Many people when I tell them about Performancing.com are interested in making an income from blogging. The idea of sitting in your underpants writing about something you enjoy and making money at it certainly is an attractive one. Inevitably though people ask me if anyone can do it. My answer is a qualified ‘yes’ …
Such a strange thing to say from someone who spends their days promoting the idea of Professional Blogging right? Why not “absolutely yes”, why the caveats?
While anyone has the potential to make money out of blogging a great many people never will. Just like any business, most bloggers don’t last out their first year. There are many reasons for this, primary factors being
- It’s hard work – Most people are ready to put the hard work in at the start, give it a couple of months, especially now the sun is starting to make an appearance and the lure of spending time doing anything but blogging can defeat them. You have to put the hours in. Yes, *hours*. This can be particularly difficult if you have to hold down a job and family life at the same time.
- You don’t get instant rewards – I hope we have never given the impression blogging is a way to instant riches, it isn’t. The rewards come months down the line after building traffic, reputation and reader involvement steadily day by day. When the rewards do start coming they appear as a trickle not a torrent. You need to keep your eye on the goal.
- There is more to it than just writing – but blogging is all about writing, right? Blogging is indeed about writing but a professional blogger, or any blogger who wants readers, has to do more than just write. You have to put your blog and yourself out there, communicate with people where they are and not expect them to magically know about you. You need to get links. There is also a large aspect of the salesman in a pro blogger. If you do just want to write, consider joining a blog network where they do all the sales and promotion stuff for you.
- Sometimes you have to act out of character – many of you will have read that “sales” word and shuddered. I feel the same way, while some people like Nick have a personality or motivation where they can do sales, many of us struggle with it. If you are going to have access to money streams other than the passive Adsense et al you will need to brace yourself and get selling. That means sponsorships, advertiser relationships, affiliate schemes and your own products. Selling and self promotion is not something every writer is comfortable with but you have to do it or you are limiting your income potential.
- Money doesn’t come easily – yes many people make a good deal of money out of adsense, and good luck to you if your adsense income is enough. A lot of bloggers get disheartened when they don’t see big amounts coming from adsense so give up. After optimising your adsense you need to start going out and getting the cash in yourself. You need something on offer over and above your blog posts. The most natural progression from content to product for many bloggers is to package up your content and sell ebooks, courses and audio. Then there are things like merchandise through companies like cafepress. Think of what your readers might be interested in buying and find a way to provide it.
Anyone could make money from blogging but only a percentage of people actually go all the way and succeed. Critical to success is having staying power, not being defeated by minor setbacks, being willing to put yourself out there and put in the hard work. If you stick to it and can do all those things then yes, I am sure anyone can do it.
powered by performancing firefox
21 thoughts on “Can Anyone Make Money From Blogging?”
Another man complained that it wasn’t as much about the money, but the promise that he didn’t need to have any internet experience to be successful. I couldn’t find one satisfied buyer. There are many websites which solely in dedicated to Jeff Paul as a scam artist.
Ahmed: cheers, mate. I sold most of my network to Ryan and he’s already turned around several of them. I still have about 8 sites, so I’ll chat with you privately about a reboot The ones I’m worried about are the ones that earn more TLA than adsense, given that Google isn’t gaga over them, and may be buying Feedburner (TLA/Feedvertising RSS ads may be next to be attacked.) I’m sure other bloggers are worried: If I lose my TLA income, that leaves me a paltry $30-55/m in adsense, and since they won’t pay up until $100, I’ll have no ad income cash flow most of the time. On the other hand, affiliate marketing isn’t as easy as some people imply. Is it?
I agree with Sire
Combine AdSense with affiliate products, maybe selling a couple of your own products and paid blogging gigs, and yea, $500-$1k per week is possible.
Raj, that offer to get your network of sites working and earning ton loads of money is still up – or do you want a blog reboot for it 😛
@Sire: Very nice. Congratulations. Care to divulge for the community how you are doing this? Good luck to your goals.
You can make a lot more money from blogging than just adsense. I’m averaging $300 a week and last week alone made $400. I’m aiming for $500 per week by the end of the year.
To maximise the amount of money you make the best thing to do is optimise your current income stream then add new ones, but also extend that to blogs, the more blogs you can manage successfully in diversified niches the better chance of earning a good income.
