Can you make money with a blog?

I've watched my girlfriend build a food blog from scratch over the past three years, and can confirm that you can make money doing it. It's hard work, but totally possible.

Monetization comes through:

• sponsorships/brand promotions
• affiliate links for Amazon products, hosting, etc.
• selling your own courses
• selling eBooks/PDFs
• selling physical books through publishers
• writing for other blogs
• social media mentions
• ads

It's all about producing content consistently and being active on social media. Networking helps, as you can cross-promote each other. You want to have good SEO, a good reading experience (clean design, good fonts, fast site), and interact with your readers whenever possible.

Over the last few years, she has met some bloggers who are making well into six figures blogging full time (don't want to share their personal details though).

If anyone has questions, let me know and I'll try to answer them.

PS: I wrote a tutorial on how to set up a blog at startyourblog.co

https://www.reddit.com/r/juststart/ has lots of case studies that show what it takes and some results people are getting.

I literally asked that question from 50+ bloggers at https://blogprofits.co/interviews/.

Why not go read detailed case studies instead of assuming everything is bullshit? You're talking about a topic that's been plumbed deeply and thoroughly by many people before you. It's not new or novel. And the answer is: Yes.

Hi I started blogging this month on medium and made almost 900$ until now.
I was very lucky to write the right post at the right time, but the first thing you should do is to acquire followers.
To do that, the most difficult thing is to identify groups of potential readers and spread the word to them. You have communities in Reddit, hacker news, flipboard, twitter linkedin.

Hi,
It's true you can make money with a blog, but it can be an uphill climb. The first thing to do is identify your "secret sauce". What is it that you have right now which would appeal to an audience? It can't just be "your passions". Do you have a great writing style, a very unique way of thinking, an inspirational journey/experience, a unique approach to problem solving, a new perspective on a topic, connections to VIPs, a unique product offering, etc. Without something to set you apart (your 'secret sauce'), a blog is just another drop of content in a vast sea of content.

Hope this is helpful.

Good luck!

-Pmox2018

I really like the affiliate model (Amazon) for making money from a blog. If you look at a site like Wirecutter, they are able to make a lot of money from doing detailed reviews and recommending the best products. They offer a great service and are able to make money in return.

Definitely not BS.

If you're into podcasts I recommend listening to some of the SPI podcast episodes, lots of them are bloggers.

Also Reach from ConvertKit, but there are many other podcasts on this topic (How They Blog for example)

I've made over $3,000 from the ads and selling text links from a blog I run. Of course, it's over the course of almost 6 years, but still money.

My website is focuses on understanding jobs, careers, and the workplace. It originally started out as a place for people to come rant about their day jobs and bosses, but it evolved beyond that, and I didn't even do that -- it was my visitors who became contributors.

So my site is open for anyone to come publish on. I accept the article and then I copy the contents of the document, paste it, prepare it with images and ensure it reads well. I did this all for free. The blog is a passion of mine. It helps me understand people and work. Other people over the years felt the same.

Over the years though, the server performance just kept diminishing -- because I was just using money from ads to pay the costs of the server that the ads could afford. I recently had to upgrade the server to keep it going. Went from Shared to Managed to VPS to Dedicated.

The Dedicated is expensive, but it was a necessary update to keep it going. Since I've had over a thousand people contribute to the site, this is their work, their writings, on there. I am trying to afford the server, but really need help, so I just started charging per article and kept ads on there. The price will go up after the holiday, but the website is delightful to work with now.

I'd wake up to Jetpack telling me the site went down or I'd have to tell people: "Yeah it was posted today, but the website is cached for 24 hours." It was a great caching system, definitely worked, as the site was able to handle quite a bit of traffic -- but once it got to be too much -- the site would go down.

Site hasn't been down once in the month I've had it sitting on a Dedicated server. I'm loving this. And I feel: it's not fair to my contributors and visitors who want to read their work to keep them on a cheap VPS. Even an upgrade to a more expensive VPS -- the site just keeps growing in popularity, but also in resource demands, even though I'm offloading everything, CSS-JS-Images to a CDN.

2,000 public posts and 500 more pending to go out, and about 200 in draft. There is a lot of demand on the server to get those articles going. I only publish once or twice per day, which allows me to write content as casually as I want. The site went through a golden period from year 2 to year 5 but has since quieted down. I had always posted everyone's articles over my own -- so I had a backlog of evergreen articles.

