How Much Can You Earn From Blogging? How To Get Started
If you walk into your boss’s office and tell them you’re leaving the company to start a blog, they might laugh at you. After all, who makes a living writing blog posts online?
Leaving a steady job to start your blog can seem like a risky business when you think about the financial rewards.
However, the reality is that thousands of people make a decent living from blogging.
Sure, it may take some time to get your blog up and running to the point where you’re seeing considerable daily traffic volumes. However, after you go through the initial phase of breaking through the obscurity, your blog will begin to attract revenue from advertisers and other affiliate income sources.
So how much can you expect to earn from a blog? Let’s take a look at the answer and decide if it’s the career path for you.
How much do bloggers earn?
Just like with any other business venture, you’ll need to put in a lot of work, up front, to get your blog off the ground. To give you a short answer, here’s what’s possible if you start a blog and commit to posting new content two to three times a week.
- Year 1: $1,000 – $10,000
- Year 2: $10,000 – $30,0000
- Year 3: $50,000 – $100,000
- Year 4: $100,000 – $250,000
- Year 5: $200,000 – $400,000
As you can see, it takes some time to get into numbers that can provide you with a full-time life. Many bloggers decide to quit within the first year of launching their blog. They just can’t find the resources or the time and effort to keep their blog up and running.
The key to a successful blog is persistence and dedication to achieving your goal of a blogging lifestyle that earns you passive income.
Traffic is your key to success with blogging
The more traffic, the higher your earning potential. By signing up for Google Analytics, you can track the volume of traffic coming to your site and which pages visitors read.
It is possible to earn between $0.01 and $0.10 per page view in most blogging niches, using affiliate ads and Adsense ads. So, if you get 1,000 page views in a month, you can expect to earn anywhere from $10 to $100 from advertising on your blog.
However, if you scale this figure up to 100,000 pageviews, then you can scale your revenue as well, with potential earnings between $1,000 and $10,000 per month.
The key to attracting more page views is content. The content on your site plays an important role in attracting new eyeballs to your blog. You need to consistently produce high-quality content if you want to keep increasing visitor traffic.
It’s all about the email list
Your email list acts as a list of potential customers who signed up for some free offer on your blog for free information or something. With an email list, you can start marketing to your prospects. Set up a sales funnel using a platform like Clickfunnels and start marketing products and services to people who sign up for your email list.
Google updates its algorithm from time to time. During these updates, it may remove some of your pages from its search algorithm. In one fell swoop, Google can kill your profitable blog that is getting a lot of traffic and revenue from advertisers overnight.
However, if you have an email list, you will always be able to communicate with your leads and customers. Research shows that successful bloggers can convert their email list traffic into customers buying the product at a rate of $0.5 to $2 per customer.
That means every new customer who signs up to your email list has a potential lifetime earnings value of up to $2. So if you have an email list of 2,000 subscribers, you could be getting average sales monthly payments of $2 each, giving you a monthly income of up to $2,000 from your list.
Write what you know
There are two things to know when looking for a niche to blog about. First, you need to choose a profitable niche. There’s no point writing a bunch of great content in a niche that nobody cares about online.
Second, you need to choose a niche that aligns with your interests and values. If you choose a niche that you know nothing about or one that you have only a minor interest in, you will eventually stop producing good content that people want to read.
What are the most profitable niches for bloggers?
Pick a niche from this list and start your blog. All of the niches on this list are profitable, and there are thousands of bloggers who make a full-time living producing content on these topics.
- Personal Finance
- Product Reviews
- Fashion
- Trips
- Lifestyle
- Supplements and health products
How You Can Make Money Blogging To Increase Your Income
After you create a blog on a popular topic, you can leverage it to create income. The internet is the ideal arena to scale your business, and if you can build a brand that has opportunities to scale, you’ll end up with a winner.
So how do you monetize your site and start making big money? Follow these strategies to get started.
Cost Per Click (CPC) Advertising Models
Google AdSense is the best platform to launch a CPC campaign. With this model, every time someone clicks on an ad, Google pays them a few cents. If the keyword you’re targeting is popular, you could earn up to a few dollars each time someone clicks on your blog ad.
Affiliate Cost Per Action Links
After your blog starts getting traffic of 30,000 page views per month, you can start an affiliate strategy to earn more income. Manufacturers will pay you an affiliate commission every time someone buys one of their products using your affiliate link.
