Making money in blogging?

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June Casagrande

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Seems to me that even the people who do make money off their blogs are those who started them as a labor of love and that passion plus time made them successful.

If you could provide very rare, very high-interest content (say by planting an electronic listening device in the Oval Office or capturing and publishing photos of Simon Cowell being nice to someone or something), then there's a chance that you could one day get enough traffic to make money.

But short of that, I think blogging has approximately as much get-rich-quick potential as writing poetry.

(That's a long way of saying: Try the stock market instead. Oil futures, perhaps.)
 

spacekadet

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What June said is spot on: my blog is definitely a labor of love. I'm making about $20/month on it now and it took a while to get there. But that doesn't even pay my internet bills! I'm sure I could do more to make it more profitable but don't have the time. Still, I keep it ticking along with new posts and all that. And I'd do it even if I weren't making a dime.

http://www.smarterfitter.com/blog/
 

razibahmed

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There is a lot of “serious” money in Blogging but you have to give a lot of time and effort. No one will give you the money. You will have to get it. You will have write the contents, promote them and ensure that many people come to read them in your blog. The only problem is that you will hardly find any money for the first 5/6 months despite working extremely hard. I doubt that if you can get $500 from the first month of your blogging but you can surely can get much more than that after 1 year depending on the amount of time and effort you give.
 

Ava Jarvis

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Yeah, a lot of time and effort is needed to make blogging really pay off. It took four years or so for Darren Rowse of Problogger to make enough money to support himself and his family via blogging; before that, in addition to his rapid-fire blogging, he also worked multiple part-time jobs at a time.

Which is why passion is necessary; Get Rich Quick as your only passion doesn't usually work, and anyways that slot is already taken by someone pretty big these days. (I forget his name. His blog is about other people reading his blog for money-making tips. It's very meta.)

Nevertheless, it is possible. It just takes a lot of time and patience and research and innovation and genius and creativity in phenomenal amounts and effort and sweat and blood and sacrifice.
 

MovieBlogger

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Go see Problogger and DoshDosh if you haven't already.

I'd say not to, as I think those sites give an unrealistic look at blogging.

It seems the most popular blogs, as far as earning money, are from blogs about how to earn money from blogging.

You need to have a site that generates at least tens of thousands, if not hundreds, or a million, visits a day before you can plan on earning anything from a site. That would take a few months at the least to do.

While some do quite well, the majority are lucky to make $100 a year.
 

flashgordon

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Exactly what MovieBlogger said. You can earn money, but the highest paying niches (which are already pretty saturated) are in the fields of marketing, business, mortgages, celebrities, and technology. If you are not going to write about those niches, then it will be hard to make a "lot" of money from blogging. You can, but it will take more time, more effort, and is more of a gamble. However, I'm making money from blogging and am enjoying it. It does take a lot of time and effort - especially promoting and driving traffic.
 

eScotty

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Thank you all for the valuable feedback. Very helpful. :)
 

Ava Jarvis

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I'd say not to, as I think those sites give an unrealistic look at blogging.

Not quite. Problogger is, I think, very realistic---in terms of the time scale. E.g., took him four years, and he's good at this stuff.

Plus Problogger ran a very revealing survey.

For knowledge about marketing and professional blogging, the advice is there and that's the best place to get it. Whether it all works out or not is another thing.

Another thing Darren pointed out a little while back is that blogs are relatively small, even the "top" blogs, compared to actual full websites out there. As a result, making money blogging is more difficult.
 

razibahmed

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I really cannot understand that why so many people think that blogging is a get rich quick or earn easy money type of thing. It is quite the opposite. On the other hand, I cannot figure out that why so many people think that there is no money in blogging.
The best part of blogging is that you can enter into this field without spending any money. My personal blogs are in Blogger/Blogspot and I do not have to spend any money for it. Instead, Google has given me all the things I need to publish and promote my contents and earn money. I cannot think of any other thing that I can earn money without investing a single dollar.
 

veinglory

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I agree with June. Even those that make good money probably come down to minimum wage for the first few years of development. Technorati puts my blog in the top 2% and it makes 3c a day, go figure. Of course I didn't set it up to earn, just for fun. My advice for blogging for profit would be to choose a good topic (not just popular, but under-served by existing blogs), blog daily, starting using project wonderful, after about a month add pay per post and when you have traffic add google adsense. And try to develop good content-specific affiliates and direct advertisers along the way.
 

MovieBlogger

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when you have traffic add google adsense.
I'd argue to add Google Adsense right when you start your site.

