Why bloggers dont make money

Pinterest I would consider the game changer when it comes to blogging, not only can you drive hundreds of thousands of page visits, but Pinterest also has a much higher income demographics compared to most other social platforms. Find out more about the Pinterest Traffic Avalanche here. What Search Engines value the most is quality content. Pinterest tends to be a bit of a hybrid network, semi-social, and very search engine. Payment methods are becoming ever more secure, shipping is becoming faster and faster and people are more familiar with online shopping than they ever were in the past.

This means people are more ready to purchase from you, read your reviews, purchase from your affiliates and so on. After all, you can do a lot more with more money than with no money.

YouTube is also a big topic around here. Joanna started her blog in December , and in her 9 th month, she was already earning a steady income from her blog, approx.

This is exactly what Amira over at Aselfguru. When it comes to making money blogging, your options are only as limited as your imagination. There are some common ways for bloggers to make money though, the tried and tested if you will. This is often confused with being the only way bloggers can make money. This is not true, in fact, this tends to be one of the lowest-paying ways to monetize your blog. You need to drive hundreds of thousands of visitors in order to make a living with only ads on your blog.

That being said, you can make some good money without having to do much of anything besides your usual blogger things to get paid every month. You can of course also make your own products, courses and offer your services through your blog.

This can often be the most lucrative way of monetizing your blog and turning you into a six-figure blogger. The key here is to know your audience. Know exactly what it is they need and are willing to pay for, and then create it and sell it.

If this sounds like you, then the Six-Figure Blogger course is the perfect way to get you going. This is the same course Amira from Aselfguru. Find out more about the Six-Figure Blogger course here. This means you get information about your niche through your regular day-to-day interests.

We all know that is a factor in many success stories. In my own long business career, I never applied for a job in the traditional way with a resume. It was always hearing of an opportunity or being contacted. There is always opportunity, and having a blog with a good following is a huge opportunity. Time to figure out who that market is, marketing-strategy-partnership and analyze.

Look to spread your wings and take advantage of your SOI and networking skills. There is always an angle to monetize on, or a means to contribute to a monetization strategy… always. Thanks Joe. You are absolutely right. There is an element of luck. Again I think the music analogy applies. Some no talent hacks do get lucky and get rich and famous while more deserving artists toil for years never getting their break.

In my observation, that holds true. Blogs offer the unique opportunity for anyone and everyone to build a readership.

Blogging is not a means to an end but more of a launching pad. I wonder why people keep going to gossip sites then. Times listed PerezHilton as an overrated blog. What problem does he solve? In fairness, I must admit he almost started a whole niche of gossip blogs. Entertainment sites do solve a problem boredom , but they can be tricky to monetize. You are right. People like to see celebrities being bashed because it makes them feel better about themselves. Insecurity helps these gossip sites live on.

These days, both individuals and corporations need to realize that adaptability is their most important asset. People crave that crap. I think another problem which limits the ability of people to make money from their blogs is the media. The media jumped on the blogging bandwagon, and because media sources already have an audience, blogs created by the media are going to receive publicity soon after launch that blogs created by members of the public cannot get.

The ideas is to find a starving prospects who are looking for solution to their problem and help them solve those problem. Making money from blogging is clearly not easy. If you have something of value to offer, you provide answers to problems, a proportion of your visitors will become buyers at some point. Especially so if you can engage them and build a relationship with them.

But it enters my mind and may affect my decisions later, or I may even do another google search on that area or even visit their site, later in a day or next day! Most people including myself are wondering generalities.

Start with a solution product or service, then start learning psychology and how to market your product or service. And be persistent! I write only on what it is really important for people : health , wealth and saving both. I never made any money with it.. I give up.. What more really needs to be said? This is why I keep visiting copyblogger!

I really think I should try to get my money back!! Everybody has a problem, so they say. Funny thing is why does it become difficult to identify what the problem actually is? Why do you took my comment out? Take this one out to MR the censor.. This is the key to why advertising works, period. Well put. Those are the most fertile areas to mine for money. He tried adsense on a blog manifestly unsuited to it. Adsense works best in tightly targetted niches, blogs that are targetted towards a specific category of products or services, not on personal or humor blogs.

