Blogging for Money? Don’t Quit Too Soon!
I started this blog last July. I had done some blogging before, but not really with the intent of making any money. Back in those days, it was considered a way of keeping in touch with people and not a way to make money in and of itself.
Then, I discovered John Chow’s blog and downloaded his eBook. At the time, he was making a little over $12,000 per month on his blog. So, I figured, hey, I’ll give that a try. I was looking for different ways of increasing my income and, even if I could get a tenth of that, that’s still a pretty good deal.
I wasn’t the only one with that idea either. When I was starting this blog, I met a lot of people that were just starting out too. Many of them had the same hopes.
And a good number of those bloggers aren’t around today. Their blogs, if they are still online, sit still like a modern day ghost town. The meal is still on the table, hasn’t been touched. Where did everyone go?
One can never be sure whether they found their riches elsewhere, or just gave up on blogging. I’d venture to guess perhaps more likely the latter than the former as I’m reasonably sure if I won the lottery or something, you’d see a post here advising you of the same.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re starting an eCommerce site or a bricks & mortar business or a blog, you have to give it time. Too often, I think people quit too soon. Sometimes that may be understandable; if you run out of money, for example, you just can’t keep going on. But, in many cases, it’s not that people have run out of money; it’s that they don’t see the dollars coming in as quickly as they hoped.
We’re not all John Chow. Not every blogger is going to make over $300 their first month. Most won’t even make a few pennies. Even if you read and re-read every page of John’s eBook, things still take time. Even though everything is laid out for you, it will still take you time to really get a feel for blogging and really get into it. Some people may do so sooner than others, but for others it will take longer.
And, even if you get into the swing of things quickly, it will still take time to get your blog noticed. Some may be lucky or skilled enough to get their blog noticed quickly and start getting traffic early on. With others, it will take longer. But, you cannot expect to get thousands of readers overnight. Even if you get an article stumbled or dugg, you can’t expect all those readers in that burst of traffic to become regular readers.
Early on, I wrote a lot of posts. I had posts with a lot of backlinks. I had posts that were stumbled. And, I also had contests and other such things to build traffic. I ended up spending tens of dollars and taking in a dollar here and there. Last year, I made a total of $5.25 blogging. That’s less than $1 per month. And, if you count the amount of money I spent in ads and contests, I lost money blogging.
Last month, I made over $16 blogging. That’s more than three times what I made last year blogging! That isn’t taking any expenses into consideration, but $16 for a month is certainly better than $5.25 for a year.
The added bonus is that the more you make, the better you can determine what is making you money and the better able you are to take advantage of it. For example, that $5.25 was all over the board last year. I had a couple dollars through the Buy Me a Soda plugin and the rest a miscellaneous batch. Hard to make any type of determination as to how to increase your income when you don’t have a good grasp of what gets you that income.
But, with the $16 I made last month, I know what accounted for it. That additional knowledge is something I can use to work toward increasing my blog income. That’s something I did not have last July. That’s something I did not have last year! Now, I do.
If I had thrown in the towel and quit, I wouldn’t have made that $16. I would be among those saying that you just can’t make money blogging. It’s not the $16 that’s so exciting (though it is exciting to triple your last year’s gross income in a single month!), but the fact that I know how I made that $16.
That’s why you cannot quit too soon. You have to keep at it. Even though you may sometimes feel like you’re just spinning your wheels, you have to keep twirling away. What works for someone else isn’t necessarily going to work for you, but you have to keep going in order to discover what will work for you.
As always,
Believe. Act. Achieve!
Good post, this is so true. I started in August or September last year and almost dropped the ball more than once. Sticking to it has definitely brought rewards that I otherwise would not have had.
Unfortunately, the notion of instant success is so deeply implanted in our culture that the myth is believed to be reality. It’s almost like hope trumps fact. So many people drop out and see the reality, but they still hope that they can make millions in a month. The hard work ethic is out the door for most people and I don’t get it.