But I figure.. if they want to see the site keep going... I'm just needing a bit of help to pay for the costs of the server. I'll pay for it no matter what, but I've closed my blog to FREE PUBLICATIONS. Those who want to be featured on it.. can help pay for the Dedicated server.

http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com

In that same veing Im curious.

Could I run a blog and just hire writers as some sort of content curation? Do you guys feel the best blogs come from someone with a personal touch or could you treat it like a business?

Totally doable (not easy, but doable). I've been running two blogs for over ten years now, and we have four full time employees based on our revenue.

I talk to bloggers all the time (it's part of my job starting InfluenceKit), and I can attest that there are bloggers out there making a lot of money (i.e. seven figures), and plenty making less (but still a decent living).

I make about 10-15K/month, but it's much more than just a blog now. Most of the money comes from our flagship course.

Before that, I wrote over 200 articles. It was a grind. We don't post as consistently now because it's more effective for us to update the really popular 10 posts that are bringing in 80%+ of the traffic.

People really do make good money from this. Like anything else it takes time, skill and a bit of luck. But there are low barriers to entry.

I know a dude who blogs about businesses he starts, and he makes a few grand a month from affiliate links.

Read more about it here:

https://sampriestley.com/create-a-successful-blog

Good luck!

It's totally possible. I made a blog a few years ago with no intent of monetizing it, but over time it just kind of organically happened. Do NOT look at me as a playbook of how to build a money-making blog, but you can take me as an example of someone who makes non-zero $ from a blog, even when they never set out to. I'm far from making "a sh*t ton of money", but am bringing in some passive cash without really putting any concerted effort into doing so.

Short story: I wrote a blog about completing a lengthy application and exam process for a specific professional designation (specific to my location). I did this to motivate myself to complete the process, learn how to set up a simple WP blog, and also because there was a lack of material online on this topic. The first thing I lazily did when needing to do the application was Google for other people's examples of how they completed the application and I was shocked that there was almost nothing online.

I completed the process, got my designation, and the blog had a very small audience. However, due to the lack of other content, I started ranking on Google, not super high, but first page for a couple of niche searches and second page for others. Traffic grew organically, but even today it's very small, maybe 3k monthly uniques. The thing is, people going for this designation often purchase study guides or assistance with the process. Out of the blue, a site selling such content contacted me to put up a banner ad. They said they'd pay me $100 and I said OK! Especially since I was getting about $5/month from AdSense. It was a disaster, they got zero conversions. I let them keep the banner on for an extra 2 months, but still nothing. We ended that trial (amicably). I didn't touch the blog, continued consulting, but things just kept organically growing. Months later that same site owner contacted me and said he had an affiliate program. I get paid for sales he makes that come from my site. We started a couple years ago and, it worked. One sale was worth many multiples of a month of Adsense income (which I quickly removed). It's been about 2 years of the affiliate program, but nowadays, depending on the seasonality of the application process, I bring in anywhere between $100-$500/month, completely passive. Last year I did about $2.5k and it's still growing this year (on pace to do +$4k in 2018). This doesn't pay our bills, but it's a nice bonus because it's passive.

Especially now that I'm bootstrapping VidHug and billing about 1/4th of the hours I used to as a freelancer, that additional income is a lot more meaningful now.

The other nice thing I get out of it is messages on a regular basis from people who also completed the designation and credit my free resources for helping them do so. Those things make my day.

Thanks! I agree about the 'secret sauce.' I'm still working on my blog concept. Going to start off with a world view type concept discussing Adventure, Photography, Wisdom (philosophy & techie), and some of my short stories.

I'll see how it goes from their. I'm experienced with and enjoy analytics (old Corporate BI hack). Hopefully, I can feel my way into a profitable niche. I live pretty simply so I'm not looking to be the next Zuck.

You could, but it would be difficult.

My own experience was that blogging for already established media as a freelance writer was easier to do. And having some writing samples on your own blog is a good "in" to writing freelance.

I've seen some other bloggers claiming to make a sh*t ton of money with their blog. Is that true or is it just some random BS?

Probably BS, except some rare cases. If you have a really niche topic, preferably related to a certain business or industry, maybe a paid/subscription newsletter could work.