What product or service matches up well with a Fake Steve Jobs website? Whereas if you have a mountain biking blog, its going to be much easier for adsense to correctly target your audience with the appropriate ads. He tried adsense, and adsense alone.

Its not as easy as if you had a well targeted niche, but he could have flogged web hosting services or blog related products like this blog? There are lots of people who try to make money on eBay and fail, and there are a much smaller number who succeed. The difference? The SMART sellers who make money on eBay do their research, learn from their mistakes, constantly strive to improve their results, put a lot of work into it, and think about their back end, upgrading sales, continuing a relationship with the buyer, even outside of ebay.

Pain killers generally make more money than vitamins. Either way, both of them serve a purpose. I see several bloggers in my industry who are still trying to figure out who their blog serves — themselves or their readers. The only good thing about this is I enjoy what I do. So I guess my next venture is to find something I enjoy doing again and how it solve someones problem so I can make some green!!!

Thank you for this insightful post. I remember reading the article written by the Fake Steve Jobs and was frustrated by his response. I do thank the Fake Steve Jobs though, he taught me one thing — not to do what he did.

I may one day be motivated to get familiar with this money making stuff via blogging, but this post was well worth the stop-over. Well done you lot. Many great points raised in the article and the comments. I also think, now nearly three months after the original post, that it is important to point out that newspapers and magazines are an industry clearly on the ropes, as newspapers are folding by the day and magazines are seeing subscribers evaporate along with ad revenues.

So, personally, I discount whatever they say about the people putting t hem out of business. In the wider world, there is still this general perception that blogs are nothing more than ego trips and political ranters … when in fact that is an unfair representation of the blogosphere. Some of us out there like copyblogger for example is using the blogging platform to sell something of value. You are right when you say online needs to grow up and I suppose grow into the systems, checks and balances which are already in place for real businesses.

I think you should not just blog for the money, but because you want to. They blog about finance, or curing a disease, or how to fix motorcycles, or whatever, and then either have targeted ads, affiliate programs, or their own product. My brother runs a six-figure per month ecommerce site. I asked him what he thought about social networking traffic. They just want to earn some cash because they have seen other successful bloggers making tremendous amount of money. You need to get involved in order to succeed.

If you provide your readership with tons of unique and high quality content in your niche which you really enjoy, people would consider you as an authority and give you credit. It means high targeted traffic containing prospects that want to just take your recommendations more seriously and buy from you.

The bottom line is huge profits. Well, it is not bad to earn money out of blogging. But in my case, I blog because it is my passion and once you love what you are doing not just because you want to make money out of it, you will really succeed.

With the help of high quality affiliate programs there are many ways for quality content with the possibiliy to earn money. Thank you for saying how it is. It can be challenging for new bloggers because time is different now. I agree with what you said here. If you blog for content, for relationships, for audience, for your own learning and fun, maybe even for new opportunities, then chances are.. I like that, never heard it before.

Talent and persistence, and a good profitable niche, is all you need. On Fake Steve Jobs, its also important that you have a long term goal for your blog. If you blog to teach people things, you can always think of a new angle to produce content about.

So, it seems evident that making money is not my cuppa tea… but still there is still this sense gut feeling that I too can make money This is a very nice post. If you are starting a blog just to make money, stop! Create a blog about something you love and are passionate about, it will show in your articles. Write articles regularly, and work on your SEO and building traffic first. Yes you can make money blogging. Is it worth all the time and effort it requires to be successful?

But be prepared to do some hard work. If you think blogging for profit is a do nothing get rich quick job, you are really in for a surprise! This is real work and you have to think about what you plan to do to get traffic and how you can turn that into money. The game changes constantly and you have to change with it. I learned how hard it is to make money a couple of years ago.

I agree with you. Not like that. You need to optimize your site, getting visitor and building your visitor trust before you can earn money from it. I think dont go for keywords and traffic, but it is essential to concentrate on making original good contents. Many bloggers focus on SEO work, instead of making good and bulk contents or posts, Just give justice to blog title. Dont go for money, then money will follow you. I think you should start blogging as a hobby or passion and eventually once your blog gets good traffic and rankings you should take the step to monitize it and earn a nice side income.

