to be included in the equation is that there is no daily travel to the office. Time and cost saved.

[annej]

It's great when your business is your hobby too. I keep thinking I should branch out to more topics but they wouldn't be as much fun.

[timwestla]

If you take your monthly earnings, and divide by the number of hours you work on your site, what kind of hourly wage do you come up with?

Also, don't forget to factor in the amount of money we would be spending on our hobbies that cost us money instead of make money.