A Lot Of People Have Made Seriously Big Money By Just Starting A Prolific Blog. A Lot Of People Have Failed At It Too. So, What Do The Successful Ones Really Do?
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The fascinating thing about blogging is the fact that a good many bloggers have indeed made seriously big money. But a lot of people have failed at blogging too. In fact, failures far outstrip the number of successes.
At Solohacks Academy, our roundups usually pick topics that most people would consider a question that begets inspiring answers. On a topic like making money blogging, every small business and every solopreneur wants to know what is the best way – and how fast can you do it.
In truth, there are as many ways as there are successful people. That’s why we have chosen this topic, for you to get suggestions from those who’ve got smart thoughts on it.
Our picks for this Solohacks RoundUp include 10 great quotes from the blog posts of Amy Lynn Andrews, Jessica Knapp, Darren Rowse, Jon Morrow, Harsh Agrawal, Taylor Stanford, R.L.Adams, Adam Enfroy, Ryan Robinson, and Jeff Proctor.
Contents
- How much bloggers make isn’t as exciting to me is how much bloggers can make: Amy Lynn Andrews
- The most common ways bloggers make money is through placing ads on their site: Jessica Knapp
- I decided to sit down and list all the ways that I saw bloggers making money: Darren Rowse
- Affiliate income lets you learn what audiences will buy while also making money: Jon Morrow
- Offering services helps you to make money while giving you more use cases: Harsh Agrawal
- By setting goals, I’m making more money than bloggers’ income reports I used to read: Taylor Stanford
- Serious about blogging to make money? Build a value ladder and a sales funnel: R.L.Adams
- The hard truth is, it doesn’t have to take you years – you need to start thinking like a CEO: Adam Enfroy
- Creating sponsored content for brands willing to pay works wonders in the right scenarios: Ryan Robinson
- Once you hit that $1,000 mark, the sky is the limit – persevere up to that point: Jeff Proctor
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1. How much bloggers make isn’t as exciting to me is how much bloggers can make: Amy Lynn Andrews
Amy Lynn Andrews in the article “How To Make Money Blogging”:
How do bloggers make money? The most successful bloggers use their blog as a hub, or online home base, then build up many income streams from there. Using your blog as a hub is important, to control your message and to have a place where you can always be found. These income streams include advertising, affiliate marketing, selling digital or physical products or offering services.
Bloggers make money directly on their blogs and indirectly through related opportunities. Trickles of income from multiple streams add up to a large river of income.
How much do bloggers make? It varies widely. A few bloggers make millions of dollars a year. Others, like me, make a healthy full-time income. Some make less, and some make no money at all.
While it’s interesting to know how much a blogger makes, what’s most exciting to me is how much a blogger can make. No amount is guaranteed, and it’s not easy, but there is virtually no limit. It’s amazing how many creative ways bloggers generate income. That’s one of the reasons I love blogging.
I tell new bloggers to allow at least 3-6 months to make a decent part-time income and 1-2 years to make a consistent full-time income. There are always exceptions of course, but after being active in the blogging world for almost 14 years, these are reasonable averages.”
2. The most common ways bloggers make money is through placing ads on their site: Jessica Knapp
Jessica Knapp in the article “How to Make Money with Your Blog in 2019”:
One of the most common ways bloggers make money is through placing ads on their site. Perhaps the most popular network for placing these types of ads is Google AdSense. With this program, you do not need to be in direct contact with advertisers; you simply place the banner on your site, Google chooses ads relevant to your content, and your viewers click on the ads. There are countless similar programs available if you find that AdSense doesn’t work for you, such as Chitika, Infolinks, and Media.net.
Working with advertising networks isn’t your only option when it comes to selling ads. If you end up with enough traffic, advertisers may come directly to you and ask you to place their ad on your site. You can also contact advertisers yourself. The biggest difference from the above mentioned option is that there is no middle man, which means you can set your own ad rates.
Selling private ads can come in the form of banners, buttons, or links. You can even make money writing sponsored posts where you write about or give a review of an advertiser’s product or service. Another option is to write an underwritten post or series, which is where you can write about any topic, but the advertiser pays for a “Brought to you by” mention in the content.
The ways you make money with this can vary. For instance, you might charge a one-time fee for a link within a post. If you are hosting banner ads, you might charge your partner monthly.
Bonus tip: To maximize your income, you can also choose to sell sponsorship space in your email newsletters, podcasts, and videos.
Not all of these tips and avenues of income are going to work for you. Don’t be afraid to tweak your methods to see what works best for you and your readers. Making money blogging can take a lot of persistence, but it can pay off in the long-run if you’re starting out from scratch. Just remember that you don’t have to use all of these money-making avenues at once.”
3. I decided to sit down and list all the ways that I saw bloggers making money: Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse in the article “Make Money Blogging”:
There are many ways to make money blogging. One of the biggest misconceptions that I see bloggers having about monetising blogs is that they have to do it in one of a handful of ways. The reality is that there are many ways to make money from blogs.
A few years ago I decided to sit down and list all the ways that I saw bloggers making money from their blogs and created this ‘money map’ (click image to enlarge).