Making money blogging is for sure not easy. It can take years to start making a decent income, if your lucky even sooner. Chunking down the keywords to small groups that are less competitive.

Blogging is a complicated business, as others before me have noted. It is a huge learning curve for an absolute beginner. But hey, my site is 1 on Google without using the quotes. That really means nothing.

Just wanted to see if I could do that. I really had to think about writing differently. Writing with keyword placement as opposed to keyword stuffing, was a new concept. Like a puzzle, or a chess game. The real Steve Jobs gets it. The commenters here get it. There is a lot of professionalism and brainspeak. For anyone new, I say: jump right in the water is wonderful. Where can you get a free education and practice on marketing, sociology, psychology, SEO, and the many tech skills that are needed, for about 10 bucks a month?!

I think this is probably one of the best tips for bloggers. I think this was a wake-up call for bloggers to take a look at different ways to make money whether it is with affiliate links or even providing a service that they can write about some on their blog.

But my question is, why should readers click on ads on blog site when they get the content for free? Why should they go through all that trouble? For many readers, the ads are annoying. The come for the content. I run several WP-based websites where I offer product reviews, price comparisons, etc. I run these sites to both help prospective customers and, yes, to make money. I have some info-based sites where I get a little Adsense money, but nothing to get excited about.

I tried that. You become a slave to the site. Why the comparison? I sure would have. I know that with , visitors I would have grown my Aweber list tremendously, and convinced half of the subscribers that a new MacBook Pro would have changed their lives forever. But then again, I have a plan. My reviews help people make decisions. As you say above, they have a problem albeit minor , and I provide a solution.

You just have to be smart about your business model. This has been going for some time! Read the article and the whole thread of comments!

Very interesting. I am an aspiring problogger … right from the outset I am branding myself as a problogger as that is where I am heading, whether it takes me a year OK… year one is almost up and that status has not been conferred yet or two or three or more.

Actually, it is an ongoing process no matter where in the blogosphere hierarchy you are. I have a stable of blogs and have made some coin on most — far from enough to call a livelihood income but here is what my feeling is, if I have made some dollars, then I just have to get better at what it is that delivered that dribble of an income and increase it.

Wishing everyone success……….. Very interesting article. It seems like everyone and their dog are starting blogs in the hopes of making money quickly. Watch it! I did it in 3 months. It all depends on what you value in life.. I have a plan now…Thanks! What a fantastic article. So true and to the point. Especially hit home for me, because I am at that point where I am considering monetizing my blog.

I had no belief that I was going to get rich quick. I did realise that it was going to be hard work. My problem is, and still is, how to go about doing it. Also just having on revenue stream is probably what killed him. Multiple smaller streams is what I am aiming for. Affiliates, private ads, give-aways, subscriptions, e-book sales, etc.

If he had had a few apple or Amazon affiliates on his site, I am pretty sure he would have made more money. My though, what a waste of an opportunity. He did do one thing right though, he taught us how not to make money. If we can learn from this, it won;t be an entire waste What truly is the best monetizing model? If it was easy, there would be more millionaire bloggers than there are at the moment.

You can make money from blogging, but you have to have patience when you are starting out. All you have to do is stay motivated and provide people with something that they want, so they will come back to you site. Well, this is my first foray into internet marketing and I am on a very steep learning curve. And supposedly all these authors are making small fortunes. When I first started out , I did a lot of the grass roots type of marketing such as forum chats, posting on others blogs…..

You will build up your traffic over time, as long as you are consistent. It does take some time and you might not see some real traffic until about 1 year of consistent marketing. It is so true, so many people have complete fantasy ideas about how to make money online.

The article should have been titled: Quit faking it and get real. Thanks Patrick for your encouragement. Find it and first time reading really like the post. Blog is not television is really open my eyes. Creating and fresh idea are need. It seems impossible to make money with blogging alone, i find the best way is to keep creating fresh content on your blog and developing long term backlinks into your blog and then link out to your own money sites.

