You CAN Make Money Blogging!

I get asked often, “Can you really make money blogging?” and the answer I always give is “YES!”. Anyone can make money blogging, you just need to approach it in the right way. That is why today, I wanted to talk about the approach to blogging that can make you money and why some bloggers never will make any money.

The most important thing to remember when trying to earn money online with a blog is that your blog is your business! If you can’t get your head around that, then you never will make any money with it.

To be successful online you have to set up your entire blog as though it was a business. Like every business, you are constantly competing with rivals for customers, so you need to be smart and adapt your blog to the ever changing climate that is the internet. Innovate, adapt and always try to stay one step ahead of the competition. It is easy for anybody to start a blog these days, but only those that approach it in the right way tend to stick around long enough to earn money from doing it.

It doesn’t matter what your blogging niche is, if you build your blog as a business, then you are much more likely to succeed.

Earning Money Blogging is Hard Work!

If you think earning money from blogging is easy, then you are wrong. It takes a lot of hard work to be successful at blogging, just as it takes hard work to be successful at anything in life. If you are not prepared to put the work in, then you can’t expect to get anything out of it.

“Success is a journey, not a destination.” – Ralph Arbitelle

I’m not trying to put anyone off from blogging, I just want to prepare you. There are so many benefits to blogging. As well as working your own hours, a lot of people like to work from home and blogging is an excellent way of doing that, but you don’t have to be restricted to that. Having a laptop and an internet connection can allow you to work from anywhere in the world. There are lots of people that run their own blogs whilst travelling the world. Who wouldn’t like to do that!

If you are prepared to put the work in, then you can achieve great things, no matter what you do.

“Success is dependent on effort.” – Sophocles

Don’t Act Like a Blogger

The definition of a blog is; ‘…a website containing the writer’s or group of writers’ own experiences, observations, opinions, etc.‘

So by definition a blogger is someone that produces this content. That is very true, however if you believe that that is all that you have to do, then you are in for a shock. Nowadays, bloggers need to know in what direction they want their blog to be heading. It is pointless to write sporadic posts on a wide range of subjects, that don’t seem to relate to each other. Doing this makes it harder for people to understand what your website is about, making it less likely for them to come back.

Bloggers need to act as business owners, with their own business plan. That way you know which direction you plan to take your website in and can then plan ways to achieve it. Bloggers need to have their own advertising and marketing strategies to help grow their business and understand the many ways that they can generate money form it.

No longer is it enough to just write something and wait for people to read it. You need to get out there and make your voice heard. Advertising your blog can be achieved in many different ways, with one of the best ways being to use social media. Check out our ‘6 Tips To Create a Profitable Facebook Fan Page For Your Website‘ & ‘Are You Using Google+ For Your Blog Yet?‘, for some helpful tips to start.

As well as advertising your website, you need to put effort into monetizing it, so that you can make money from it. It is rewarding when you know that your blog is being read by many people, but knowing that you are making money from it gives you a real buzz and spurs you on to improve it even more. Check out our ‘30 Ways Your Website Can Make You Money‘ for some advice, as well as our other posts on ‘Making Money‘.

Solve Problems

The best way to make money blogging in any business, is to provide a solution to a problem that people have. The bigger the problem is that you can provide a solution to, the more money you are likely to make. Anyone that comes up with a clean solution to the worlds energy needs will be very rich indeed!

But how does that relate to blogging? Well there are plenty of problems that people want the answers to, and the first place that they tend to look nowadays is the internet. People want information and you as a blogger can provide that information.

Lots of people are into DIY, so a website that provides valuable DIY information to people would be in high demand. Blog posts, video tutorials, demonstrations, recommended products, general tips, etc. These would all be excellent sources of information that people would want to find, which you can use to generate online money from.

Our website ‘OnlineIncomeTeacher‘ provides information to people that are interested in building websites/blogs and making money online. For people that don’t know how to do this, we try to solve their problem by giving them tutorials, blog posts, guides, product recommendations, video demonstrations, etc. that can help them achieve their goal of building and generating income from their own website.

Make Things Easy For Website Visitors

Any business that makes it difficult for customers to use their service is destined to fail because they will just go elsewhere to find an easier solution. Blogging is just the same! Make your website as easy as possible for visitors to navigate through. You are much more likely to make money from visitors reading more than one page. So it is in your best interest to make it easy for them to do so.

There are many ways to do this. A clear menu at the top of each page is a great starting point. Also, if you are using any of the WooThemes Templates like we do, then you can display the Woo Tabs in the sidebar. This displays your most recent and most popular posts for people to easily find posts that they might be interested in.

Another great way to advertise your other posts is to link to them within your posts (known as ‘Internal Linking‘). So for example, if I am writing a post about ways to improve your blog writing, I could make a reference to one of my other posts that is related. Check out my ‘10 Steps To Write Amazing Content!‘ which you may like.

Make Your Own Product

Many bloggers, me included, make most of their money from affiliate marketing. This is where you promote other peoples products in return for a percentage of the sale price. So for every person you refer from your site that goes on to purchase that product, you receive a portion of the profits.

If you can come up with your own product that you can sell, then you can make some serious online money! You could build a website around your own product to sell it, or you could develop one by solving a problem that you have encountered whilst you have been blogging.

The best products all solve a problem. Think about all of the things that people buy.

• A Car – Why? So that you can travel from A to B!
• A Light – Why? So you can see in the dark!
• A Fridge – Why? To keep food fresh for longer!

Obviously these are all simple examples, but often the simple ideas are the best ones.

I wanted to find a simple way to encourage people to revisit my website. I found a great online product called AWeber that allows you to advertise your website with email marketing. With this, I can build an email list of visitors for my website who sign up to my FREE 7 Day eCourse – ‘Make Money Blogging’. When they sign up, AWeber sends out daily emails that I have set up, teaching people how they can build their first website, with tips on how to earn money from it. I can then subsequently send out other emails to them telling them about new blog posts, product updates, promotions, etc. that can get them to come back to my website! Check out ‘Use Email Marketing to Increase Traffic with Return Visitors!‘ to learn how I did this.

This product helped me because it solved a problem that I had. In the future I plan to develop my own product that will help solve a problem that is related to my blog niche. I can then use my website to promote and sell it online to my visitors.

Promote, Promote, Promote!!!

Like I said earlier, it isn’t enough to just write something and wait for people to read it. You need to promote it as you would do with any business. You could spend your time writing the most amazing post ever that could make you loads of money, but if nobody knows that it exists then nobody will read it!

Bloggers need to split their time up so that they are writing quality content and advertising their site. Content is very very VERY important, but ultimately traffic = money! There are X billion people online in the world, but finding them is not as easy as just building a website and waiting for them to come. You need to make lots of signs that point people in the direction of your site.

There are many ways to do this and the smartest people seem to invent new ways of attracting visitors all of the time. Social Media is probably the easiest and cheapest ways to advertise your presence to people. You can find lots of people online that are interested in your field and just start talking to them and build from there. Check out my ‘4 Ways to build traffic to your website‘ for some great tips on starting out to advertise your site.

Hope you found this helpful.  Please leave your comments below & feel free to ask any questions.