Who hasn’t dreamt of living by the beach or moving to another country to begin their best life? Yep, I’ve had that dream too. And Just five short years ago, I began a journey that would change my life and my family’s life forever.
It is not technically difficult to make money from a blog, but it will take hard work, discipline, and commitment to make a blog successful.
In this post, we’ll look at how difficult it is to start a blog, what it takes, and the rewards you can expect, including how long it might take you to earn your first dollar. Buckle up!
But Isn’t Blogging Dead?
Some say blogging is dead; it’s not! That said, video is a far more engaging media and is experiencing the most online growth these days. But video making is a different skill set from writing a blog.
You may have a favorite YouTube channel, but you are far less likely to have a favorite blogger. Blogging was like that initially, but it has evolved into a far more transactional type of media. While you may like to spend time and hang out as it were with your tribe on YouTube, most folks don’t consume websites that way anymore.
And that, I suppose, was one of the first valuable lessons I learned about blogging. Successful blogging is about writing helpful answers to the questions folks have and not about writing whatever the writer feels like writing about.
Folks care less about our opinion, they want the meat and potatoes of what they asked, and they want it quickly. Satisfy that need, and you’ll be on your way to successful blogging.
My Blogging Journey
I started life as a mechanic and moved into construction just in time for the financial crash, which meant I had to return to being a mechanic. That was a difficult time but a time of great personal growth.
While I wasn’t an avid reader of any particular blogs or YouTube channel, I was like most folks using both in my daily life to solve life’s little problems.
You know what I mean, stuff like – How to fix a dripping faucet or When is the best time to plant tomatoes? Not exactly exciting; it’s life.
In the spring of 2015, while planting tomato seeds, I thought to myself. Who writes the answers to all these questions? and more to the point – Why would they write them?
My blogging journey began because I asked myself these two questions.
Today I own several successful blogs, I’ve taught family members and friends to blog, and it has changed their lives too.
How To Make Money From a Blog?
Making money from a blog is pretty simple. There are many ways to make money from blog traffic, but here we will cover the top three ways most bloggers earn an income from their blogs.
- Advertising
- Affiliate income
- Subscription model
Advertising
Advertising is one of the most reliable forms of income you can earn. It requires little to no extra work for you above your normal blogging duties.
An advertising agency handles all the heavy lifting, and for that, they charge about 25% of the income. How much income varies by industry and, of course, by how much traffic you have.
Some agencies will accept a site with as few as 1000 visitors a month. But most of the bigger and better-paying ones will require 50-100k visitors per month.
Advertisers pay by the thousand views. You can earn anywhere from $6 to $50 per thousand, depending on your niche.
Affiliate Income
The concept of affiliate income is simple, you help sell a company’s products by inserting a link in your post, and you get a small percentage of the sale.
The percentage varies by the seller, but around 1-3% is normal for Amazon.com, the biggest player in the business.
Subscription Model
The subscription model usually offers customers education in exchange for a monthly fee. This model offers the best source of income for a website owner, but as with life, there is a trade-off. A subscription model is a ton of work and not at all passive.
Other common ways bloggers make money from their websites include:
- Paid promotion – You are paid a fee directly to promote a company’s product or service.
- Email list – You collect readers’ email addresses and write them regularly with niche tips and recommended products.
- Referring – Refer your reader’s details to a third party for a fee
- Coaching – Offer one on one digital coaching
What It Takes To Make Money From a Blog
Blogging is not technically difficult, but it is hard work, especially at the beginning when you are holding down a job and blogging. As your website becomes successful, life becomes easier. You then have the option of quitting the day job and focusing on your website full-time.
A successful blogger must have the right stuff; what’s the right stuff? A blogger will benefit from having some of the following characteristics:
- Positive attitude
- Driven
- Inquisitive
- Committed
- Discipline
- Organized
- Tenacious
- Self-belief
So what does a blogger’s day look like? Below I’ll outline what my day looked like while building my first website and how my day changed after I quit my day job and focused full-time on my website.
- Arise at five am and write for two and a half hours
- Drive one hour to work while listening to podcasts in my niche
- Write for thirty minutes during lunch hour
- Listen to podcasts in my niche on the drive home
- Write for two and a half hours in the evening.
- I worked all day Saturday, but Sunday was a day off (family time)
I worked like this for close to two years. I did burn out every couple of months, and when I did, I stopped writing for a week, recharged, and returned.
So how did my day change after two years blogging and blogging hard? My day and life changed greatly after my website income replaced my day job income. I quit my job, obviously, and I got some help; I hired a writer and later added four more writers. My day still includes writing because I like writing, but as much of my day is made up by managing writers.
My day now looks like this:
- Arise at five am and write for three hours
- Spend two hours organizing writers’ titles, editing and publishing writers’ posts
I no longer work Saturdays, and I spend a lot of time traveling with my wife. She also blogs, and her routine is very similar to mine; we work in the am and site see in the afternoon. As I write this, we are on three weeks working trip in the Canary Islands.
How Long Does It Take to Make Money From a Blog?
Blogging isn’t going to be an overnight success, which prevents most bloggers from succeeding. Most newbie bloggers will go at it all guns blazing but stall out after a month or two when they discover nobody apart from their mum is reading their blog.
No, blogging is a slow burner; it could take a least twelve months and maybe longer to see any real traction. Until then, you must believe and push through.
And that brings us to money – How long does it take to get a return from all this work?
The short answer is you could be making your first dollar after six months or so, but it generally takes two years before the income is significant enough to make you think, Hey, my blogging income is about as much as my job income!
And that’s exactly what happened to me. It took me almost two years to replace my day job income with my blog income. That was a wonderful moment, success tastes great, and we all deserve some success.
How Much Money Can You Make From a Blog?
Money is important; when I was younger, I wanted to be a multi-millionaire. I don’t think of money in the same way today. Sure, I like money, but I don’t want to swap all my time for more of it if you know what I mean.
That’s partly why I was so attracted to blogging. Blogging is passive, meaning the work I do today will bring me an income for years. I’m thinking about tomorrow and the next day when I’m less likely to want to work as much.
I’m saying you can make as much money from blogging as you like, millions, yes. It’s about how much of your time you’re willing to swap for that number.
If you want to turbocharge your passive income journey, then consider buying a site; check out these ready-made sites for sale. We built them all using the same WordPress platform and principles we used to build multiple websites that generate passive income.
Sum Up
Blogging is not technically difficult. To be a successful blogger, you’ll need to rise early and work till late for about two years. You’ll need to overcome self-doubt, and you’ll need to possess tenacity and discipline to push through to the other side.
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