I really enjoy reading this posts! This list is quite complete. The resource links are valuable as well as the overall post! Im not a major blogger or anything but this was very interesting to me especially the part about the half a million views in a day and only making dollars in adsense money? I think you should blog because you enjoy it.

It takes a lot of time to make an good blog with good content. Content is king! I blog because I enjoy it, whether it make me get money or not.

But if we want to make our blog as permanent source of our income, we have to work hard. Twitter is also a little bit like blogging i guess? Business is business, online or offline. Also, it is getting a bit more difficult breaking into the MMO niche for sure! Just like the business world I guess…. As ever, quality content is absolutely key. Wow, that was a seriously insightful article. Great… I Agree on this article you did easier for those who are doing this by this article many people will learn how to… such as me also… trafficking online business, online marketing etc.

Honest and productive content is important if we plan on making big bucks from the internet. And i agree what you said about online business need to grow up. These are the times when competition are at its peak and we need to figure out a more effective way to stand out in the crowd. I totally agree! Great Article! For me, my main goal is to improve my writing skills. At the same time, I just put up some Ads for people to click. Nowadays people fails to make money blogging and end up they quit it.

I believe that make money from blogging requires hard work and patience, we just provide value content to the readers, write what they really want and make them learn something new from your side, as long as you enjoy writing and interact with readers.

If you can do that, with just simple monetization method, you can still make some money from blogging. I totally agree with you. Most people especially those who are thinking of starting a blog but read this article carefully. Rather than posting articles for the sake of it, bloggers should think on how best to address their target audience needs.

As stated by other commenters, the thought that came to me is: advertisers want to advertise in a magazine that is read often enough and has high retention rates. Magazines offer a solution: information, knowledge, entertainment gossip etc. I tried blogging for an while, but found it hard work to keep producing good content on an regular basis.

Respect for al the pro-bloggers! I agree with you when you say…If you want to make money in the real world, solve real problems. I am convinced that making money with bloging is pretty hard. Well, if I ever doubted that you could make money at blogging, those doubts are gone. They might be of good quality and fairly priced as you say. It actually made me feel a bit more optimistic about monetizing my blog.

I did feel that entertainment and viral bloggers tended to make more when it came to ad dollars. Great information.. From your perspective, are they equivalent? And a working model is one where you actually see income. A blog about something much more mundane in other words, that solves a real problem , say a blog about how to get rid of garden pests, is much more likely to do well with Adsense.

Some people make it work, of course. Yes, I agree that bloggers who find solutions to problems have the potential to make money.

It seems like very few are making a living at it, though. Good content is great but you need to have some business savvy so you can either tastefully promote related affiliate products or develop your own.

Or journalism. Jon Morrow did it to great success I think. Let me know how it ends up. Hi Ramsay, I would agree to wait until you have a lot of content and mailing list before you begin to sell.

I know I get turned off when I all get from some bloggers are emails that are sales pitches. Hey Ramsay Excellent post as usual and you really are fine tuning the art of the Headline that captures attention. I did my first off the cuff vid last week and have received some really great feedback from people — another way to connect with my audience. What do you think of the new title format for the BT mail outs? Why have you purchased products or services from specific people?

Trust, endorsements, demonstrate expertise, etc. Take the above answers and list them out. Next, write down how you could build those components into your business. Find a path to becoming the person people look to for advice. I agree with you, Ramsay! Building a relationship with subscribers has to be the best way, but so often we are told to immediately monetise the blog and push the affiliate links.

Love this post. Just a landing page and off site marketing. The biggest challenge is finding free growth tactics. Write now I get about 2 to 5 subs per day just from twitter and blog commenting. Not bad but I want more. Thinking about doing more blogger outreach via email. Any other suggestions?

Great article! Great article. I have taken steps like offering a free eBook and setting up a subscriber opt-in through aweber great youtube tutorial on that btw.

Thanks Ramsay, I am slowly moving over to the light. For a long time I looked at building a list as something every one was doing and I wanted to be different. I now see the power of the list. Your thoughts on how long it might take for a new blogger to start to see success. I guess it depends on how you define success.

