Wondering Whether Should You Blog for Money or Not? Maybe This Would Help

Blogging is a great way to make money as a side hustle or even as a main income once it gets big enough. But in order to do that you will have to run advertisements on your blog, and recommend other people's products there. So before you make a blog, you need to know whether making money from blogging is the right thing for you.

Asking whether you should blog for money or not is maybe quite silly, but it is worth asking because not every blog is suitable for making money. For example, the specific topic or niche that you choose to be the core of your blog doesn't interest many people, therefore, making money out of it would be extremely difficult. These are some things to consider if you're wondering about whether you should blog for money or not.

Your Objectives

Not everyone starts a blog with a sole intention to make it a source of income. Most people blog just to do something in their spare time, just want to write something that they are passionate about, for recreational purposes, to promote their book, because writing is fun, and to help others with their similar problems.

There's nothing wrong with starting a blog for more than one reason, and some bloggers also didn't make money from their blog on purpose, they just write and people got interested, and they inadvertently make their blog profitable. Again, to make your blog profitable, you would have to show ads on your blog at some point. And there are a couple scenarios where that might not be a good idea.

Readers Uproar

You usually find your loyal readers or followers of your blog because what you write resonates with them, relates to them, or they just simply like it because your blog is good or funny. There are many blogs that after finding loyal readers and then put some ads on their blog, receive some anger from its followers.

While some blogs don't rely too heavily on what the readers think since the reader ownership is not very high, for some blogs, if the readers are angry and decide not to visit anymore, could change the game forever. So before adding ads to your blog, make sure that the income will outweigh the risk of losing some readers.

Greed

Sometimes, the blog's owner gets too excited about how much money they are receiving after putting some ads on their blog, and then starts to think that nothing matters except money. There are real cases where some bloggers eventually killed their blogs after getting too obsessed with money.

There was a blogger that after getting money from putting ads on his blog, started to delete his archives from before that he thought had no potential in earning money, putting so many ads that he barely had any content anymore.

Instead of writing the things that he's interested in, he ended up only writing things that will give him money. Because of this, over time, he lost more and more readers every day and with that companies wouldn't put ads on his blog anymore, and his blog died. So if you ask should you blog for money, there's nothing wrong with that but don't let greed take over.

Reputation

When you start to get readers and followers on your blog, you are also building a persona and a reputation for yourself. Putting ads on your blog can either enhance or damage your reputation you've been building for months or even years.

Be careful of putting ads on your blog, make sure the products or services you put there are legit and do extensive research on them. There was a case that a blogger put an ad on his blog that he didn't have any knowledge of, and that product was actually tricking people and ripping them out. Because of that, he destroyed his reputation and greatly damaged his blog.

How to Start a Blog

Now you know what you want in creating a blog, the next thing to do is actually starting it. A successful blog means it has quality contents and in order to make it profitable, you have to provide value to your audience. This will help you to get loyal readers, get your daily page views needed, and before you know it, your blog is big enough for ads or affiliate programs.

Find your Own Unique Niche

Finding your niche is the first and one of the most important steps when you're starting your blog. There are so many topics out there, so it is important to narrow it down by choosing the ones where you are skillful at or have so much knowledge about.

The most popular niches out there are cooking, travel, technology, and fashion. If you're going to choose one of the most popular niches, make sure you have something that will make your blog stand out among thousands of similar blogs. For example, you can write about traveling, while also being funny while telling your readers about it instead of just telling the details of your journey or the places you visited.

You might think that you could just write about anything you want at the time and you don't need a specific topic. That is okay if you're blogging just for filling your spare time or just to relax, but if you want to make money from your blog, creating a blog without a niche and filled with random things can confuse the readers and it will become extremely difficult to get loyal readers that will visit your blog regularly.

Niche is not only about the topic you will write on your blog, but also your potential target audience, the style of writing you will have, and the approach you take in running your blog. Ideally, your niche should be about something that you're passionate about because this will push you to keep writing new content regularly.