That way:

A: Everyone gets used to seeing the ads on your site. You don't want to have a blog get popular, then see adds show up while people say "Hey! You sellout!!"

and

B: Even if you have very few readers, you still get paid for people clicking on your links.
 

brc23

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What the heck does Technorati actually do? I read all about it and I have not generated any traffic from them...that I know of. I just wonder if I am doing something wrong.
 

Georganna Hancock

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But I've noticed the ads pay different amounts. Sometimes I'll only get one click a day and I'll get $.02. Other time I'll have one click and get $1.50. How does that all work? Do the companies say, "We'll pay X for each click"? Or what?

Simply designating an amount to pay for a keyword would not be cost-effective, I think. BIDDING in an AUCTION means being willing to pay top dollar (or cents) to get your ad shown at or near the top most of the time. That's the only way to get it seen.

When you, the blogger, receive $1.50 per click, it is because a higher-paying keyword is associated with that ad.

As I recall, part of the Google process for determining which ads are shown and in what order also involves the quality of the "landing page", that is, the page to which the ad links (NOT the page on which it is shown). Unless Google's changed that part, it is the advertising purchaser who determines ad placements to some degree.

It's much easier to participate in AdSense than in AdWords!
 

veinglory

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The reason to start with project wonderful is that you will makes a few cents a day on a low traffic blog, but nothing with google adsense. You swap over when the blog is more popular because project wonderful doesn;t pay out much at the top level. the reason to not run both is that readers are put off blogs with too many ads, and they load slower.

Technorati is mainly a directory and blog search engine rather than a traffic generator.
 

DTNg

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It took me two years to start earning good money through FWJ. It took three years for me to earn a profit - and that's after paying someone to write for me each month and a re-desgin.
 

Talia

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Exactly what MovieBlogger said. You can earn money, but the highest paying niches (which are already pretty saturated) are in the fields of marketing, business, mortgages, celebrities, and technology. If you are not going to write about those niches, then it will be hard to make a "lot" of money from blogging. You can, but it will take more time, more effort, and is more of a gamble. However, I'm making money from blogging and am enjoying it. It does take a lot of time and effort - especially promoting and driving traffic.

I'd add politics and weight loss to those topics, but the gist of it is you need an audience to make money and building up readership takes time. Making money from your own blog can take years (as others have already said). Some companies will pay you to blog for them and have an established customer base but you usually need to work as an unpaid blogger first to prove that you understand the blogging system e.g. blogger, typepad, wordpress
 

razibahmed

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I am perhaps lucky that I got accepted in a blog network very early and it brought me some decent amount of money in the first months of my blogging life.
 

james45

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Can anyone tell me where I can get complete free stuff about it, from start till end?

Pls don't refer books available.
 

veinglory

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It is all online but the exact strategy (and so information sources) depend on what kind of material you have or what kind of market you are trying to tap.
 

NJFoster

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Do you try make money from your site?

I subscribe to the RSS feed of ProBlogger and Darren made an interesting post on when to introduce advertising to your blog over here

So it got me thinking... do you guys try making money from your site? Whether it be through adsense, adverts, affiliate marketing or text links there are now dozens of ways to make money from your blog.

Now I don't mean are you able to make a living out of it? Indeed on my sites I have adsense and text ads up, not because I am looking to be a full time blogger (indeed I am blogging about my setting up a business) but because I hope that it will earn me enough to buy a domain name and hosting... I just like the idea of it being completely self funded.

Obviously, as with any aspect of blogging, making money takes time (I have earnt a HUGE £5 in my first 3 weeks) so I am not disheartened

But I was intrigued as to other people. Is it ALL about the love of the writing, the love of the message? Or are you interested in making your tea money from it as well, if only to give you a small sense of reward, much as comments and webstats can do?
 

razibahmed

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I am here for money as earning from blogging has been the only source of income for the last 2 years. In my country, we still do not have Paypal or any form of online transaction. So, Google Adsense is the best blessing for me.
 

silktwisteddagger

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How do you physically put adsense on a wordpress? I've tried doing it, but my blog doesn't seem to like the code. A lot of tutorials talk about plugins, but when i go to the wordpress site, it says plugins aren't allowed.
 

Ava Jarvis

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Blogging is passion first, money second (or maybe even not in the running). It's a tiring business, and if you wouldn't be there even without the money, you're doomed.

Especially the frequency of blogging needed to actually churn out the good content regularly enough so that people will visit/pay you.

I don't try to make money on any of my sites---apart from donations. "Buy me a coffee" kind of stuff, which I only put up after 6 months worth of content on my sites. I did get my first donation on my main blog yesterday---which is a very cool feeling. And it indeed could get me a cup of coffee in Seattle, WA.
 

veinglory

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I started experimenting with advertising this month. It will be interesting to see how much I can make without detriment to the main purpose of the blogs (which is to inform, or sell my own stuff).
 
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