Forget About Making Money From Your Blog

Blogging February 1, 2010 8 Comments




Making Money BlogsI read a lot of blogs form around the world on a daily basis as part of my job and one thing that I see a lot are people who are fascinated by trying to make money from their blogs. The vast majority of bloggers do it as a labour of love and most are passionate about their niche but what amazes me are the amount of people trying to make a living out of their corner of the web. There are hundreds of sites that feature tips on how to make money fast online, how to be a professional 6 figure blogger and so on and many have huge active communities of people trying to tap in to the secret that these blogging gurus claim to be revealing. The simple fact of the matter is that there are very few people making money from blogging and the people who do are either ridiculously talented at what they do or are the blogging coaches themselves who claim to be imparting some amazing money making knowledge while actually charging you to share it.

The Get Rich Easy Dream

The problem with the internet is that we have all seen the success stories of people making buckets of money while sitting back and leading the easy life. No dream appeals more to people than setting something up online and making money from it while they sleep. The quick win. People really do believe that it is that simple and that is the single reason why so many people are drawn to try and make money through blogging and the internet in general. Believe me it is not one little bit easy. For every one successful blog or website out there making a living there are 1000s who don’t make a penny. Building an audience and community takes time and skill and can’t be done over night. If you think you can make enough to live through your blog or even to fund some luxurious lifestyle then you are completely wrong, it just doesn’t work like that.

Forget The Ads, They Are Ugly

One of the first things that will put me off a blog or make me leave in a hurry are Google ads. I don’t know what it is about them but the cheapen the look of the whole site and something goes off in my head telling me that this blog is about the money rather than the content. It’s just a minor perception thing but it is the way my brain works and always will. To generate cash from Google ads you need to be turning some serious traffic volume so why tarnish all other possible revenue streams just for the sake of a few $ here and there?

The Benefits Are Indirect

Showing clients and the general public the benefits of blogging is very tough at the start. Sure you can tell them the SEO benefits that your site will experience and you can talk to them about building themselves up as experts in their field and gaining credibility in their niche but those things take a lot of time. It is a hard sell. For the first 3 months you are probably not going to see anything in return. No new business, little traffic, no comments, no interaction with your readers and certainly no revenue. 3 months is a very long time for a business not to be seeing any results from a huge amount of effort being exerted to create good original content and although I would advise people to stick with it I can 100% see why people would give up. The benefits do come indirectly, we often get business through this blog but it is very rarely a case of somebody finding an article and calling the number and asking us for a quote, the sales funnel (apologies for the nerdy speak) is a lot more in-direct and will often involve several visits to the blog, a couple of comments, some interaction on Twitter and possibly a couple of emails. Basically what I am saying is do not blog and expect to see an instant increase in your bottom line related to the amount of posts or traffic you get because it certainly does not work like that.

How Do I Make Money From My Blog

Starting off with that intention is tricky but if you are determined to make money there are some simple rules that you can follow. Write about something you are passionate about. Write often and make sure it’s amazing content, the best you can possibly write. Find a niche and stick to it. Forget about ads or building huge traffic. Forget about making anything for the first 6 months. Build a service around your blog on a relevant topic (hairdressing, gardening, cooking or whatever you love). Build up a community no matter how small and look after and engage with them. If you look at the biggest blogs in the world from politics to sports they are written by people who were passionate about their chosen subject and wrote passionately about it for a long time before they started making a penny. I would imagine very few of those successful bloggers ever set off with the intention of making lots of money from their blogs, their passions just shone through and it happened naturally.

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