Making money from Blogs

[Kate Rothery]

Hi all,

Someone recently said to me that I should start a blog as a good way to generate an income.

One of my family members suffers from a very rare medical condition and as a result of that I have become a bit of an expert in it over the past year or so because there was sack a lack of information or help.

I do a lot of charity events to earn a little money for the very small charity that exists, but it would be great if I could use my knowledge to generate an income that I can then direct the way of the charity. At the same time it would help people like me and my family who are looking for plain English information about the condition. Because when we needed it, all there was was very complicated medical papers that took a long time to understand

But I have no idea when it comes to creating a blog - could an income be generated from the kind of blog I am suggesting? And how would that even work?

I’d be really grateful for anyone who might be able to offer some advice. If it doesn’t seem realistic then maybe I will just stick to cake sales and fun runs!!

Kate

 

[japancool]

How rare is very rare? The rarer it is, the smaller your potential audience.

 

[Chawton]

And not mutually exclusive to cake sales and fun runs in any event.

 

[fisicx]

Blogs make money from advertising. But to make anything more than a few pounds needs thousands of visitors every month.

 

[WaveJumper]

I don’t know about blogs, but my son works with several social media types, yes you can earn a lot of money from YouTube etc, but you need a massive following and it’s all about content, content, and then even more content

 

[fisicx]

Same with blogs. You need to keep churning out blog posts day after day after day.

 

[Financial-Modeller]

Sounds like a great idea @Kate Rothery

Not my area of expertise, but is there a platform / app / way for charities to promote content providers, whose content is then consumed, with any income directed to the charity?

If not, perhaps someone on here can make it happen?

 

[John Hemming]

What @fisicx says. There are systems for selling advertising clicks, but getting any material return is quite difficult.

 

[Washington]

My suggestion would be to look on Youtube for info. There are lots of 'Bloggers' on there who earn income from their efforts and many who will share on their Blogs/Vlogs how they generate income from their channels. The successful ones seem to have to create an awful lot of content over a long period of time to build subscribers and viewers to generate income

Add to your channel Cake Sales and Fun Runs and you may get your viewer count (therefore advertising revenue) up

 

[MattRumbelow]

In my experience, the biggest benefit of a blog is to drive organic traffic to a website. So, for instance, in the blogs I write for Safepoint, the goal is to write relevant, helpful content that hits all the SEO markers. The value comes from the increase in traffic coming from that article.

In the past, we've been able to see the value from these sorts of articles and have paid people to write 'guest articles' if they have a specific knowledge set. If you provide proof that you know a lot about this topic (articles on your own site) I couldn't see why you wouldn't be able to 'sell' similar ones to relevant organisations. Quite a long route, but it's the typical route for making money, from what I've seen. (There are also ways of inserting trackable links in your own pieces that, if clicked, might make some money for you.)

 

[Elliot Green]

You need a lot of traffic to make any serious money out of a blog. Content would need to be very good.

 

[Ryan Paul]

I'd start with a short daily vlog on the socials and take it from there.

You could also setup a JustGiving page, and do a sponsored walk/run.
Eg. A target of 25km a week for 8 weeks and record short video vlog during or at the end of each run itself explaining to viewers why you are committed to doing it; (To raise awareness and highlight issues of the condition).

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

This is very last year even I know this

now it is all about video and using this to drive to a site
More to follow on this subject

 

[UKOnlineServices]

Are there any products related to the medical condition?
Blogs can earn in a couple of ways. One is display advertising, that means selling part of the viewport to advertisers. This will bring you money if you have large volume of traffic. That's not likely for new blogs and ultimately depends on the subject and quality of content you post.
Second option to make money is getting paid for publishing links to other websites, be it by writing your own posts with links to someone elses website or publishing posts written by them and sent to you. If your blog is well established, this method can bring you some money, but it is likely to compromise the quality of your blog.
The third method I know is affiliate marketing, which I think could fit in your situation best. The way it works is you agree with an online retailer to sell their products on comision. Then you just mention them in your posts and publish a link provided by the merchant. That way anyone who goes to the online store via your blog and makes a purchase will earn you some %.

 

[Alan]

As above, multiple ways of earning from a blog, but in my experience the revenue is
- hardest to generate when from advertising
- a bit better when affiliate marketing - niche is good here
- a lot better when selling your own product(s) - niche is good

So if you can find some products to sell that are directly related to your message - that are 'niche' then I would say create blog to drive traffic to the selling site.

So is there something that those suffering from that medical condition, or their carers, need but is not too mainstream, that you could become a distributor of?

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Why would a person pay to read your information when no doubt there are other ways to gain the knowledge after all medical information is normally GIVEN for free

 

[sharabela]

Making money from blogs is certainly possible. You need to create good content, and do SEO so that you get a good number of visitors every month. You may have to invest time towards it to be able to generate a good income from it.

 

[Chris Hanson]

To create a blog is simple to make money from it is difficult.
There are lots of examples of genetic conditions like PKD, Dysplasia and the rest on the internet and what people find most comforting is that people are not on their own with the condition by adding simple content like a daily diary.
Once you have established a group of similar carers you can bounce ideas off each other to create your funding activities.

 

[Aniela]

Why would a person pay to read your information when no doubt there are other ways to gain the knowledge after all medical information is normally GIVEN for free

There will always be people that will pay for information that can be found free elsewhere.

Especially when it comes to medical stuff.

 

[Kate Rothery]

Why would a person pay to read your information when no doubt there are other ways to gain the knowledge after all medical information is normally GIVEN for free

Because it is a rare condition and the existing information is either in very long and complicated medical research papers, or in user friendly guides that are not accurate. But I think I have answered my own question - if its this rare, I guess no-one will be interested