A comment on another post about blogging said she’d love to work full-time as a blogger, but was struggling to make it work. Many think blogging is no longer viable as a home-based career. So I went out and asked some experts what they thought about blogging a home-based career option.
Is it still possible to make money blogging?
Dominic Panarello, SuitVenture.com
Yes, it is – as a long-term strategy. You cannot achieve overnight success with a blog, as it takes many months to build your audience and market to them. I’m the owner of SuitVenture.com, the guide for working overseas and traveling as much as possible as an expat. It’s a new site (a few months ago) and is growing rapidly. In the first month, uptake was slow – but subscribers are growing at an exponential rate.
Blogging is absolutely a viable income option, as the legion of professional bloggers can attest. That said, as the market has gotten more crowded, it’s become harder to break into it right away. Gone are the days when you could do some basic keyword research, draw up an article and expect it to rank. In 2016, you have to spend at least as much time promoting your blog as you do writing articles.
Blogging is still a viable option for income. Depending on your target audience and their level of disposable income, you can set yourself up for success with the right audience and messages. Below are three tips to help monetize your blog.
1) Choose an Audience that spends money online
- Doing so will ensure that you can convert blog readers into customers
- Gives you a head start on targeting a demographic
2) Release Products on a Schedule
- Having a schedule sets a standard in people’s minds. Maybe someone can’t afford your product today, but if they know every 3 Monday’s you release a product, then maybe the next one they will be ready to buy.
3) Promote to Influencers
- Give your products away for free to other bloggers and influencers asking them to write a review of it will increase the clout around your name and product. Making your product seem hard to get or exclusive can also drive up the demand.
Gary Adkins, Kenmore Law Group
I think blogging is absolutely a viable income option. If you’re passionate about the topic that you’re writing on, your posts will get shared on social media and you will get exposure. But you have to connect to your audience and to do this, you have to understand your audience and their needs. You don’t necessarily have to be unique. We know of a blogger who writes about her daily life, cooking, taking the kids to school, etc and she has 100,000 followers. It seems like a boring topic but she has managed to connect to her audience.
To monetize, you can sell products directly on your blog. For example, if you tried a lotion that you really liked, you can partner up with the lotion company and sell their products and receive a commission for every product sold.
You can also monetize as an Amazon affiliate, which is almost the same deal: You would sell products and get commission from amazon. However, we don’t recommend this because Amazon will take a huge chunk. It is better to go the first route: contact the manufacturers directly. The other option is to sign up with Google ad sense or similar service where people click on ads on your site and you make some money (amount varies, could be a few pennies or a few dollars per click).
What Leslie Says…
I agree that it is possible to make money blogging, but not in the same way people did it years ago when they relied on keywords and affiliate income to all the work. Today, it’s harder to succeed in blogging because the market is crowded. However, if you can create an appealing site, deliver great content on a regular basis, and can get a lot of readers, you can still making money blogging. Over at Digital Writer Success, I have a lot of great articles on how to make money blogging. Or perhaps you’ll consider getting my book:
