I always laugh when people talk about blogging because everyone seems to fall into one of two camps:
- Blogging feels like a waste of time
- How much money can you make blogging?
I can’t help people that fall into the first camp. If you feel that blogging is a waste of time then the best I can do is tell you that it isn’t. It’s a great way to build a business if you have the right mindset and take the right approach.
For those of you who want to understand how much you can make from blogging then I’ve got some good news for you.
Because the answer is an unlimited amount of money.
I know, I know. That sounds ridiculous but you need to hear me out because I’m going to show you why blogging is one of those things that acts as an infinite ATM.
Ready?
What Blogging Does for You and Your Business
We live in the Attention Economy. If you want to make any type of money online then you need to get the attention of the people.
How do you do that?
Content.
Blogging is you creating content that is meant to help people. How do you get people to pay attention? Tell them that you have a solution to their problems. If you can do that then why wouldn’t they pay attention to you?
Now, this is where the unlimited ATM comes into play. How many people have problems that you can solve?
An infinite number and here’s what I mean. Let’s say you have a fashion blog that teaches people how to make their own dresses. Today there are 10,000 (I’m making this number up) people who want to learn how to make dresses.
Does that mean that everyday for the next 10 years it’s always going to be the same 10,000 people? Nope.
New people will decide every single day that it’s time for them to learn how to make dresses and therefore there are always new people for you to reach. The unlimited ATM.
The struggle is always going to be how do you get people to come to your blog.
More People, More Money
This is a simple truth.
When more of the right people come to you, you make more of the right money. So when it comes to blogging you need to figure out ways to build traffic and the best way to do that is through SEO.
How does it work?
Think about all of the times you’ve gone to Google and searched for something. If Google is doing its job then it presented you with results that helped you out. Those results are usually sites and those sites are usually blogs.
Your goal is to get to the #1 ranking for different search queries so that the right people come to visit your blog.
Do you think you could make a little bit of money if 100,000 people came to your blog each month? I think you could.
But if people are coming to your blog how do you make money with it?
Well, that’s the fun of blogging because there are a number of ways to monetize your blog.
I’ll show you my 3 favorite ones.
The Best 3 Ways to Make Money Blogging
Just because I think these are the best 3 ways that doesn’t mean they will be the best for you. Because a blog brings people to you, there are an almost unlimited number of ways for you to make money with it.
Pick one that works well for you.
These are the ones that work well for me.
1. Ads
This isn’t my favorite one but it’s the one that I’m going to start with because it’s the most obvious. Advertisers like to get in front of an audience and if your blog is attracting an audience then you have a great way to make money.
Your best bet is to wait until you can get into an ad network like Mediavine or Rapture so that you don’t waste time filling your blog up with ads that don’t make much money.
How much money can you make with ads? Again, the number is unlimited because it depends on how much traffic you can get.
Ads are usually calculated on a CPM basis meaning you get paid for every 1,000 page views.
If your CPM is $20 then that means for every 1,000 page views, you’ll get $20. To make $10,000 a month you need to get to 500,000 page views a month.
That’s a lot. It’s doable, but it’s a lot.
2. Affiliate Marketing
This is a great way to make money blogging because you don’t have to wait to get started. You can start to put affiliate links in your blog posts on day 1.
Affiliate marketing is when you refer people to a product or service. If they buy it then you get a commission. So let’s say you love talking about books on your book blog and each month you recommend 5 books.
When you link to Amazon, Amazon will pay you a small amount for each person that buys a book.
If you want to learn more about affiliate marketing be sure to check out my best affiliate marketing tips.
3. Digital Products
This is my favorite way to make money with a blog because it allows me to keep all of the money.
What is a digital product? It can be anything. There are a ton of different types of digital products but some of my favorites are:
- Books
- Worksheets
- Templates
- Courses
- Workshops
They can be easy to create and you can charge more to make more.
For example, if you create a course and decide you want to charge $200 for it then there is nothing stopping you. Plus, the math with digital products is a lot more fun.
Let’s say you get 20,000 people a month to your blog. That’s not enough people to get into the good ad networks so ads are out of the picture.
You can do affiliate marketing (which you should) but depending on what you’re selling, you might not get a great commission so you need a lot more traffic to really make a dent in the bank account.
But what if you sold a $200 course and got 10 people each month to buy. 10 people out of 20,000 seems doable and that’s $2,000 a month for you.
Sounds good to me!
How Much Money Can You Make Blogging
The truth is that most people who decide to blog don’t make over $1,000 a month but not because it isn’t possible. It’s because they don’t follow the right strategies to grow their blog.
There is nothing stopping you from getting over 100,000 page views a month to your blog. There is nothing stopping you from just getting 10 page views a month to your blog.
If you take the right approach then you can make blogging work really well for you, but it can also take time if you aren’t incorporating other strategies into the mix.
For example, many people that get into blogging usually have burnout with social media and I get it. Social media can be exhausting at times, but the benefit of social media is that it can get you traffic now.
With blogging you need to have patience because Google doesn’t love your site overnight. It takes months before you can start seeing significant numbers with blog traffic and this is why so many people give up.
However, those that stick with it for more than 6 months start to see the rewards and they compound.
Mix blogging with a solid social media strategy and you’ve created an online business that can act as your ATM machine. If you’ve heard people talking about passive income then blogging is a great thing to implement to make that happen.
Your goal with blogging should be to make at least $10,000 a month because if you can get to that number then you have all of the tools available to keep it going up.
