Wanna Make Money Blogging? Chances Are – You Won’t :)
If you think that you can make money blogging by just working a few hours a day in your underwear while the cash just starts to pour in then guess what? You guessed it – it ain’t gonna happen.
“Wait! Wait!” you say. “I realize it takes a lot of work. I am going to work 10 hours a day until I get a million page views a month and then I will be rolling in the dough”.
I hate to be the one to break it to you but even if you accomplish your goal then you likely wont be making as much money as are anticipating. I will be the first to say that I enjoy blogging because I enjoy writing and I enjoy it when readers leave comments and we get to debate different things and I also enjoy blogging because it does bring repeat visitors to Domain Superstar many of whom will go on to become happy customers of our domain name tools BUT I would never ever rely on blogging to make anywhere near the amount of money that can be made by developing a “real” website.
When I say “real” website I mean any website where people visit the site with the intent of buying something, applying for something, “getting” something – anything other than just visiting to comment on what a cool post you just wrote. Let’s face it. When I put up an insurance website I build the site so that visitors will come to the site as they are searching to buy insurance/compare insurance quotes/etc. When I put up a credit card site I build the site so that visitors will come to the site as they are searching to apply for a credit card. Yes, you can have a very high quality content rich blog that gets some of the exact same search engine traffic as I mention above but where is the majority of your traffic going to come from? People who just enjoy spending a few minutes reading your blog. Nothing wrong with that and it can be an ego booster for some I suppose but those visitors aren’t necessarily going to make the blog owner any richer – especially with CPM advertising prices so (justifiably) low.
My examples above are very tightly focused niches and my goal is of course to draw people into those sites by providing high quality content and helpful tools but let’s get real and answer this question:
“Why are visitors visiting my site?”
If you are a blogger then even if you have a huge email list and an enormous number of RSS subscribers then that does not necessarily mean that your visitors are coming to your blog for any type of commercial reason. Sure, you have influence but many people just like the way you write.
There are definitely some bloggers that make a significant amount of money: Shoemoney.com and ProBlogger.com come to mind immediately. I am definitely not one to say that just because something is hard that you shouldn’t go for it and work extremely hard to make it happen. That being said, is blogging really one of the better ways to make money online?
The Alexa blog published a great post a while ago titled: “Get Rich from Your Blog – Is it Realistic?” that should put a lot of your thoughts on blogging into the proper perspective. With so many other great ways to build content rich websites and develop new products and services I would strongly urge anyone that wants to make real money blogging to either just blog for the fun of it and devote the majority of your time to building out a “real” website or use your blog to drive traffic to your “real” website and connect with your customers.
What do you think? (Please do not be offended if you are a blogger since I called non blogs “real” websites as it was just to make the blog/regular website distinction 
)
(Thanks to Financial Samurai for pointing out the Alexa post.)
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Hi Joel – Good thoughts to think about. Everybody wants to be shoemoney i guess!
What that Alexa entry doesn’t mention is the amount of money you can make with multiple ads. Sure, you may only make $2,500/month with that 1 ad, but have 4, that $10,000/month nut becomes meaningful!
Have a good Thanksgiving!
Sam-urai
Great point – a huge key to success is definitely how well one is able to monetize their site/blog.
I have had sites with 1/10th of the traffic of another one of my sites make 10X as much just because of the niche the sites were in, the quality of traffic, and how well each site was monetized.
I think the biggest takeaway that I was trying for in this post was just to put out there the thought that even with great monetization a blog is usually not the best avenue for building a substantial income online as compared to a traditional website since typically the majority of blog users are just hanging around for a few minutes to read a post or two on their lunch break rather than doing anything commercially oriented. There are certainly exceptions but that is just the way that I tend to see it.
Owen Frager sent me this link on Twitter of the 25 most valuable blog properties so there are definitely blogs that make a significant amount of money but I just tend to think that there is a higher ROI for an individual webmaster to go a different route in most cases: http://fragerfactor.blogspot.com/2009/11/25-most-valueable-us-blogs.html
it amazes me how many blogs have surfaced in last 12 months .
most are pretty useless , i have hand reg. doms from 2000, there were no metrics about, 2 blogs / google was in its infancy,
if you can make a income most bloggers would be too busy selling and not posting / a little harsh perhaps./there is so much crap about flipping doms but it all takes time to make a profit if one accounts fot time.
the ROI, as a percentage, can be high but so what ,there is no leverage as in tangible property , ok buy a domain for 6 dollars sell for 60 dollars ,big deal.
imho