Can you make money from blogging?

[PiperGeorge]

I have been blogging now since the start of the year, just random thoughts and ideas. I started out as I wanted to get writing - anything just to get some practice.

Now I wonder whether it is possible to make money - I know people do it through testing out products and writing about them, although I am not sure how they got started. Any other ideas, hints, tips or general help anyone can give me?

I am not sure if my blog is too general to be useable - would I need something more specific?

talkaboutcheesecake.wordpress.com

The short answer is, 'No'.

The long answer - maybe, but with difficulty. Those who are making money from their blog are often making money from the opportunities that their blog has brought, or the products or services (or writing) that their blog publicises.

Doing reviews is a bit of a minefield as you have to ensure that you write about other stuff too. A lot of blogs are packed with reviews and simply boring.

There are millions of bloggers out there, and only a handful make real proper money from it.

Can't really add anything to what MmeL said, except that people who make money through advertising get, literally, millions of hits a month. Not thousands, millions. And it's rare to get that many.

I think if you want to make more than pocket money from blogging you really have to treat it as a full time job and spend that number of hours (if not more) on it, not just writing the posts on the blog but promoting them, networking, guest writing elsewhere, writing and publishing e-books, speaking at events and so on. There are opportunities for advertising, sponsored posts and reviews but I think that there are very few people that would earn enough to call it a second income, and like MmeLindor says above you need to watch the balance of reviews/sponsored posts or else people will stop reading.

I have Google adsense on my blog and I earn literally pennies, and I think that I have a reasonable number of hits as far as parenting blogs go.

Jennifer

I earn a decent living from my blog (enough for me to stay at home and write full time) as I use it to promote my novels. I know of a couple of bloggers who make a VERY healthy living from advertising and sponsored posts but their hits are, as Dilly says, in the millions every month. :)

Firstly, you're using wordpress.com, so adverts and product reviews won't be allowed - their toc don't allow them. If you wanted to go down that route you'd need to switch to self-hosted wordpress.

As Tee and MmeL have said, making money from advertising is hard. I have ads on my blogs, but they don't bring in much, about enough to cover the cost of my broadband. And revenue from ads is going down (on most/all blogs) for a number of reasons. Even blogs with millions of hits are having to look for other sources of income.

Product testing used to be lucrative, but so many people did it - and did it badly - that it's now seen as the blogging equivalent of infomercials. You might make some cash in the short term, but long term you could damage your reputation.

It's more likely that you could make money from the publicity and connections your blog brings you. Through mine, I've been able to get to know editors and publishers who have offered me jobs.

You could also do what MmeG has done and use your blog to sell a product.

Am I Dilly now?

Oh crikey, sorry! I was struggling with something at the time and like a lazy sod, didn't scroll up. Sorry! :(

It's okay. I did have to check three times though to make sure she and I hadn't cross posted.

I was SO sure that it was Dilly. I'm really sorry! :)

Hi,
I consider blogging as a good way to earn money. Most of the youngsters make money through blogging. Blogging is a great source of spreading useful information to the readers. Thus, you must have a proper content and use simple language for your readers.
I am sure your blog will be appreciated and you will get good money out of it.

ermmm. I disagree with the previous posts. You can make money by blogging. I have only been going 6 months and am starting to bring in good money through sponsored posts and contextual links. On one day last week I nearly made as much as I used to make as a lawyer! Seriously. I don't have millions of viewers. True..I have a PR2 site and I get 6000 visits/month. But I think the key is to have focus to your blog. I think that is what has made it possible for me to pay for the groceries from my blogging. I am aware though that every post can't be a sponsored post so you do need to mix and match there. MmeLindor is right on that one. Also I have tried Adsense and found it not to be particularly useful ..peanuts compared to the money you can make from sponsored posts and links.

Bex I must be doing something seriously wrong! I have 18-20k page views a month & make very little

Wouldn't sponsored posts only be suitable on certain kinds of blogs? What do you blog about Bex?

Interesting, Bex. Can we have a link to your blog so we can see how you do it?

It's www.howilostweight - it's a blog about running and weight loss - started off as a blog about how I lost 20 lbs last year and has morphed into a running blog, which seems to have really upped the visitor numbers. QueenMaeve - am getting about 18K page views as well so your blog should be attractive to PR. Make sure you are contactable by the PR people. Have a separate page with your contact email (make it one linked to your webpage - you don't want to give out your private email) and say on it that you are willing to discuss sponsored posts. If the focus is right, you will get the PR people knocking on the door.

For those of you wanting to increase traffic - look at content, focus and getting backlinks to your site. Use Adwords to pick a key phrase and then really hone in on that key phrase in the blog. Hope this all helps!

It's not just about the amount of page views though - my blog gets around 130,000 page views a month and I get contacted by PR sorts maybe twice a year? They usually get knocked back too. ;)

The actual content is just as important as the page views, if not more. My blog isn't really interesting to PR types because I blog about history and writing, which aren't things they really understand how to use plus I'm not interested in doing sponsored posts - however if you write about something that's more marketable like weight loss, childcare, beauty etc then it's much more their sort of thing. :)

On the other hand, I make enough money from the book sales from my blog to have to pay tax on my earnings so it's not like I'm doing badly from it. ;)

Thanks Bex.