How Much Revenue Share is Too Much?

Everybody either wants to be a blog celebrity overnight or they want to make money via blogging. Hence, a large number of blogs with keywords; blogging, money, make more money, create money, generate money and the list goes on and on about…money. It’s not committing a cardinal sin to blog for money and to be proud of it.

But once your ego upgrades your level of personality, you’re a whole different person without realizing it. I was inspired a couple of days ago by Su Ann’s (Quaintly.net) entry; Being A Blogger Does Not Make You King Of The World. It wasn’t her strong opinionated personality which gave birth to this but the fact of how bloggers have changed their personality after becoming famous or gained celebrity status.

These celebrity bloggers or ‘diva’ bloggers became over demanding and started pushing their weight around. All because they can now breathe the word, I am a celebrity. And mind you, it’s not the word ‘blogger’ which relates to your status. The blogger word is more like a profession. Kind of like saying; famous actress. To me, the moment you start blogging for money you are applying for a job. Just that it’s in the comfort of your home behind a monitor and keyboard.

But I want to talk about the proposed Nuffnang revenue share program they wanted to implement.

I was unclear about the mentioned Nuffnang ‘revenue share’ program so I decided to personally ask Timothy (Nuffnang co-founder) to explain it to me. He wrote in his email:

For the revenue share.

That’s our split with the bloggers.

Basically like… for every 1 dollar we get from the advertiser, 60-70 cents goes to the blogger and the rest goes to nuffnang to pay our bills.

I’m not any good with maths but let’s say a blogger participating in this program earns RM2000 per month. A 30% cut of his RM2000 would be approximately RM600. Personally, it does sound a lot albeit my earnings are not even near that. But come to think about it, we only have a handful of personal bloggers earning RM2000 per month from one provider.

So let’s say an average blogger consistently is getting RM50 per month. We cut out 30% is RM15 leaving RM35 for the blogger’s spending. If Nuffnang has 10,000 members then that’s RM150,000 per month.

That sure is a lot of money even if I paid RM2000 to 10 employees in Kuala Lumpur minus the recurring bills like hardware rental if any. But I don’t want to jump the gun because:

1. I don’t know what blogger is the program aimed at – maybe celebrities only.
2. I don’t know what is the cost of running Nuffnang.
3. RM2000 per person is only if all employees hold 1 position.
4. I have no idea how many bloggers actually earn RM50 per month.
5. Tim did honestly tell me he’s forking out his own bills now.

In general, I’d believe this is a great business idea to support Nuffnang’s employees, its bosses, its necessary spending (events and etc) and to leave enough each month in the case of a drought during the business.

However, it’s the Malaysia conventional culture that for every penny you give you want something more in return or just don’t want to give it. To be honest, a 30% cut for revenue share is quite a lot of money. However, if I’m not blogging full-time and have other sources of revenue than RM15 is not really a lot to give back to Nuffnang.

Heck, even insurance premiums today cost 10 times more than that. And besides, out of the 10,000 bloggers I bet only a quarter are consistently earning RM50 per month.

But how much would you share if you got RM50 per month?

[tags]Nuffnang, revenue share, celebrity blogger, diva blogger[/tags]