Image courtesy: Problogger.com
Note: this money map was updated in September 2016.
As you’ll see there are quite a few options that bloggers have to derive income from their blogs.
Don’t worry though – while this map is quite overwhelming at a first glance there are a few main ‘clusters’ of income streams that you might want to focus upon rather than all the specific ones.”
4. Affiliate income lets you learn what audiences will buy while also making money: Jon Morrow
Jon Morrow in the article “How to Make Money Blogging (Free Guide for 2019)”:
So, you’re operating in a profitable niche, and you have traffic and an email list. What next? Lots of bloggers jump into creating a course or book or community of some sort, but that’s a mistake, in my opinion. Before you start selling things, you need concrete evidence those things are what people want to buy. Otherwise, you’re risking wasting months or even years of your life trying to push a product no one wants.
The simplest way to obtain that evidence: Affiliate offers. By seeing what your audience buys from other people, you can get a much better sense of what they might want to buy from you. If you promote a product and it converts well, you should think about creating a similar product. If it doesn’t convert well, you should probably move on.
In other words, affiliate offers are a form of market research. As a bonus, you just so happen to get paid commissions on the products your customers buy in the process. So not only are you learning what your audience wants to buy, but you’re making money from your blog at the same time. Pretty sweet deal.
At Smart Blogger, I’ve tried lots of different offers. WordPress hosting, landing page tools, email marketing software, WordPress themes, and half a dozen different types of courses. Since we sell courses, I pay the most attention to the results from those programs, and here are a couple of lessons:
End to end solutions sell best. Courses promising to take someone from knowing nothing to making money far outperformed the others. Tools with a clear connection to making money also sell better than the others. For instance, landing page builders. By themselves, neither of those promotions really moved the needle on our revenue, but they did teach us useful lessons.”
5. Offering services helps you to make money while giving you more use cases: Harsh Agrawal
Harsh Agrawal in the article “How To Make Money Blogging (The Practical Guide for 2019)”:
Based on your skills, you can offer various services. Depending on what are you good at, you can offer content writing, logo creation, SEO, and so on.
In the past, I used to offer WordPress, SEO and hosting related services. Offering services not only help you to make money but also gives you more use cases which help you hone your skills. I have had time when I was earning more than $2000/month only by offering services.
In fact, launching your own services is pretty easy. All you need to do is create a page on your blog and list the services that you are offering. Make sure to place the link of that page in your blog navbar and prominent space for the maximum visibility.
Make it easier for your audience to contact you and inquire more about your services. As you deal with your first 2-3 clients, you will have ample ideas to improve the sales process of your services. In fact, you will be able to automate some of the things like payment and follow-up.
Can you actually make money blogging? I’m living proof of someone who can make a handsome living with blogging. A lot depends on how consistent and persistent you are. In my case, I was working almost 14 hours every day for 4 years to reach this stage where I’m earning more than $40K/month from blogging.
As the online space has matured, now there are more opportunities to make money via blogging. The only thing is, you need to be consistent for almost a year before you start making decent money to quit your job or to plan your life on blogging income.”
6. By setting goals, I’m making more money than bloggers’ income reports I used to read: Taylor Stanford
Taylor Stanford in the article “How I learned How To Make Money Blogging”:
When I started my website I had no idea what I was doing, and my only followers on Pinterest were friends and family so If I was going to have any direction after starting my blog, I was going to need some goals. So, I set goals for myself.
And I am so glad I did. I set goals for Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Google +. I knew I needed to set social goals to push me hard to engage and grow a community for my blog online.
It was hard set goals about how much money I thought I could make my first month, and how many followers I wanted to get when I had absolutely nothing to compare my blog to.
So when it comes to YOU and your website here is something to think about when setting your initial goals earning 1,000,000 a month when you have nothing to sell and no followers may be impossible, but earning a few hundred dollars or even a thousand is not.
My first month blogging goals were:
- Earn: $250
- Twitter Followers: 500
- Pinterest Followers: 1000
- Facebook Page Likes: 70
- Instagram Followers: 50
12 months later and now my goals look much more like this:
- Earn: $20,000+ A month
- Schedule 70+ pins a day (using Tailwind)
- Write 2 Monthly Newsletters
- Keep active in my Facebook Group
- Create a new email opt-in every month
- Grow my Pinterest Following 500 a month.
GOALS ARE SO IMPORTANT!
I remember seeing other bloggers income reports and realizing that there is no reason that they can do this and I can’t because they must have known nothing when they started too.
Here I am a year later on the other side, making more more than the bloggers who wrote the income reports I used to read. All because I set goals and was determined to reach them.”
7. Serious about blogging to make money? Build a value ladder and a sales funnel: R.L.Adams
R.L.Adams in the article “How To Start A Blog That Earns A Real Income”:
If you’re serious about ensuring the blog that you started will make some serious coin over time, you need what’s called a value ladder and a sales funnel. If you’ve never heard of these two concepts, let me explain. First of all, you need a system for email marketing. There are plenty of great plugins and programs to send out emails.
