3 Things no one told you about web monetizing

For those who were following my posts chronologically, this post may seem out of place, and it is. I am posting this now to join a competition in Daily Blog Tips .

There is a huge fuss everywhere on the internet about Web Monetizing, however there are costs associated with it that I was not able to find anywhere. This post discusses 3 major costs of web monetizing and how they can contribute for your website to incur in a LOSS, instead of making you money as intended. For the sake of simplicity all my examples will be based on a blog.

Opportunity cost is the cost of something in term of an opportunity forgone (and the benefits which could have been received from that opportunity), and a blog is full of them! Here are the top 3 opportunity costs for blogs:

1. Opportunity cost of capital – Regardless the size, a blog requires some spending in order to work. You need an internet connection, a computer, webhosting, domain name, advertising budget and paid writers. Some of those are optional, such as webhosting and paid writers, however you definitely need a computer with an internet connection.

One may argument that he already has a computer and would already pay for internet connection however you are allocating part of your available computer lifetime and internet connection for blogging, thus you are using such resources for that purpose and incurring costs.

All that money could be used for a different opportunity, such as real estate investing, paying your debts, starting your own business or deposit into a savings account. It simply does not matter what you could do with your money. What matters is that such money could be generating profit in another opportunity and because it is allocated in blogging your blog has such opportunity cost of capital because you have given up making money elsewhere to have a blog and try to monetize it.

2. Opportunity cost of time – Behind a blog there is always a person, the blogger, that spends part of his time running the blog. Posting, designing, reading related blogs, managing ad and affiliate accounts are just some of the activities behind a monetized blog, and all those activities take considerable time if you add them up.

That person could better use his time for a different opportunity. He could be spending extra hours at work, starting his own business or managing investments elsewhere. Again, it does not matter. All those activities could be generating money from the time spent with blogging, thus that time has an opportunity cost of time.

3. Opportunity cost of space – Last, but not least is the space inside your blog. Each pixel you use for placing an ad has a cost associated with it. With that space you could be placing a different, more profitable ad or simply content for your blog which would add value to the blog itself and thus increasing the profit of your other ads. Therefore, even though it seems “free”, placing a Google Adsense ad block in your blog has an opportunity cost associated with it.


Those 3 costs should be added up to your tangible costs, such as your webhosting fees, advertising budget, etc for the total cost of your blog. Subtract that total from the income your monetize blog provides you and check how profitable it really is.

It’s important to say that those costs will not make it impossible to profit from a website, however web monetizing should be more carefully looked upon than it usually is.