Does blogging for money work?
It depends on the amount!
How come I write about this?
A popular blogger failed at growing rich blogging.
Listen up and learn from his 6 noob mistakes!
The fake Steve Jobs and his real failure
One day a Newsweek article by the “fake Steve Jobs” [Daniel Lyons] blogger basically denounced blogging for money. Why?
It claimed that blogging is not a profitable profession.
Or in other words depicted problogging as a myth. Well, not really. It just said
you can’t make “huge amounts money” or “grow rich” by blogging.
I’m a professional blogger. It means I earned most of my money by blogging for many years.
My path to become a professional blogger was rather unique.
Unlike the fake Steve Jobs I even work as a blogger for clients!
Is professional blogging a myth?
No! Blogging can be a real job! How do I know?
I worked as a professional blogger since at least 2005.
I made a living blogging to some extent in various ways ever since!
My experience shows that it’s possible.
Also along the way I learned what works and what not.
Some bloggers grew and sold blogs for tens of thousands or even millions in mean time. It’s not common but it’s possible.
The author of the Newsweek article tried to earn money blogging as if blogs were the same as main stream media.
Blogging is different than journalism and requires a different business model.
There are many different business models out there that work, the old media copycat business model does not work apparently.
I want to outline why. Also I will tell you what works instead.
The typical blogging mistakes
The Newsweek author was blogging for huge non targeted traffic and monetization by Adsense:
It was not enough, just pocket money.
He made these 6 common blogging mistakes:
- Blogging by the dozen
- Blogging all by himself
- Blogging for huge traffic.
- Blogging for non targeted traffic.
- Blog Monetization by Adsense.
- Nothing to sell/offer
He could have done better by changing one or a few things.
Blogging by the dozen
Earning enough for a living by blogging is hard. This is a fact.
It becomes even harder when you spread yourself thin and blog for several publications.
Ideally you have just one very successful flagship blog.
The one blog must be very popular. Then it works financially as well in the best case!
Yet you can’t blog all day and night and just churn out content by the dozens.
It’s not about the sheer number of posts!
A flagship blog focuses on often few large and high value articles.
I had three or four blogs at the same time and thus none of them got my full attention.
You have to blog with a business model in mind.
“Just create great content and they will come” is not a proper one.
Then you just blog until you drop. Heart attacks happen to bloggers.
Blogging all by yourself
Most successful professional bloggers work in teams.
Solo blogs are not the norm anymore. unlike in the early days of blogging.
Either they are paid writers on group blogs by companies that pay them.
Many blogs have teams of contributors who blog for them either for free or for low pay.
Blogging for huge traffic
Monetization of huge traffic works best by CPM (cost per mille/ thousands page views) ads.
Huge untargeted traffic means people flock to a site take a short look and leave to never come back.
They especially don’t click ads.
With CPM ads they don’t have to.
Just the act of opening a web page and viewing the ad completes the required action to get paid.
Most bloggers don’t have such huge traffic.
Most people will have to aim lower. Thousands of visitors are already many for bloggers.
With Google keeping most users onsite traffic dwindles for all publishers.
Blogging for everybody
Nowadays the mass market does not work.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s in music, art or writing.
It’s all about the niche. You have to find one! You can’t just blog for everybody.
You have to find a niche and a following of people who really care!
You need a faithful audience caring for the subject and for you as an author. Ideally you get the so called 1000 true fans.
Monetizing through Adsense
Apart from the people who’d subscribe to your blog you need to write for Google, that is for search traffic.
In case you want to use metaphors as headlines it won’t work.
You have to name things. You have to use keywords and boring headlines.
In the best case you write about products, mention their names and people searching for them find your blog and buy them through your blog.
For bloggers Adsense is not the best option.
When your blog is really crappy or spammy or simply low quality Adsense might work, but for real blogs it does not.
The only way it might work is when people coming via Google search do NOT find what they seek! No joke!
Only then they click the ads hoping to find it there instead.
Nothing to sell/offer
Once you have your proverbial 1000 true fans you have to offer something of value to exactly these people.
Such an offer may be for example
- consulting
- a digital product like an ebook
- a membership forum
or anything else that might be of use to them.
These things might vary. It depends on your niche.
You could sell online courses in some niche you know well for instance.
This is not the whole story, just a short overview of the typical 6 noob mistakes when it comes to blogging for money.
Stop acting as if blogging is TV, radio or print.