While it may seem impressive to earn $1,000, $5,000 or even $35,000 a month from your blogging efforts, I feel that the raw number can be a crude way of judging the “success” of your blog and will not be as meaningful as using other metrics.

A more significant statistic is to determine your average revenue per unit (ARPU) or income earned per visitor.

For example, if you have 100,000 visitors and your blog earnings are $5,000 and you compare it against a smaller blog with 35,000 visitors and earnings of $4,000. Which is better?

Let’s skip the superficials $5,000 versus $4,000 for the moment and look at ARPU. For the large blog, ARPU is $5,000 divided by 100,000 or 5 cents per visitor, while the smaller blog’s ARPU is 11.4 cents.

The smaller blog is twice as effective at generating income as the large blog and though it trails the large blog in terms of total readership, I’ll go one step further to say that assuming you’re not a casual or hobby blogger and you’re blogging as a business, the end goal should be income generation, rather than the “generating eyeballs/impressions” game that was prevalent in year 2000 with dotcom mania.

If anything, sustainable blogs are going back-to-basics, focusing on a solid business foundation and continuous growth – all supported by a sensible business model and sustainable income generation.

If the pieces are in place, you have the makings of a profitable blog business.

For more blogging strategies and tips, check out Secret Blog Weapon.