Choose a Name and Take Off

Whether you blog for money or not, you should choose a name for your blog that will describe you and your niche, and also it has to be unique and catchy. If possible, make the name of your blog that will instantly tell people what your niche is, so they will immediately get interested just by looking at your blog's name.

After you found your unique blog's name that represents you and your niche, now it's time you launch your blog online, and to do this you need to use a blogging platform also known as CMS or Content Management System and a platform for web hosting.

Blogging platforms are online services that will let you create, publish and manage your blog on the internet. Some of the most popular blogging platforms are Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, and of course WordPress. There are so many blogging platforms out there, so make sure you do some research to find out which one is the best for you.

Design Your Blog

Now it's time to fill your blog with your contents, and the design in which you show your contents to your readers. Try to choose elegant and consistent design because when you present your contents in consistent design, it will help to build trust from your readers.

Make sure your design is also making your contents easy to read. You also need to make your blog easy to navigate since a lot of people are visual learners and will judge your blog on its functionality. It doesn't matter if you create good content if your blog is hard to navigate and visually confusing.

To make your content sit on the first page of Google when people are searching certain keywords, you need to use SEO or Search Engine Optimization. By using SEO you will get your blog identified by the search engine and then could help people to organically find your contents and blog.

The next thing to do is to submit your site to Google Search Console to let Google know about the existence of your blog. Getting your blog indexed by search engines is important since you can have the ability to track the metric of your blog.

After that, you need to optimize the contents in your blog on the keyword level. You can use tools provided by Google such as Google's Keyword Planner or Google Trends to find out the keywords that are widely used by internet users. After finding those keywords, make sure to use them in your title and spread it out through your content.

Write Regularly

This is the most important part, because many bloggers got bored or run out of ideas and then start to make posts very late, and sometimes even stop altogether. Regularly putting a new post is the critical part of creating and running a successful blog. The more content you have, the more potential readers you can get.

So if you're asking yourself whether you should blog for money or not, that won't matter if you don't write posts in a regular basis. When you start, try to make 1-2 posts weekly, after you get more comfortable with your writing style and your niche, and you also have a better understanding of your audience, try to up it to 3-4 posts weekly. Ideally, 12-15 blog posts would be best for your blog.

Promote Your Blog

If you want your blog to reach more and more people and will be able to be your source of income one day, you need to promote your blog. While SEO will get your contents appear in the search engine, trying to promote your blog via social media is also a good thing to get organic traffic.

Try to capture the best part of one of your posts and then show it to your social media to let people know what you can offer in your blog. If you get any comments or suggestions from people who visited or read your blog, try to reply to all of them to build a relationship. These people would feel seen and heard, and they could turn from just regular visitors to loyal readers.

Posting Ads

The most traditional way to earn money via a blog is to let companies or brands put the ads of their products on your blog. The most popular ad networks out there is Google AdSense, and for your blog to be eligible, it needs to have unique and interesting contents, organized navigation bar, and some key static page.

Regarding traffic, there's no exact rules on how much traffic your blog should have before becoming eligible for Google AdSense. But just to make sure, try to build your audience and create organic traffic for at least 6 months before applying.

Affiliate Marketing

Another most common way to earn money from a blog is via affiliate marketing. In this process you will need to promote products from a third party usually using a unique promo code or links, and after that you will get commissions on each product sold.

It is a great way to make a passive income, you can write a post with the product marketing on it, and that post could generate income for you continuously. However, most affiliate programs have a minimum number of blog visits, social media followers number, and sales volume before you can participate.

Sell Services, Digital or Physical Products

When you are running a blog with your expertise, you can also use this to generate income. For example, you can offer your time and skill to write for other people in exchange for money, or if you're good at something specific, you can offer them a virtual class or be their consultant.

Whether you should blog for money or not, if your blog has many followers, you can make money by selling them physical products like merchandise, and digital products like an e-book.