I think part of it is that “overnight success” makes such a great story. But, while some people may find success “overnight,” stories (and especially retellings of those stories) generally overlook (or lose) the long struggle that happened before that success.
“Overnight success” just isn’t exciting to hear about if the preceding story is about how the person’s family life fell apart, lost their home and were living in a van down by the river and were contemplating jumping into that river when the big check arrived in the mail.
Re Pete’s comment . . . I suspect the only way to make millions in a month is to be a day trader on Wall Street. Even mafia hit men don’t get paid so well. Owning a company that makes munitions or sends mercenaries to Iraq, that’s a good gig, too. The rest of us work for a living
Or you could be a movie star, but there aren’t a lot of openings and it’s not easy to get into.
I took me nine months to make $100 in Adsense revenue.
But getting $100 in my bank account was kind of cool- the weird part is I
make more $$$ on websites I don’t update and that just sit there.
High volume traffic is the key though-
when my husband blogged, he had 2 or 3 blog posts make front page digg. We had 16,000 visitors in on day and it crashed our servers, that’s what made us move everything of our own servers. Anyway on each of those diggs he made $16-$23 for each day. If someone sustained that sort of volume then they would make a little cash from Adsense- I imagine.
Took me a year to get my first AdSense check. The second one has been taking a lot longer.
I think blogs that are in the money making/affiliate marketing niche tend to make more money than a broad spectrum non-niche blog, even if they have low traffic. It’s simply because of the type of readers that frequent them. Also, I think John Chow is notorious for inflating his earnings - it’s part of his mystique. If he made only $200.00 one month, he certainly wouldn’t mention it. When someone says they’re making $30,000 per month, I want proof. It’s much like the ridiculous late nite infommercials promising millions. Most of them are full of it and blatantly lie.
I think it will be difficult to ever make any real money with the blog I currently have because it is so non-niche. I write about anything and it has no particular focus. Look at Court Tuttle’s blog. He didn’t start making any real money until he reached 50,000 page views per month. That’s a ton of traffic, which is reflected in his Alexa Stats. I believe that straight up affiliate marketing is extremely difficult to make money with. If it were easy, every Tom, Dick and Harry blogger would be rich. The ones who really do make money, work endlessly…all day long. When they get big enough, they hire a writing staff and so forth. The idea that someone can put in a few hours per wek and make a killing is a pipe dream achieved by only a few. I think it takes a lot of hard work, a great deal of knowledge and endless pursuit. I’m in this thing for the long haul and learn more every day. It’s fun and interesting, so I plan on making some money on the Internet. We are on the ground floor!!!!
That’s why I’m spinning out some blogs from this one. You can hit a good topic, but then the next topic can cancel that out or confuse AdSense and deliver way off-topic ads. It really does work best to have a consistent topic. But, I’ll likely continue using this one for an eclectic mix of topics as I do!
Well, I think this blog as well as mine are basically fun personal blogs; however, they have a lot of power. They are good to have to provide yourself a link for one. They can also be used to promote your other sites. The way I see it, it’s great to have a personal site because it builds friendships and tons of contacts. Anything you do online has a collective effect. Some business bloggers consider a personal blog to be a waste but I disagree completely. The more people you know the better off you’ll be.
Of course, I already know that any niche site I have will probably not have the same readers or audience as Revellian.com. Nonetheless, I have built a good rapport with other bloggers and need a place to just have fun and write about anything. I’ve also thought about slowly morphing my blog with a business slant - not changing too much, but including a little more about making money, affiliates and so forth.
Excellent post. I started last July, too, with big dreams of big paychecks. But I kind of let the monetizing aspect slide while I concentrated on writing good content and getting a nice readership. Now I’m slipping a few ads back in, and we’ll see what happens. There are so many monetizing options, you really do have to be patient, try different things, and see what works for you.
I’m glad you’re still around!
I’m glad you’re still around too!
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