The Truth about Making Money Blogging

And why you’re not going to make $3k a month your first 3 months

We’ve all seen the ads that promise to show you how to make money blogging in a couple of months if you just take this course – or that you can double or triple your traffic… Promises, promises… but are they for real?

• Make 3k a month blogging after just xx months!
• Triple your traffic in 90 days…
• How I lost 500 pounds in the 2 weeks before my wedding!

We’ve all seen the ads and the hype and, it’s likely, we all have considered the possibility that this is the course that will finally sprinkle us with magic pixie dust and voila! make us successful. That indeed we can, we will make money blogging!

It’s possible but let’s talk about expectations and reality, ok?

Blogging Is Not a Magic Money Tree

I really hate to break it to you but there’s nothing easy or magical about making money blogging. It takes months and years of really hard work and dedication.

There are lots of blogs out there and you have to find a way to make your blog unique.

Is it rocket science? Not usually but there are skills involved that you’ll have to learn, then you’ll have to figure out how to use those skills profitably on your unique blog, then you’ll have to figure out how to keep doing it day after day.

Blogging is one of those things you have to be in for the long haul. Anything that promises you that you can double your traffic in 30 days or make a six figure income the first year might be exaggerating a tad.

Making Money Blogging

I made over 6 figures last year with my blogs and courses. I know it’s possible to make a living as a blogger, I’ve been doing it for years. I am in NO way saying that it can’t be done. What I am saying is that too many new bloggers buy into the hype that they can make money blogging — within a few short months.

Unlikely, Karen.

Here are the normal ways bloggers make money and roughly how much traffic you’ll need to make an income. Keep in mind most successful bloggers have several different sources of income.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a popular way to make money on a blog – and it works pretty well depending on your unique readers and how much they interact with you.

You can figure that maybe 10% to 20% of your audience will click through a blog post link to the affiliate item you’re selling. Out of that 25% you can plan on 1% to 2% actually going through with the sale.

So, if you have 5,000 page views on that ONE post per month you can figure that maybe 500 people will click through and 50 people will actually purchase something.

Let’s say that the item is $50.00 and you get 5% of the sale as an affiliate fee. That’s a whopping $2.50 for 5,000 page views.

Once you have over 1,000 post on your blog, like I do, and at least half of those posts have affiliate links, AND you’re getting 250,000 traffic or more you might make $300-800 a month depending on the products and the month.

Advertising

So let’s look at advertising.

The ad companies that you probably really want to sign with are Adthrive and Mediavine. (Full disclosure, I’m with Adthrive and I am partial to them). Both of these companies have minimum page view requirements. I don’t know what Mediavine’s are, to be honest, but Adthrive requires 100,000 page views a month minimum.

You’ll make money based on your RPMs, which are based on your demographic, your blog, and a million other things. RPMs move up and down throughout the year and are usually highest at Christmas. Let’s say that your average RPM for a month is $15. Some are lower and some are higher but since we’re just talking here I’m using $15. RPMs are figured by Page Views / 1000 xRPMs.

So at 100,000 page views per month and $15 in RPMs you’ll make roughly $1,500.00 in ad income.

There are ad companies you can sign with when you have much less traffic but the RPMs are also significantly lower. It’s not worth having the ads slow down your site if you’ve got 5,000 page views a month and a RPM of $1.25, right?

Sponsored Posts

Sponsored posts are those posts that companies pay you to write for them. If you have a very engaged audience you can make a nice income once you have some experience and can show engagement on your blog and social media.

So, if you’ve had a blog for 2 months and you have 1, 000 page views with 5,000 followers total across social media AND you are good at blogging (great images, good seo, great communication skills) you could potentially make money with a couple of sponsored posts a month.

The payments vary from sponsor to sponsor and blogger to blogger. I’ve made $250.00 for one post and I’ve made $2000.00 for one post.

The following is an affiliate link. I have taken this course and am involved in the coaching program that Jenny offers – I believe it in 50000000000% BUT if you click through and buy the course I will get a percentage.

As a new/small blogger it’s my opinion that this is the best way to go. AND the best course in my opinion is Jenny Melrose’s Pitch Perfect Pro course. She gives you all the info on how to pitch, emails you can copy for your own pitch… and more.

If you are just starting out this is a great investment in your future income.

Selling Products

How is this different from affiliate income, you ask?

Well, this is when you create a product specifically for your audience and sell it to them.

How to Make $5000.00 a Month as a New Blogger would be an example (I made that up but you know what I’m talking about). A cookbook, if you’re a food blogger… a photography course if you’re a good photographer… anything that you can teach someone else to do is something you can make money at.

Full disclosure – here on Marye Audet-White I sell courses as well as coaching. I think it’s a great way to monetize your blog AS WELL AS help your audience learn something that will enrich their lives. I am not against creating products to sell.

Buyer Beware When Buying Courses

What I do have an issue with is false promises that are sometimes made when bloggers sell their products.

It’s important to look at the blog and blogger before you buy a product especially if it’s a course designed to help you make money or grow traffic on your own blog.

• Look at the age of the blog. Most new bloggers do not have the skills necessary to teach blogging for at least 3 to 5 years.
• Use SEMRush or Traffic Estimate to estimate the actual traffic to the blog. If someone is telling you they can teach you to double your traffic and your traffic is 25,000 page views a month and their traffic is 15,000 page views a month it’s doubtful you need their course. Be aware that traffic estimate seems a little on the low side by maybe 20% at least in their estimates but it will give you a ballpark.
• Ask around. Ask in your blogging groups if anyone has any experience with the course.
• Contact the people who’ve given testimonials for their thoughts about the course.
• Make sure the person that created the course really is more knowledgeable about the subject than you are. I bought a course on how to increase my Pinterest traffic and the particular course promised me that they’d doubled theirs in 30 days. Once I got the course I saw that they’d gone from some very low number like 1200 to 2400… much less than the 15,000 I was getting.
• Listen to your gut and ask all the questions before handing over your credit card info!
• Make sure there’s a money back guarantee and that you understand how it works.

Making Money Blogging Bottom Line

The bottom line is this. Everyone is different and everyone grows at a different rate. Don’t expect to make much money your first year or so of publishing your blog.

Work on putting out quality content, creating relationship with your audience, and making sure you’ve got a strong blog structure and seo. Then, be patient and consistent.

THAT y’all, that is how you’re going to eventually make a six figure (or more) income blogging.