Can you really make money blogging?
If you’re someone who’s into the new wave of taking your income online, creating a second source of income, or just wants to start a passion blog and make some money from that – first of all, good job.
Secondly, can you actually produce said income from a simple blog?
It does need to produce income by the way – otherwise it’s just a time sync…and what are you supposed to do? Work 20 + hours a week and NOT make money from it? Good luck.
The problem is, there are so many opinions on the internet.
Someone who gave up too early on their dream tells you “It’s all a scam, they just want you to buy their course”
I bought the course by the way, and it wasn’t a scam.
Another person says “You can make money from a blog, but most blogs don’t, and only the top 10% of blogs earn an income…”
Um, that’s the way with anything in life. It’s called the law of averages. There are requirements to be successful at a thing, and most people don’t do satisfy those requirements, so they don’t win. If you do them, you’ll win. It’s literally that brain dead simple.
And there are a bunch of other nonsensical things out there floating around the internet that can really make a brother confused about whether to start this damned blog or not!
Ever heard this crap?
- “Theres no money to be made at all”
- “Blogging is saturated, you’ll never get noticed”
- “You could be a millionaire in 12 months or less”
- “It’s not as simple as they make it sound, they just want you to buy their course‘
- “Blogging is bullshit – affiliate marketing, ecomm, and influencing don’t work anymore”
- “Only meta bloggers make money (bloggers who teach bloggers how to blog)
- “Stop getting caught up in the six figure blogger hype. Here’s the no frills truth”‘
What do you believe? Well, you wanna believe what’s true, right?
I actually blog, and I actually earn a real income from blogging. I won’t tell you how much, because frankly, that’s none of your business – and I hope you appreciate the honesty.
What I will say is that I blog full time and I quit my job just a few months after starting my blog. I made my first sale through this blog in it’s second month…of a whopping $9.99 – and sales have gone up every since then.
I make money through this blog in a very non-scam, non-sleazeball, helpful and honest way.
Can you really make money blogging? Yes. My answer is also that you will put in a serious amount of work in the beginning getting your blog off the ground, and a moderate (but pleasurable) amount of work maintaining after it becomes successful. Blogging is not dead, saturated, evaporated or whatever people say….Monetize your blog properly, put in the work, be honestly helpful and genuine, and you will see profits.
Can you really make money blogging?
Of course you can, people are doing it right now, so the question isn’t really even a question.
There is no debate as to whether you can make money blogging, because its literally a thing that’s happening right this minute. Right now, someone is making money from their blog. See where I’m going with this?
The question is – some make the money, and others don’t, so what’s the difference between the two?
How can you make money with your blog? And where is the starting point and the ending point. What are the steps in between that you need to take in order to make sure you’re in the group of successful bloggers, instead of the cry babies, who fail and then say it’s a scam.
Yes, you can make money from blogging, and people are starting successful and profitable blogs all the time.
How do people make money blogging?
Now that we know it is possible, the question becomes “How do people make money blogging?”.
Bloggers make money from their blogs through a process called monetization. Go figure.
Monetization comes in many different forms, but it will always take the form of offering goods and services to the readers who are interested.
Those readers will be in some position along the blog’s funnel, which is a very non scary word for “everyone has a varying degree of interested” in what you’re offering.
For example: people at the widest part of the funnel (the majority) are only interested in the free content they can consume. Others, are actually interested in in taking you up on your offer and paying you for it.
How exactly does that work?
Right now, you’re consuming free content on my blog. Later on I will give you an opportunity to actually get the results you’re reading about through a paid info product I’ve created.
That course will be a step by step program that will instill in you the mindset required to be a successful blogger, and also the skills and steps you should take to make real profits from your blog.
Not everyone will be ready for that, and they will simply read this post, and click off to gather more information later, and maybe in a few weeks or months they’ll finally be ready to take the plunge and go after their blogging dreams.
However, for many, that few months has already passed. They’re ready to take the leap, do the thing, and make the bank right now, and those people get the course and reap the sickening benefits of having thousands of readers per month and the same in dollars (eventually).
That’s how a funnel works – and that funnel will be monetized relative what’s appropriate to you and your blog individually.
I make most of my money from selling courses as an affiliate. It’s what I love, it’s what I prefer – there are so many wonderful self improvement course creators out there that I haven’t felt the need to make my own yet…so I just find them, take them and sell them if I think they’re good enough.
Other ways to monetize your blog are: ads, sponsored posts, affiliate marketing, ecommerce, services you offer (like coaching), influencing and partnering with other companies
Why do some people NOT make money blogging?
- Poor monetization
- No roadmap, they chose to figure out everything by themselves
- Too much trial and error – you really wanna hit the ground running and never trip up
- No desire to be the best they can be – they want big results with small effort
- Not original / not a helpful resource
- No desire to learn or grow
- Sleazy selling – only about money, not so much about helping people
- No selling at all – don’t wanna sound sleazy so they forget the product DOES help their reader get results and solve personal problems
- Crap money mindset – they think money is evil or something stupid like that
What would it take for you to make money from your blog?
You would start your blog around a central theme or topic (like finance), create a massive amount of content (at least 100 posts) in the shortest amount of time possible (anything longer than year is too long for your initial “test the waters phase”) then see your most popular content and design your blog around those sub categories (like getting out of debt, managing school loans, budgeting and budget shopping etc…).
Then you would decide what the best form of monetization is for your blog relative to what type of situation your readers are interested in paying for.
Maybe they want to buy an ebook from you for 19.19 that shows them how to finally take control of their financial circumstances.
Maybe you partner with a debt consolidation firm that pays you commission for each referral from your blog to their organization.
Or because your blog is so damned popular (debt insurance and money is a highly trafficked niche) you might be able to just put ads on your blog and make your desired income from that with no product or service at all.
Either way, your method of monetization will be based on you, your blog, and a unique fit between the two.
How long does it take to make money from blogging?
It depends, and there are several ways to look at it.
How long does it take to make any money at all? No time. I made my first sale after 30 days and with the power of some social media platforms, it can happen even faster than that.
How long does it take to make consistent money? Also depends on how much initial effort you put in right at the launch.
There are phases to blogging, and part of phase one is putting out a massive amount of content as quickly as possible (100 posts in 3 months or less if you really wanted to cook with white gas). The purpose of the massive content phase is for you to find the top 10% of those posts and find out what’s popular in your niche.
From there, you can start writing about those topics in different ways and make it the main focus of your blog.
From then on, it’s a matter of writing content about those topics, and monetizing them however is appropriate.
Google will have some lag time ranking your posts and recognizing you as a blogger, which can’t be avoided – but the action you take, how much and how quickly, is completely up to you.
If you were really serious about being successful at this and really just wanted to kick ass, you could be through phase one toward the last part of a year. Really.
Otherwise, it could take you 2 or 3 years to even see traffic if you’re a slower person. That doesn’t mean you fail, it just means you’ll take longer to see results.
What’s the easiest way to start making money from blogging right now?
As someone who’s been blogging for years now, I’ll give you the checklist I would use for myself if I could go back and do it all over again.
Decide what blog you want to start.
Are you going to create a passion project, a movement from nothing? Or are you going to start a blog that already exists and just be the best so everyone comes to you instead (like starting the worlds newest and best finance blog)?
Buy a course.
Yes I said it. The idea of tiptoeing around it almost makes me want to vomit. People are so silly with the way they see online courses. Sure, there are scams out there, but those scams are very few. It’s hard to scam people on the internet because after a while, everyone will now. A good course is a roadmap to your success. No guessing, no confusion, real experts giving real advice…its a no brainer. Find a good course – like this one, and get that money faster.
Set aside some money.
It’s not super expensive, but now that I know what I’m dealing with, I wish I would have set aside more money from tools that make blogging way easier and simpler.
Hit the ground running.
Produce as much content for your blog as quickly as humanly possible. This allows you to collect data, test the waters, see what people like and only focus one what’s getting traffic. Traffic means a human on the other end of google needed your help in that area. That’s what it’s all about.
Create a master plan ahead of time.
AS much as you’re able, see the entirety of the project at the very beginning. Make sure you know who you want to help, understand what kind of help they need. What will this blog do for you as a person?
Choose to blog about something that’s interesting to you and could be profitable. How long do you plan on taking to get this thing off the ground? How much money do you wanna make? Is that amount of money feasible from this niche?
Ask those questions and you’ll be way better off than me when I first started!
So how did I learn how to blog anyway?
I learned from create and go, Alex and Lauren who’ve created probably the most popular and successful blogging resource on the internet.
Check out my review of it here, and good luck!