If you scour the web, you’ll find companies like Aweber, Get Response, Mail Chimp, Constant Contact and loads of others when it comes to email marketing. The first thing you need to do is to pick one of those companies and integrate it into your blog. Second, you need to develop a free offer. What will you give away in exchange for that lucrative email address?
Keep in mind that email marketing is where the gold is. But it doesn’t happen without a large volume of subscribers. You need tens of thousands of active subscribers to make a very significant income through email marketing efforts. And that doesn’t happen quickly no matter what anyone tries to tell you.
Once you’ve built your free offer, you need to create a value ladder. What will you sell on the next step up? Create your own digital products if you’re serious about earning a real income from your blog. Decide on the next sale or dollar amount such as $99 on the next step, $499 on the second, $1,999 on the third, $9,999 on the fourth, and $24,999 on the fifth.
Yes. People will pay $25,000 to join some mastermind program if you have enough authority and your sales funnel is convincing enough. Your sales funnel is going to actively market all of this for you on autopilot, giving you passive income and the freedom to travel the world or do whatever you want while earning serious income from your blog.”
8. The hard truth is, it doesn’t have to take you years – you need to start thinking like a CEO: Adam Enfroy
Adam Enfroy in the article “How to Make Money Blogging in 2021 ($203k in Year One)”:
To make life-changing money from your blog as fast as possible, you need to start thinking like a CEO and developing systems to scale your blog like a startup, not a hobby. I’ve worked for high growth startups, and some of the best CMOs, VPs, and Growth Marketers out there. And what did I learn?
Most blogging advice is harmful, not helpful. You’re sold the dream of passive income and the ability to make money online while you sleep, all while 95% of bloggers still fail. And yet, these “experts” that started over 10 years ago are the only ones profiting the most from blogging.
So I started this blog in January 2019 to track my progress as a brand new blogger using everything I learned in the startup world. Here’s the first thing I learned – you need to focus less on writing and more on creating systems to scale your blog at startup speed.
Remember, you’re a business owner, not just a blogger. Bloggers don’t fail because of a lack of passion (they have that in spades). Bloggers fail because they can’t transition from blogger to business owner.
So they choose a non-lucrative niche targeting a low-value audience. New bloggers forget to leverage networking and connections to their strategic advantage. And they don’t have enough market demand to scale traffic.
Before launching your blog, it’s crucial to choose your niche based not on passions, but three business factors: audience budget potential, professional leverage, and market demand.”
9. Creating sponsored content for brands willing to pay works wonders in the right scenarios: Ryan Robinson
Ryan Robinson in the article “How to Make Money Blogging in 2020: 12 Proven Ways I Made $451,238+ Blogging This Year”:
Sponsored content is a tried and true investment for brands of all kinds, and it works wonders in the right scenarios. This makes it a clear win-win of the many ways to make money blogging. Over and over again, this method is not only proven to work for advertisers, it’s proven to help you make money blogging at the same time.
What is sponsored content? It’s when company pays you a fee in return for you writing an article that’s either about them—or on a topic related to them, where their product, service or brand is prominently featured as the go-to resource for those of your readers that want to learn more.
It’s one of those sweet deals between a blogger and an advertiser where you’re both truly benefiting from the relationship.
When sponsored content is done well (and not just a plain & simple advertisement), it comes across as genuine, unique, and free of a high-pressure sales pitch. In my opinion, if your sponsored post doesn’t lead with providing real value to your readers, then you’ve already gotten off track.You’ve already built trust with your audience, so they trust you to recommend products that you know and believe in. That’s why I always recommend staying true to your audience when making sponsored content.”
10. Once you hit that $1,000 mark, the sky is the limit – persevere up to that point: Jeff Proctor
Jeff Proctor in the article “How to Make Money Blogging for Beginners: A Complete Guide to Your First $1,000”:
The first $1,000 you make blogging is probably going to be the most difficult money you’ve ever earned in your life. But, once you hit that $1,000 mark, the sky is the limit. You’ll be surprised how quickly your blog can grow and your life can change once you get past the initial hurdle of profitability. You just have to stick with it to get to that point.
The biggest mental roadblock I see out there: people thinking they need to come up with something 100% unique that hasn’t been written about yet. Or worse, thinking that you can only write about something you have a raging passion for.
Here’s something for you: I’m not “passionate” about the subject areas of our two blogs (personal finance and blogging/business). Sure, I really enjoy both topics, but it’s not like I have a primal calling to write about them. I just enjoy both things, and that’s enough to keep me going.
Freelance writing is one of the easiest and most common services to offer as a new blogger. You’re already writing content for your own website, so why not get paid to write for someone else?
Freelance writing is a great way to practice your writing skills and get your name out there. It’s also perfect for building authority if you write for sites in your niche. And don’t think for a second that “freelancing” is synonymous with “working for pennies.” Some freelance writers make upwards of six figures per year.”
So What Are Your Thoughts? Do Share!
This post is incomplete without your input. The community of Knowledge Commerce solopreneurs would feel galvanized to hear from you … so do share your thoughts on this topic with us, in the comments field below this post.
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