Read Write Web Shows Glimpse Of How Much People Make In Blogs & Social Media

Read Write Web conducted a survey amongst 20 "top tier" bloggers and social media consultants (that they claim to know and trust) to find out what kind of money they make with their blogging gigs. The agreement was for RRW not to disclose their names, or companies they work for in exchange for the bloggers themselves to be honest about their earnings.

Unfortunately only 10 of the so called "top tier" bloggers responded, giving us a very small cross section of the blogging community.

"We hope that no one will be too angry with us if these numbers lead their employees to feel newly shortchanged and protest," says RWW's Kirkpatrick. "These folks are at the top of their field."

So, How Much Do Top Tier Bloggers and Social Media Consultants Get Paid? According to RRW's survey the low end of the scale was $10 per post for what respondents considered very short posts, with $25 per post being the going rate. One person said they were paid $80 per post! One respondent said they were paid $200 per item of long-form writing; bloggers often do other kinds of writing as well.

In-house/Full-Time bloggers reported annual pay rates ranging from $45k and $55k with benefits (!) up to $70k, $80k and $90k with bonuses. While Social media consultants reported hourly consulting rates from $150/hr to $300/hr or monthly rates of $2k to $4k per engagement.

The survey was limited to bloggers who write for other blogs and not blog owners which was a little disappointing. I'd like to have seen a larger cross section of the blogging world, as well as seeing a little insight into what some of the "top tier" blog owners make. But it is interesting to see some of the numbers that came out.

John Chow, created a similar post to this one on his blog. As always John is nice enough to share with his readers his monthly earnings and noted that he averaged $543 per blog post last month.