It seems that finally everyone is starting to come clean about making money with blogs. The reality is that I’ve known for years is that most people can’t make a living off of a blog, and will never be able to. But because there are so many “make money online” sites out there nowadays, there seems to be some perpetual brand growth that everyone can make this professional blogging thing work monetarily.
It just isn’t true. This is hard, hard work.
Look, I’m not saying don’t try, because you CAN do it. I’m saying that most of you won’t get there (making a ton of cash off ads), that’s all.
Look at what Henry Copeland said this week. Henry is the CEO of Blogads.com, the first blog ad system from years and years ago.
…Only “dozens†of the 1,500 sites he works with can can sustain their sites solely with ad revenues.
Wow, if that isn’t social proof that I’m right, what is? Dozens of sites out of 1,500 make enough income to sustain solely with ad revenues?
I hate to preach, but c’mon, we all know this to be true as I’ve been saying for about 3-4 years now…
I wonder if anyone will have a solution to this problem soon??? Hmmm….
You mean that only a handful of bloggers can make a living directly from advertising on their blog online.
I don’t make a living from advertising, but I use my blog to get blogging positions, which pay enough money for me to live. It’s making a living from my blog, but not directly through advertising.
Yehuda
I think there is the possibility for *anyone* to make money online, whether it’s with a blog or some other form of content. It’s not that people can’t do it – its that they are not prepared to pay the price. The price is quite simply, the time and effort (aka hard work) required to do it.
Another problem with blogs in particular, is that they take a long time to build a readership so you are almost guaranteed to make a big fat ZERO for some time and many people just aren’t prepared to stick at it while earnings are that low.
I agree that one can not make money blogging. That was not the point of blogging to start off with. It eventually evolved into a money making machine. If one follows one’s heart, the original idea of blogging to create something that can be shared by others for the joy of it is all that matters. If you make money as a side benefit, so be it.
Jim, that post is bound to get reactions. But that’s because it is just so very true.
So wait, I can’t make money on random musings unless I’m providing very valuable content?? That’s so very unlike the offline world where I constantly have people hand me money for my random chatter at cocktail parties….
Ugh, I hate this meme. As Yehuda points out, I too could say that I “make money” from my blog in form of advertising, support for pending sales leads, and credibility. I’m not sure where my biz would be without the blog, yet I rarely “make money” directly from the page views and unique user counts.
I’ve also always suspected this and I’m glad you point it out for two reasons:
- save some poor suckers a lot of trouble while de-cluttering
- allow me to blog ‘expectation-free’, however the heck I want! Great if you just want to explore and share ideas. This also lends itself to the kind of benefit Jake McFee is talking about: credibility.
That said, I would encourage everyone who wants to go for it to go for it. But look into other opportunities as well.
Totally agree with you Jim. I am coming down to realities in terms of expectations, though things are not too bad as yet.
What I figured out is that It’s like stock market – 1 gains when 9 others loose out and make room for the smart one :)
Cheers,
Ajith
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