Every time I talk about the potential for blogs to earn money I generally get a lot of feedback from readers. Much of it is pretty balanced but there are two other types of responses that within hours of my most recent announcement I had in my inbox:
- readers telling me they are going to quit their jobs to become a ProBlogger too
- readers telling me that I’m being irresponsible for talking up blogging as an income spinner and saying that I’m just doing it in a hype filled way to make some quick cash myself.
So let me mention three previous posts that are companion pieces to my recent announcement:
Keep these in mind when you enter into ProBlogging and you’ll have a much more realistic approach.
Update: You might also like to check out two polls I’ve run that show that the vast majority of bloggers don’t earn much money from their blogs. Once again I’m not wanting to put a downer on the potential for blogs to earn money, ask you’ll see in the polls a small number of bloggers make very good money blogging – but I just want people to have a realistic understanding of it. Check these polls out at Adsense Earnings Poll and Chitika Earnings Poll.
Also relevant on this topic is a story I wrote of my first 3 years of blogging.
Update – and for good measure – a more recent post on the topic – A Reality Check about Blogging for Money.
Damn, there goes Darren again trying to hog the entire blogging market for himself…
… Just kidding, as ever some very sage advice on problogger. Keep up the good work.
the truth is somewhere between 1 and 2. Most people would be better seeing blogging for dollars as a part time job at first. Its hard to avoid the hype allegations though when you are so honest about your revenue. Personally, I see it as a reason to try harder, others should as well
I’ve been blogging daily updates on Hurricane Katrina on my main site. And because telephones are one of my big interests, I’ve been blogging daily on a new blog about telephone companies’ efforts to restore service and assist victims of Katrina. Much to my shock, these posts are now accounting for some 1/4 to 1/3 of my ad revenue — which wasn’t even on my mind as I wrote them. I just happened to discover it while looking through my ad channels.
In short, here I’m not blogging for money — far from it — I’m blogging as a public service. Google noticed and is now sending me people who search about Katrina and phone service. And that information needs to get out. I’ll continue doing it for as long as there are updates to be had.
Even if it doesn’t make me one cent.
Anyway, now that I’ve gone off on my tangent, back to the topic at hand. Blogs can earn you lost of money, but whether you’re one of those nasty sell-outs that people seem to have a problem with depends largely on how you approach it.
Making money from blogging is a great thing. It does feel a whole lot like work lately, though…
How do you find out which blog posts earn you revenue? I don’t seem to have any tools that allow me to do that.
Anyone who quits their job after reading something on a blog is an idiot and deserves to be unemployed. Harsh, but I had to be honest.
I have 5 more days to go then I am officially full time blogger. My suggestion is that blog for part time first, when your part time blogging revenue is OVER your full time, AND you still enjoy blogging very much. Then you can consider to turn into full time.
[…] I also always like to emphasise that blogging is NOT a get rich quick thing. To balance the links above (and before you run out and quit your job to become a Pro Blogger) I also STRONGLY recommend you take a look at some of the links and information that I mention in my ProBlogger Public Announcement Post. If you enjoyed this post Bookmark it at del.icio.us […]
This is a great source of info. Darren has given me the motivation to start my own blog. My one weakness is writing and I hope to improve through practice. If I make some money doing it, great. Thanks Darren
Go point about writing. Post some incredibly great material before trying to make money off it. Blog could be good for fiction writers. It’s a hell of a lot easier and cheaper than mailing manuscripts, and people actually read it!
[…] In a similar line of thought PreBloggers might also find my Public Service Announcement posts useful. […]
Well, I have to agree somewhat, those starting out, should start out slow and easy. Like Darren said, it takes time for things to actually pick up, if you follow the advice, I’m sure, some will start seeing things more revenuely to your blogging and visitors to your site will come, remember the saying from the Kevin Costner film, “Field of Dreams” – “If you build it, they will come”.
Makes sense, huh? So, like a lot of us, we start out slow, than watch it skyrocket from time to time.