But from what people have said, determination, talent and a desire to to see your blog work for you are clearly qualities that move it in your favour…
You don’t know what kind of status you will reach by blogging. One day it may pay off and you will make money out of the blogging world due to blogging. Just a thought, people may disagree.
Tahir
>>Technically, the answer to this question is yes.
>> Anyone could possibly make money from blogging
Everyone can earn some ( or maybe a lot) of money by blogging, but the most people dont know anything about it !!!
I just see that you (also) mention the link to Steve Pavlinas article. That really long article is worth reading … I just stumbled upon it and created an extra ‘bookmark post’ for it 🙂
“I want you here because I want you to do something for me” – too right Kim. Funnily enough, people keep on wondering what sinister motives we have at performancing because they can’t find what we want people to do for us, hah.
Thanks for the links Raj, Darren and Steve make some excellent points, well worth reading both of them.
Well, the answer to Chris’ actual question is still YES. But the question for which the answer is NO is “Will Everyone Make Money From Blogging?” Unfortunately, the answer is NO, for the reasons that Chris, Darren, and Steve mention recently.
“Supermom in NY” has the right idea when she mentions defining goals. It’s not very hard to tell what a blogger’s goals and priorities are. Often its what they don’t have in the blog that’s the most telling – like original content, for example. I don’t consider many blogs to be actual blogs. They are just web sites whose owners found free software and free templates to do their bidding.
“Get Rich Quick” is not a goal that is reader or customer service oriented. It’s self-serving, and readers aren’t stupid. They know when the blogger cares about them because a good blogger shows appreciation and courtesy for their reader. One of the ways they do this is to NOT use the reader for any purpose. If I pick up on a “I want you here because I want you to do something for me” signal in a blog, its like offering me a drink and expecting me to go back to your room later.
I really only want the damned drink.
Technically, the answer to this question is yes. Anyone could possibly make money from blogging. The actual answer, however, is more along the lines of Absolutely not!
The bar of entry in the the realm of blogging is so low, virutally anyone with access to the internet could start one, I would argue that most cannot make money from blogging.
My Blog, Eat4Today is very new. But, I am interested in eventually making some money with it. So, I’ve had Amazon ads from the beginning, just as a place holder — it would be nice if people clicked on them and bought something (they don’t yet) But I’m not ready to spend time optimizing them.
But since they’ve been there from the beginning I don’t think it will be too controversial when I do start making them more visible.
It’s entirely a matter of whether you have the discipline. Just like a musician, will you be world class, top end performer worth millions, or simply a bedroom wizard?
My brother, who owns his own advertising business (i.e., all marketers are liars), told me yesterday, “No one wants to hear the truth.” But I’m stubborn. The truth is, there is no easy way to riches in life except to be born into it.
If you want a different metaphor for blogging, think of this activity as being similar to playing a musical instrument. It’s really hard at first, and you make a lot of mistakes. But you learn more efficient ways of doing something, and it just seems to get easier. Eventually, if you do a lot of things right and are proactive about your plans, you’ll make some money. Question is, will you do enough things right?
You have to really watch what and how your content effects your readers, what products create income and which ones don’t. (That’s when performancing metrics comes into play.)
I broke down the amount of money I made at my previous employment by day. I set a goal of trying to make at least that amount of money 5 days a week, just as if I was at a 9 to 5. I write down exactly what works and what doesn’t. It’s important to write down your goals and keep track of them. It’s also imperative that you track what actions you take and how that effects your income, so you can repeat the luctrative measures.
It is time consuming, but I believe that in the end I won’t regret it. With 7 kids, a 9-5 is very difficult to keep. Blogging gives me flexibility and is an outlet for my creativity.
some people, after failing at blogging, turn to content-scraping and start putting up MFA junk sites at the rate of 10 a week and start spamming sites and blogs to get links and what not. Splogging is a direct consequence of people failing to find the easy way to riches through blogging.
Those who aren’t prepared just fall by the wayside. That’s fine. If they don’t understand the rules of the game and don’t bother to find out. I still love just seeing people come to my site – but I’d also love to see the money start coming in. I’m learning something new every day about SEO and even the topic I write about. I’m developing it more, and trying to overcome hurdles on the way. Yes, blogging (pro blogging even more so) can be hard work, but there’s a lot of pleasure to be had – and money no doubt.
People are rarely self-motivated enough to work every day without a boss. For some it comes naturally, but others just won’t get the work done.
Plus, how many people have the patience required to wait for the months necessary to build traffic and an income?
Comments are closed.