Making money from blogging, recommended?

[skeating89]

Gooood evening

Ok so i am looking at mini ways to start generating funds which will go towards my bigger picture!

I have come across blogging. I will need a domain name and web hosting and I have read about word press.

I would like to ask you 'genius's' your honest opinion, is it worth while, how does one make money and typically how much can one earn?

Many thanks,

Sarah

 

[jdbcomputing]

Most people use adsense or casually throw in affiliate links. Without a large amount of traffic you don't make very much at all, especially given most people don't like clicking ads.

 

Content is king. Content is king because to make money you need to display a LOT of adverts, and to display those adverts you need a lot of page views. To get the page views you need visitors and those visitors will only come if there is something they want to see, so your content has to attract users.

So it all depends what your blog would be about. A personal blog where you chatter about your own life is not going to make money. If you can come up with something popular or quirky you have a chance but to make serious money you would need to be blogging on a topic that would attract thousands and thousands of visitors.

 

[sarahjohs]

Making money out of a blog is easier said than done. Like the above comments say, you must have something unique about your blog that draws many readers. This must also be useful content that would make businesses want to give you advertising deals. Good blogging requires good language and writing skills teamed with the ability to provide insightful knowledge that people don't come across everyday. It also takes a long time to get popular enough to have businesses advertise. This said, if you want to money writing for blogs and such things online, you could consider "Content Writing".

Good luck!

 

[fisicx]

Sarah,

Can you write 600 words of winning copy every day and do you have the skills to idetify topics and themes that people want to read about?

Have you got the tme and energy to promote your blog and pull in relevant and income generating advertisers?

Yes of course it's possible but it can take years to build up your blog to the point when you will be earning more from writing than you would serving burgers at the local takeaway.

 

[MortifiedCow]

Blogging is, in itself, a pretty terrible business model.

But most people who "make money from blogging" don't make their money from throwing up a few Adsense ads. They use a blog as a sales funnel for another product, a way of building an email list, a starting point for building a membership community, or establishing expertise to get speaking gigs.

If you look at top-tier bloggers like Pat Flynn, JD Roth, Steve Kamb and Chris Guillebeau, you'll see that they make very little money from their blogs - their blogs just give them the credibility and audience to go on and do other things.

(Also, all the top-tier bloggers talk about how they were pushing out content into the void for the first nine months. It's a long-term play.)

So if you've got a cause or passion or business idea or want to rally an underserved group around a common cause, I'd recommend starting a blog to anyone. But if you start a blog "to make money", you'll almost certainly give up in a few months when you're still only getting 3 readers a day.

 

[shpangle]

What a coincidence, I have just received an email from someone wanting to guest post on my blog, in exchange they offered me a $10 cup of coffee. hmmm I thought, I don't drink coffee just tea....

 

[webgeek]

For every person earning a 'decent' amount from their blogging efforts, there's 100 or 1000 that tried and didn't make enough to cover their domain renewal, let alone their hosting costs as well.

1) Think about what it is you love doing and being around.

2) Find a product or service to sell or resell.

3) Build a site dedicated to that, and contribute to it every day

Return to step 2, rinse, lather, repeat.

 

[WickITServices]

I agree with Mortified Cow above. My weekly blog posts primarily serve to keep my business in the mind of clients and potential clients and build the business reputation generally.
It can be quite hard to come up with something engaging and valuable once a week so I imagine writing a blog to earn money would actually be considerably more difficult than just setting up a wordpress site and typing 800 words a day.

 

[darren atkinson]

Blogging is like anything in life, if you are committed and put in the time and effort and treat it like a 'proper' business then you have a chance of making a success of it.

In my opinion most blogs fail because the founders start it thinking its going to be an easy way to make money, as most people here will tell you there is no easy way to make money whether it be through blogging or any other venture (online or not!).

For some blogging inspiration though check out this: http://boostblogtraffic.com/make-money-blogging/ - A really inspirational post from a very inspirational guy.

Darren

 

[MikeJ]

'genius's'

Are you sure a writing career is for you?

 

[jane p]

i am constantly confused about blogging. I have a facebook group but not a blog and dont undersrtand whether I need one or it would add any income?

 

[darren atkinson]

i am constantly confused about blogging. I have a facebook group but not a blog and dont undersrtand whether I need one or it would add any income?

I think the OP is mainly talking about starting a blog with the sole intention of running it as a business, whereas you seem to be talking about adding a blog to your existing business (if I'm reading you correctly?)

For an existing business a blog probably won't generate any direct income but the indirect benefits can be really valuable, things like establishing yourself as an authority in your area of business, talking about how customers can use your products better or more efficiently, these can all help with your conversion rates.

This is exactly what I did on my ecommerce site and the results have been massively positive to say the least, I wrote about my experiences of blogging alongside my business here: http://www.ecommerceblog.co.uk/increase-your-organic-traffic-by-22-start-blogging/

I hope that helps a little?

Darren