May 25, 2016 at 12:46 pm

We all know about the successful bloggers and the money they are generating through adsense, affiliate programs and offering courses through their websites. But majority of us are still struggling. Do you think it is possible to make money out of a personal blog? Any tips?

May 25, 2016 at 1:41 pm

Yes, it is possible. If you give as much of your time to your personal blog like you do to a current content mill, like this one, you will see the difference.

The problem is that we all ( I have a personal blog which I neglect too) spend more timed around then doing stuff for our blog.

May 25, 2016 at 1:44 pm

@Rapid Blue I agree but the thing is that I don’t have adsense and I have not made any money through amazon affiliate program either. I have tried chitika and infolinks but they seem to be no good. So I am a bit clueless on how to monetize my blogs.

May 25, 2016 at 2:26 pm

@swalia there are other advertisers you can use, they don’t earn so much but they have a low payment limit and easier approval terms.

May 25, 2016 at 7:01 pm

It takes more hard work than anything.  I have tried before, and the hard work does not yield as much result as writing for writing sites.

For one thing, a writing site has many writers, and they will read, and give you support.

When you have a blog, you are on your own.

May 25, 2016 at 8:00 pm

@Rapid Blue I am using infolinks and adhitz on my sites now. Let’s see how it goes!

@scheng1 In writing sites, at least we get paid but in blogging, we can’t be sure if we are really going to make any money out of it.

May 25, 2016 at 9:47 pm

@swalia – I dont know what do you mean by personal blog as such but let me guess. There are 2 meanings.

First – You chose a niche which is too personal (Who are you, what you do, dairy writing etc.). The articles on this blog are random thoughts.

Second – You are writing an independent blog and you alone are administrator there with no 3rd party involvement. This blog is a fix focusing on topics which cover your competencies.

Now comes, fundamental question – how you make money from blogging?

Technically speaking, there is only 1 way to make money – buying and selling goods and services.

=-=-=-=-=-

You are selling spaces on your blog to advertisers – we call it advertising.

You are selling goods by someone else – we call it affiliate marketing

You are selling your own goods – we call it self selling.

You are selling URL links – we call it link shortener.

-=-=-=-=-=

In either case, you need some customers.

By Customer, I mean traffic – they will click on your ads, they will purchase the products you market.

The definition of personal blogging is important here.

If your blog belongs to 1st category – traffic will be lesser unless articles are made SEO friendly. (You need to chose titles like How I made $1 million in 60 Days rather than plain how to be rich techniques OR how I lost 40kg in 2 weeks rather than general weight loss tips) Those mentioned in brackets are simply examples and need not be taken literally.

If your blog belongs to 2nd category – you will keep getting traffic based on your competencies and SEO. This case focusses on content quality rather than plain SEO and you might need to back your content with logic.

In either case, it is hardwork in content and marketing which will actually pay and in the beginning you might be making $1 – 3 a month and in order to make a living this way, you need patience. Sorry if you feel bad but this is the bitter truth you need to know.

May 25, 2016 at 9:51 pm

Sorry, accidentally pressed Submit button. The reply continues…

Coming to the actual ways to make money – As already seen there are multiple ways to make money.

Which one suits you and which doesn’t – let us prepare a questionnaire which your customers will ask you. You can’t decide what suits you till you answer these questions.

1. Advertising

There are various options like popups, popunders, banners, text, videos etc.

Q: Why as a user should they click on those popups and popunders when they know that those ads will distract?

Q: Why should users visit your website with video ads when the ads decrease website loading time and put unnecessary pressure on user’s memory?

Q: Why as a publisher you have chosen for advertizing when you know that it won’t earn more than 5$ a month under general conditions?

2. Affiliate marketing

Q: If as a customer, if I need to buy a mobile from Amazon, I would go directly to Amazon, why would I come to you?

Q: How will you monetize if the user clicks the link with the intention to buy but suddenly decides not to buy?

3. Self selling (selling your own stuff)

Q: It requires sophisticated e-commerce technology. Do you have that competency?

Q: You are selling a product. Are you sure that a cheaper and better variant is not available anywhere?

4. URL Shortener

Q: People tend to ignore your website / blacklist it if majority of URL are found shortened. After all URL shorteners use popup ads. If that happens to you, what will you do?

Only, if you find satisfactory answers to questions above, you can be successful. Your answer is totally yours so take your time.

I know you might be questioning relevance of questions stated above, but the questions are coming from research and should not be ignored.

I suggest going with unconventional method. If you want to go with advertizing – contact advertizers directly rather than 3rd party webservers like adsence, adhitz, infolinks, revenuehitz – so that you can save on commissions and fees. If you want to go with affiliate marketing, go with Clickbank rather than Amazon. Clickbank has better commission and the products are digital. Self Selling is always best method but I recommend to sell digital products only. Rest all is up to you.

May 25, 2016 at 10:11 pm

@swalia I think that the biggest benefit of a personal blog is to actually write what you are passionate about and that you don’t need to follow objectives of others, or to be too careful what are you going to say and how.

Personal blog gives you a possibility to be yourself and to feed your creativity and writing passion, this is something you can’t achieve with the writing page or a content mill.

May 26, 2016 at 11:32 am

@dancing.baby Thank you for such a detailed response! You almost wrote an informative blog post 🙂

I have two websites- one is based on astrology and allied sciences. The other one is based on simple and meaningful living. So I guess, the websites come under second category. I have been using Amazon affiliate program and infolinks but without any success. I was wondering where I am going wrong! Besides I don’t really like infolinks as it makes the site look very cluttered and messy.

May 26, 2016 at 11:36 am

@Rapid Blue  Yes, it’s the freedom that you get on your own sites which is priceless. You are not bound by restrictions regarding to the word limit or the topics.  That’s why I try to strike a balance between the writing sites and my own sites. Though I have neglected my blog in the past due to my focus on writing sites but now I have realized that it was wrong. So now I write on writing sites daily but I don’t neglect my own sites and publish new content on them once or twice every week.

May 26, 2016 at 11:53 am

A new personal blog does not get search engine traffic for a couple of months.

This is known as the sandbox period!

I think if you want to make a success of a personal blog, you have to clearly define where your income comes from.

Hard to make money from both Adsense and affiliate marketing.

May 26, 2016 at 12:42 pm

@ scheng1  Since I don’t have adsense, so that’s out of question. On one of my sites, I am offering horoscope reading and tarot reading services. So I hope that I will be able to make money on that site by selling the services. But like you talked of sandbox period. This site is relatively new- Just three months old. So it will take some time to establish.

May 26, 2016 at 12:46 pm

@ shaloo walia Do you have Fiverr account?  If yes, you can offer basic astrology service at Fiverr for $5 per gig, and after you have established the customer base, you can link them to your website for more detailed reading.

May 26, 2016 at 1:56 pm

Yes, our personal blog could earn money. There are many ways of making a blog earn a penny. As always mentioned through an affiliate advertising and AdSense is one. I was so sorry to tell anyone that I had tried several times, but I was denied by Google to have an AdSense account. Its rules are too strict. By a single mistake, your AdSense account would be disabled right away, without explanation.

But there are other affiliate ads like the Amazon, AdHitz, ClixSense could be linked to your blog. Though they take longer to get paid, but at least you are earning. Accommodating line ads and writing reviews could also be a good source of online earnings.