A lot of people are afraid of blogging to earn a living. Becoming a digital nomad and making money online is a dream, but a lot of people are afraid to leap. Being an influencer isn’t easy, and most of them aren’t making more than $15,000 per year. This is actually a great salary globally speaking, especially considering these businesses are being run by people who are self-employed and began as amateurs. By American and Canadian standards however, being an influencer isn’t necessarily lucrative enough to justify doing. So who’s to say that blogging will be any different? Blogging is a slow grind, and you’re unlikely to see a lot of traction for the first few months. If you don’t have a digital product, you’ll never truly know how much money you can make from your site, because the ad revenue from 10–2000 pageviews per month is minimal. So, most people don’t understand just how lucrative blogging can be, and as such they don’t understand how to get blog traffic that converts and earns them a living.
The way blogging for a living works is pretty simple. You write articles, people read them, and you earn money as a result of people reading your blog posts. This can happen in one of several ways:
- Ads
When you make blog posts, and you own your own platform, you have the option to plaster your website in display ads. This can be done by establishing a well-trafficked website and writing a lot of interesting, search-engine-optimized articles. Making money from ads is a long grind, and you’ll likely need a lot of articles to do it. That being said, it is certainly possible, and I do think I’ll be able to do it with this blog. So far, it looks like I’m on track to get the traffic I need to do so. Getting accepted to the right ad networks usually matters a lot for the purposes of Ad revenue. Adsense doesn’t pay a lot. As a result, it’s important to do your best to keep your content clean, so that you don’t find yourself running afoul of advertisers. A high-quality ad network pays about $5–90/1000 views. This means your blog will need to earn a minimum of 10,000 views per month before you can even think of surviving on ad money.
- Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is probably the most talked-about way of making money from a blog or social media account, and that’s because it feels the easiest. When you become an affiliate for a product, you are given a special link, which tracks the customers you send to the product page. When a customer makes a purchase, you are given a commission. This commission is usually a small percentage — between 1 and 40%. It’s a great side hustle, but the higher commission rates tend to be reserved for products that are more expensive or scammy. Based on my experience, it would be hard to make money from an affiliate blog alone, but with a small team, it could be quite lucrative.
- Sponsored Posts
A sponsored post is a blog post that was commissioned by an outside customer. This could be for any reason and is usually done to promote the outside customer’s product. Different sponsored posts can net a blogger varying amounts of money. It all depends on the blogger’s audience and writing ability, along with the value of the product. Sponsored posts are a great way for some types of blogs to make money. Forbes is known for earning money this way. They have a fairly strong reputation.
- Readers buying products or services
If you create products and services, they will get attention from your readers. If your readers trust you and like your work, they’re going to buy from you. People buying products or services from you is the most lucrative way to make money online. Think about it this way. When you promote a product, whether it be as an affiliate or with a display network, you split the money with another person or company. When you sell the product, you keep all the money. Making products is tough. Writing is much easier, in my opinion. I hope to attach some products to this blog, but I still am not exactly brimming with ideas at the moment. For now, I’ll keep working hard and writing. My viewership is growing at a steady rate, and I’m beginning to master this craft. Digital products can bring in a lot of money. This survey claims you can earn $365/1000 viewers from digital products. That’s way more than it claims you can earn from the other methods. Writing a lot and getting traffic to your site is important, but creating digital products is the way you really cash in. Assuming you can match the numbers above in terms of revenue per thousand viewers, 10,000 views per month is more than a living wage.
So how can I make money blogging about my passion?
You aren’t exactly guaranteed to make money blogging about your passion. The thing is, if you can get the eyeballs to your website, you can get the money. Every view counts for at least a bit of display ad revenue. Unfortunately, many people are not able to get the necessary traffic to their websites. They don’t have the persistence and dedication to come up with a solid body of work, and they don’t have the SEO skills required to attract eyeballs from Google. If you can fix these two problems for yourself, you can make a few extra dollars. It won’t be as much as if you had created a blog about a targeted, lucrative topic, but it will be a lot more than if you had done nothing. Getting passive income is addictive and great. If you can find the work ethic to post regularly and work hard, you’re ahead of half your competition. Learning SEO is the harder part, but I have articles which discuss the topic in a more in-depth manner, and will be releasing more soon.
SEO takes about 6 months to two years to take effect. Google (along with Yandex, Yahoo, and the other search engines) likes it when new content is uploaded to the internet. If that content is left online for a few months, it’ll get search traffic. After a few years, it should rank. Just write good content about relevant keywords and this process will play out. Don’t be afraid to write about wat you want. Attention = money in today’s world.
By Rising Current on .
Exported from Medium on November 8, 2024.