For example, if you are running a blog on smoothie recipes, then you could write an article on the best blenders. Link to the article text that refers to the products, and encourage your readers to take action and click on the link to purchase that specific blender.
You get a commission that can vary between 5% and 60% of the sale, depending on what you are selling. It is crucial to present your affiliate options to your readers as a light sales opportunity. Don’t be pushy, or you risk sounding like a salesperson, and that will cost your blog readers.
After your blog gains traction, you can use it to host and promote sponsored posts. Companies may contact you to write about their website or product offering. Of course, they will pay you for the privilege. Some bloggers can earn up to $30,000 for a sponsored post, and some earn even more.
You can also write sponsored posts on other sites to drive traffic to your website and increase page views. The more links you have to other people’s sites, the more your credibility ranking will increase in the eyes of search engines.
Direct ads
Some companies and brands will communicate with your email address on their site. You may be offered a direct mail deal worth tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. The company places a banner ad on your blog and gives it an RPM of $20. So you can earn $20,000 in revenue from this single banner addition if you get 1 million page views per month.
However, it’s important to note that as the world transitions to browsing the internet via mobile devices, the ad space is getting much smaller, limiting these types of opportunities.
Advertising content on your site
Google Ads and Facebook Ads are two of the most popular advertising models for promoting web content. If you are running an affiliate link in your post, you can use these platforms to submit your post.
It is going to cost you money to run an ad campaign on these platforms. However, if you’re running the ad to promote an affiliate post and it earns you more than you spend on the campaign, you’re earning.
The problem with advertising, especially on Facebook, is that you need to laser target your ads for optimal click-through rates. The cost of running a campaign can be expensive, and if you don’t see any results, you may be exceeding your marketing budget.
The key to using these platforms is to test, test and test. Test all aspects of your campaign. Find out what is working and what is a waste of time and money.
Offers to talk
As the years go by with your blog, you will develop a reputation in the online world. As a result, more people start to take notice of your content. This effect could lead to companies asking you to organize or participate in conference events in your specific niche.
As a blogger, you will build a lot of knowledge in your niche, and this opportunity allows you to earn money from your experience. Fees for speaking or giving conferences or webinars, can range from $2,000 to $50,000, depending on your niche and the popularity of your blog.
Independent works
Freelance work is the fruit of the blogger-verse. When you start your career as a blogger, it takes some time to build an audience on stage where you can start monetizing your efforts.
Meanwhile, many bloggers turn to the world of freelance writing to earn a few extra bucks a month. When applying for a freelance job, having a blog can improve your chances of securing the job. If your blog has a lot of unique content, and the writing is good, it is an ideal portfolio to present to your potential client.
Tips to improve your blogging skills
Here are some tips you can use to speed up your blogging career and get yourself on the fast track to success.
Hire writers
Many bloggers start their careers full of enthusiasm. They release a new piece of content every day because they have so much to say. However, this enthusiasm eventually wears off, and you will find yourself struggling to create unique and fresh content for your blog.
At this stage, you should hire writers to do the work for you. Hire a writer on platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, and Freelancer. These sites have many writers looking for work, and many of them have talented writing skills.
Use grammar tools
No one wants to read content that has poor grammar and no structure. Using an app like Grammarly can help you grammar-check your work to make sure it meets professional standards. For the price of a cup of coffee, you could have a grammar tool that allows you to produce impeccable work.
To practice
Your writing skills may be somewhat less than stellar when starting your blog. At this point, you should spend as much time as possible writing. Practice makes perfect, and by writing every day, you will constantly improve your skill.
Create a schedule for posts
While you may write every day, there’s no need to post on the same schedule. During the first 6 months of launching your blog, it will take a while to build traffic.
Publishing all your best content in the first few weeks is an exercise in futility. It’s best to schedule your posts to post two to three times a week.
By using this strategy, you will save your best ammunition for when your blog starts to experience increased traffic flows.
Start blogging and find freedom with your work
Blogging is fantastic for several reasons. Once you have a model that works, it’s easy to scale your efforts and turn your blog into a money-making machine.
There is no need to stop with a blog. If you manage to automate most of your processes through the use of virtual assistants and freelance writers, you can start producing numerous blogs in a variety of niches. Each of these blogs earns you a residual income that begins to add up as the blogs gain traction.
Read Also: The 9 Best Jobs for Introverts and Freelancers
Eventually, you’ll get to a space where your blogs almost run themselves. At this juncture in your blogging career, you will find that you have more time and more income, allowing you to pursue other business and investment dreams.