As y’all know, I’ve been talking a lot about marketing lately. I’ve also been talking about the myth, of sorts, of making money by blogging. Well, I’m here to add some things to previous conversations.
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First, I’ve always believed that if one has a highly ranked blog that they should be making pretty good money, enough so that they won’t have to work for anyone else ever again. That doesn’t turn out to be true at all, but not for the reasons you might believe.
There are two reasons a person won’t make a lot of money if their blog is highly ranked.
One is because their audience isn’t quite niched properly. By that I mean like my blog. I talk a lot about social media and technology stuff but at a moment’s notice I’ll change up and talk about marketing, diabetes, whatever. I have a nice group of people that subscribe to this blog and some other folks that stop by on a regular basis, but overall I’ve never niched this blog so that it continually attracts a specific group of people that might be interested in buying any of the stuff I have on the left or right sidebars of this blog.
Two, the other is that some of those people aren’t trying to make money blogging, even if the rest of us think they are. One of my friends who stops by here often pretty much told me that’s not her focus right now; it’s on content, plain and simple, and one day she might give it a real try. I’m not going to mention her name, but I am going to mention someone else’s name, and by extension mention a host of other folks.
I once talked about Steve Pavlina, who has stopped taking comments on his blog, and how much he writes. Truth be told, I have way more posts than he has, but he writes these really long posts, sometimes as much as 7,500 words. He puts a lot of time into researching his posts, sometimes experimenting before writing the posts, and I have to say that until he went on one 30 day challenge for himself that frankly freaked me out a bit, I used to stop in and read his blog a lot.
Now, here’s two things. One, he’s not making any money blogging. He’s got a highly ranked website, and he talks about writing lots of content that’s timeless and valuable to everyone that stops by. Two, he doesn’t have to try to make money from blogging because he’s already got money. The guy makes money in a totally different way that has nothing to do with blogging or writing. In other words, he’s got the money to do whatever he wants, including writing long blog posts, going on vacations whenever he likes, etc. How do I know? Because a few nights ago I read one of his books titled How to Build a High-Traffic Web Site (or Blog) where he talked about it.
It reminded me that there are many other bloggers with high volume websites that either do or don’t make a lot of money actually blogging because they already make money in other ways. Some that do were making money or already had money when they started, and thus really can’t relate to the rest of us.
The only one I can think of that’s somewhat like us is Darren Rowse, and you know how he did it? By having a niche blog as well as his regular blog, and the niche blog generated the big bucks. He also started off writing 9 or 10 posts a day, which fits the criteria about content. A lot of content will drive visitors and traffic, even if it’s not one long article. As a matter of fact, the highest ranked sites have multiple bloggers or use a lot of guest posts to help populate things. Copyblogger is an example, along with Huffington Post, of blog sites with lots of posts per day.
So, we come back to the two ways; niche blog and lots of content. For the record, a 7,500 word post works out to 10 – 15 posts for most people, and Pavlina does that 2 or 3 times a week. How many of you think you could do that? If I didn’t have 5 blogs I think I could do it, if I knew that’s what was going to make me money. But that’s still the issue isn’t it? You drive traffic but who’s to say that you’d have the right niche topic that brought buyers as well as readers?
I don’t really believe that any of the blogs I have right now would bring buyers, even if I was writing that much content daily. That means I’d have to figure out a way to modify things somewhere so that one blog could be within a broad niche so I could have enough to write about, but also make it a niche where there are buyers. It’s certainly not going to be leadership, it’s not going to be a local blog, and it’s not going to be a blog on SEO. I’m not sure a blog on social media would get it done.
But a blog on technology; yeah, that might get it done. A blog on working out might get it done. A cooking blog, absolutely. Man, too bad that’s stuff I can’t write enough on. If I were in my 20’s I could probably tackle technology but that’s it. I actually do have a friend that was making pretty good money writing on horses and horse equipment, but she found it hard to sustain at a certain level after awhile and turned it into a magazine, where she has a main sponsor that helps her out some. That proves that with the right niche you can do it, but also proves that it takes content, continuous and lots of it, to get it done.
Do you have what it takes inside of you to get it done? Are you at least thinking about things in a different way? Let me know.
Time to start brainstorming. I mean with all your interests, you can not come up with one idea to try this with? BTW, I would have thought technology would suit you just fine. Maybe not a broad scope but something like home office, audio or video would be something you could do.
Scott, the problem is that I don’t have the time or the money to try all these things out anymore. I used to read a lot and I still read some, but if you can’t really test stuff then what you write about it isn’t real, and you know that’s not my style.
