Can You Really Make Money by Blogging?

Yes, you definitely can! However, just like any business, making money by blogging takes effort and time to become established, and if you are lucky maybe it’ll 3 months. So forget all those hypes which claim little effort and quick money.

Before we get into the nitty gritty of making money with blogging, let’s try to understand what blog is all about and its origin.

The Origin of Blog

Blogging was originally a form of online diary fka Weblog in the late 90s and early 2000s. Since then there are many types of blogs: personal blog, special interest blog e.g. SEO blog, political blog, corporate blog and even blogshop.

Blog and Writing Style

First you need to understand too that there’s a difference between blogging as a writing style, and using blog software to create websites.

The most common form of making money with blogging is usually much more personal though.

Casual Writing with a Personal Touch

The writer creates content on a blog, and that content is frequently written in a casual, “blog-like” style. This personal touch creates a unique atmosphere on the blog and that in turn creates a unique following of readers.

Once established, the writer who creates the blog content can often recommend products to readers, and many of those readers will buy based on those recommendations.

This form of blogging puts a personal touch into the world of business, so it helps faceless corporate entities and somewhat famous individuals seem more real. And that can generate great profits.

Approaches to Make Money with Blogging

Here’s the three primary approaches to make money with a blog:

1. Recommend Products

Once you have a loyal base of readers who like your writing style, enjoy the things you write each day, or connect to you on some level you’ll be able to start making product recommendations to them. And by recommending products which you earn sales commissions from, you earn money each time one of your readers buys a product based on your recommendations.

2. Sell Your Products or Services

This approach is popular with service based professionals, software programmers, and book authors. If you are a certified accountant for example, then blogging will help you establish yourself as an expert in your field and this can lead to you getting more clients. If you write books or create software, the approach works the same. By writing content on a related blog you will build your reputation and readership, and that will naturally lead to readers buying your books and software.

3. Sell Advertising Space

Some people start blogging about topics that interest them. They may not have a specific professional skill they’re trying to promote and they may have no products for sale, but they’re interested enough in a given topic to write about it frequently and well. In these cases readership and reputation also grow over time, and the person writing the blog is able to earn money from selling advertising space in key locations on that blog.

Build Reputation & Audience with Good Content

In all of these cases you need to build a reputation and audience first.

New magazines and TV shows don’t often launch with a ready made audience in place, and neither do new blogs. There are exceptions to every rule of course, and you’ll probably come across success stories where people were able to get large amounts of readers to their blogs fairly quickly.

Just keep in mind that this is not the norm. Usually you have to work very hard for several months before you’ll start seeing progress. As time goes by however, if you’ve kept working diligently you should start seeing some income.

You may also want to read this article by Problogger:

Can you REALLY Make Money Blogging?