My goal was to get to 10, subscribers in the first year which I managed to do. But every niche is very different. I guess set a financial goal based on a traffic goal and see how you go with that. Might be worth a go if they are interacting with you so quickly. This is a great post! Which is great! Two sets of people just want information, one about pop psychology, one about new, hip trends in psychoanalytic thought. So, I feel split between community building and in time selling!

I think this is awesome advice Ramsay. It seems like blogging has evolved so much in the last years. I would really like to learn more about cultivating and nurturing an email list. Do you think it is similar to a blog content strategy? Or are there specific nuances to content strategy with email lists? Like something that worked online 10 years ago, and will work 10 years from now. In spite of social media and whatever else comes along to disrupt the way we produce and consume content for our online audiences.

Rather than something that feels more polished. I have been following you for just a little while now and love all your advice. Right now I have been working on thank you pages for people who subscribe and people who comment. Any advice? LOL, I wish I knew what that meant. I worked it all out on your inspiration and advice. No plugin needed. Hope that helps. Jay Abraham sold me on the concept of leading with education way, way back in the day.

Before the days of internet marketing. Then when he co-hosted the P. Seminar with the late Chet Holmes, and Chet unpacked the Masters level process of educating your list in order to excite them about buying, I became even more a zealot of slowing down the sales process. For years Ben ended each of his entertaining and educating emails with an invitation to buy something from him that enhanced your knowledge on the topic he was speaking to.

One of the reasons I feel this has helped Ben absolutely kick ass is because his emails are valuable in and of themselves. They stand on their own. No hard close; only a common sense logical next step if what you just read has piqued your specific interest. And then just as other popular blogs do, we make announcements in between our blog posts of the new product that is now available.

Since , this has worked rather well for us. I admire the guys like you, Derek, Brian, Yaro, and others who are making it happen with with your own variations. How does that work in terms of conversions? Do you get a high percentage of sales from each mail out? I was just commenting on the interview Yaro did with Erika Awakening on the point she made about her tiny list making her very significant profits.

Our list has been small for years now, mainly because of our unwillingness to do the joint ventures, PPC advertising, affiliate marketing, etc. So anything that comes in from the PS. Another small step that I believe has served our email sales incredibly well is bonding with our perfect prospects via individual private email conversations or on public social media channels primarily Facebook.

The fun and useful interaction via email or social media takes pressure off our mailings. People who love you, see your name and automatically open with good, bad, or ugly copy. But of course, you need to make sure all the email copy is money as not everyone on your mailing list is seeing or interacting with you on social media or in email conversations. All of that to say that PS. Especially when you compare that to the money you may make from google adwords.

That said, it is still important to find a way to pay the bills somehow. Thanks for posting on such a relevant topic anyways. I believe the building email list is the only way to substain an online business? You can promote and promote your affiliate products, own products, membership sites think of recurring to your list again and again. Really worthy posty. I was also trying to do the same since the long tme but htrough this post I get to learn many things.

Firstly we should try to make our blog useful for our readers and after a long time when there are sufficient posts and users then we can think about making money. THanks for sharing information Ramsay…… I am new to blogging and really motivated to see your post writing style.

I want to say thanks to you. I am going to use this method of writing post in my blogging career. I wish you write more motivating and quality content like this. Thanks For Sharing This!! Many times i feel demotivated and feel their is nothing more which i can do with my blog have your website niche. Then, i visit websites likes your and again start feeling that i have to do something and i start my work one more time.

What are your thoughts on starting a blog on Blogger without a hosting website? Thank you for your help!

Let us help you build a blog to support your family's income and help the community while you're at it! Type in your keyword and press enter to search:. Facebook Tweet LinkedIn Shares Most of us are trying to make money with our blog. But perhaps the biggest mistake you can make is to try and make money with it today. How most bloggers try to make money Take a step back and think about how you view making money on your blog.

This type of immediate earning strategy rarely works. So what is a better way to make money blogging? I then introduce the selling affiliates or my own products later down the line. So why focus on the email list before the money making?

There are three main reasons: 1. Your mailing list is a reusable asset The main problem I have with Adsense is that you are essentially asking potential email subscribers and long term readers to click away from your blog in exchange for a few cents.