It is very complicated topic, Mitch. Depends how blogger approach money making opportunities, depends for what kind of keywords blog is highly ranked and again depends on the niche. Let’s take for example travel related blog – for instance particular city. Blog should have static home page, hotel search, attractions, activities and may be some news. Excepts the news section, most likely this blog doesn’t need constant updates, as attractions, activities and theme parks will be the same. So if this blog get highly ranked for “book someplace hotel” most likely blog will make money. Different niche, have different conversion ratio, let take health and medical niche – previously I was working on a website which used to convert on average 42-48 visits into sale. On technology blog my conversion is 2000:1 and on my fashion project 4000:1. Again traffic levels can be very different, IT and fashion are getting much more searches compared to medical and travel.
Carl, you just helped to emphasize my point. Kind of a finite niche, probably not sites highly ranked overall but ranked for their term, and it can be done. It still needs lots of content and new content to keep it fresh. I bet if you’re not working with those sites right now that they’re not doing as well as they did when you were.
Yeah, targeted keywords are very important and when traffic is organic, in most cases it is high quality. About the websites, I’ve sold one of sites, the other one is in process of re-design, I will try to get user generated content, so there will be always fresh content flow.
I’m going to make money with my blogging content book that will be done next month. That will then lead to trainings and other opportunities. I may be able to get paid from my roller skating site when I start promoting it, but that will not be until the summer. As for my other two sites, I don’t really see it.
A roller skating site Marcie? As in talking about equipment or actual roller skating. Don’t tell me you’re a Derby girl in disguise! lol
I agree with you. People may have various intentions when they start blogging. However, that does not mean that they should not earn from their writing.
It certainly doesn’t Keone, but it’s not as easy as many people think it’s going to be, especially if they believe there’s only one way to make money because of blogging.
Seems like intricate topic. In a way, I find it helpful, money in blogging is hard for me.. but thanks to you I will take some of your views for me help through.
I think it’s hard to post quantity and still have quality without a team of writers working on a site. That is the advantage of Problogger and Huffington. You are getting enough content that something is interesting to everyone. I think the different views are what make the site good. I’m not sure I’ve seen that type of traffic from a solo writer. That’s tough to pull off.
That’s my thought Melinda. Unless you already have lots of money and thus lots of time, I can’t see it either. When I looked at Darren’s early posts, most of them were very short. Not bad stuff, but he was sharing a lot more information he was finding on the internet than writing the types of posts he writes now… when he writes one that is. 😛
I have read it that blogs in themselves dont convert – you need something with a strong call to action like a squeeze /sales page or webinars.
That being the case the blog is there to inform and build relationships within the targetted niche. Then providing you have the relationship you can send your readers a link to the odd offer.
So I guess the site with clear offers with a blog integrated into it for articles is the way to go…
Who knows, my site doesn’t convert that well but Im still tweaking and experimenting
Peter, I think most of us are always in the process of tweaking and experimenting, even those who are actually making money directly from their blog. It all comes down to relationships and traffic, as well as what we have to offer to entice people to stop by, read, and possibly purchase.
Thank you Mitch Mitchell for sharing this blog. I go through the blog and also all comments. I am totally agree with Carl. Its totally depends on the blogger that how he/she approaches money making opportunities.
The thing that is the most difficult for me is to obtain quality if the niche is too small. That means, usually, that the competition is not too strong, but I can write about, let’s say – sport’s socks just as many times.
Bella, you probably means “so many times”, and in that case I understand where you’re coming from. Niching oneself too finitely is a way to crash and burn quickly. Yet, last year I was talking to a friend of mine who was taking a course in college where she had to find someone to write articles for. She found a company that made artificial grass. Whereas I might have thought about 2 or 3 posts and then got stuck, what she did was find companies and organizations around the world that used artificial grass and not only highlighted them but put up pictures of what they had done. Sometimes it’s all in the creativity that one has in figuring out how to get more mileage out of a topic.
Yes!
Sorry for the mistake! That was a really good way of using creativity. I guess that with those kinds of topics, you have to try and go along for as long as you can. Perhaps there some really interesting things in them that aren’t visible at the first sight.
Hey Mitch! Nice post out here. To be honest, even I get freaked out when reading posts which are of thousands of words!
Raaj, that kind of thing doesn’t bother me if the information is compelling or is giving me what I need. Of course when a post gets that long you also hope it has some form so that you know what’s coming. I’ve done it here and there often so I can’t be hypocritical and tell others not to do it.