While blogging seems to be a hobby to most, as it was for me for many years, blogging as a business is a very real and very different animal. It is not a get rich quick, a risk free, or necessarily easy business to run, but the long game can be well worth the time and money investment.
What Is Blogging As A Business?
Everyone pretty much knows what blogging is but is there a difference in doing it for a hobby than a business. The short answer is yes, it can be quite a bit different.
When you blog as a hobby you simply can write about what ever your in the mood to write. You will generally give no thought to keyword phrases, search volume or anything else bloggers think about when doing it for an income.
The fact is you can still write about things you enjoy and are interested in but you do have to consider how it will be found and what will bring in the most readers when blogging as a business.
How Do You Make Money Blogging?
There are several ways a blog can make money and you should diversify the income on a blog in as many way as possible to lower the risks if one way takes a turn for the worse,
Ad Revenue
The most common and easiest way is through Ad Revenue. This is simply getting ads placed on your site automatically through a company like Google Adsense, Ezoic (what I use on most of my sites), Mediavine, or Adthrive and get paid for how many see the ads. Naturally the more visitors you have to your site the more you can make.
Affiliate Income
This is another great and easy way to make money with a blog. When you become an affiliate for another company or brand you promote their products and when a sale is made you get a small percentage of the sale.
Some affiliate companies pay a small percentage but can have high conversions like Amazon for instance, While other companies might have lower conversions on the sales but sell higher ticket items with higher affiliate commission percentages.
Digital Products
This is a way many bloggers make significant money. By creating your own digital products that can be downloaded a blogger only has to make the product once and can have unlimited sales with very little overhead expense.
These products can range from things like journals, training courses, videos, even photography and audio products. You’re only limited by your imagination and a desire from customers to purchase your items on what you can create in digital products.
Sell Physical Products
Setting up a store and selling physical products is another way bloggers can make money. Although the blogging itself isn’t what is making you money in this case, it can be a great avenue to get customers to know about the products you have for sale on your site.
Other Money Making Options
I won’t go into a lot of detail but there are other ways to make money with a blog like sponsored guest posts, sponsored product reviews, selling services, membership communities and even using an email list. The fact is, building a successful blog opens up a lot of opportunity for income.
How Do You Get People To Read Your Blog?
The million dollar question…literally, if you could get enough people to come to your blog you can make a million dollars. There are several ways that contribute to visitors coming to your blog.
Google Search
This for most bloggers is where most of your visitors will come from. To get Google to send visitors to your site you need to write helpful content that answers questions people are looking for the answers to.
This means you have to write what people want you to write, not necessarily what you feel like writing. This is probably the biggest difference between a hobby blogger and a professional blogger.
Social Sharing
Many bloggers, depending on their niche and trending topics, can see a significant amount of traffic from social media. When a post goes viral somewhere like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram or even TikTok the visitor numbers can shoot up quickly. Although the traffic spike is sometimes short lived, if it happens often it can contribute to higher monthly views on average.
Other Search Engines
Although none are as dominating as Google, search engines like Bing, Yahoo, Duck Duck Go and others can also contribute to your traffic numbers.
Make Your Blog Known
By putting yourself out there in your niche you will get more traffic to your site. Being on YouTube, active on Social Media, and maybe going on podcasts within your niche can significantly raise the awareness of your blog and bring traffic.
Can You Make A Living Blogging?
You certainly can though it’s not usually a quick process. Sometimes it can take years of hard work to get a blog successful enough to make enough money to replace a job. Sometimes if you pick the right niche at the right time and write enough posts quickly a blog can see huge success within a few months but this isn’t the norm.
Starting Your Blog
You don’t need much and although there are many platforms out there to build a website on I believe WordPress is the best and most versatile. You will need a host, I like Siteground, you can purchase your domain name from them and set up an affordable hosting service and they will install the WordPress platform for you.
You will then need a Theme for your website. There are some free ones but paid ones have better support. I use the Popcorn Theme on this site and like the way it works. Once you get it set up (which we all put too much thought into) you start publishing quality posts that people want to read and you hit publish as much as you can. The more posts you have the more likely your traffic will grow quickly.
My Journey As A Blogger
After years of blogging, first as a hobby and then as a way to replace my day job, I can tell you that it can be done. For years I never made a dime, but when I started blogging as a business I changed the way I did things and everything changed. It still took a couple of years but eventually money started coming in and profits were made.
If you want to blog for a living you have to do it in a way that will bring visitors to your site and the money will come. I was in denial of this for a long time and just wrote what I wanted to write and I got very little traffic.
Some great ways to learn how to blog as a business are to join one of the paid communities that teach this method. A couple of the ones I recommend are Income School and Passive Income Geek. By following their systems you can take blogging to the next level.
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