In the beginning, I wasn’t making any money from the blog. My thought was not necessary to make money from the blog but to be recognized online, just like the great Romanian bloggers of today. I just wanted to be an A-lister, have tens, hundreds of comments, be quoted in the press, dreams…
Step by step I turned some of my attention to how I can earn money from blogging because it consumes time, financial resources, and even materials (laptop, smartphone, an ergonomic chair, etc.). I turned to affiliates, instinctively, knowing that would at least bring me a little something.
I wanted it to be worth it, and I was also motivated by the potential financial gains, so I put recognition on the back burner. I turned my attention more to how the blog can produce, excluding Ad Sense, which is a mess on.RO per 100 unique visitors I had then. I managed to produce it.
Part of the money came from affiliates, and part from advertorials, although I wasn’t writing very well, the ideas in the paragraphs were excellent and converting. Clients loved this and were understanding about my grammar and more importantly appreciated my writing. Naturally, the raw material was corrected. Some of the money came from there as well.
Some of the money came from occasional customers who had problems with WordPress, on the admin side, not a lot but it came. I was also writing tutorials on how you can do one or the other (e.g. translate a WordPress theme) with WordPress, they didn’t want to bother them, so they hired me to do the work for them.
Why not make money with the blog
You don’t like what you do
You like the idea of having a blog, you still write occasionally or even daily, but you don’t like it, or you don’t like it anymore, and it shows in your writing.
You don’t write daily or regularly
You’ve lost your early enthusiasm and write sporadically, only when you feel like it. When you want to make money, you don’t just write when you feel like it, you write regularly, even if your cat died, your wife gave birth, or your child came home drugged.
You stick to the schedule no matter what! Write at least a few lines even if you don’t feel like it. You do it though, do your homework and blog. It’s kind of like having a job, you have to take it seriously if you want to make money.
You don’t want to make money from blogging
You want to make money, but in your unconscious, you don’t want that. You have to want to make money from it and become persistent. When I say pushy, I mean you have to want to earn that affiliate commission, to convince the reader that it’s worth it.
And it has to be worth it. Because if you pull the trigger on the reader, he won’t come back to your blog, and you’ll get a not-so-good reputation. You need to promote something, either from the Affiliate Marketing platforms or some external product or service and thus earn money.
Find something to promote, something that is worthwhile and that you like, and then try to advertise it on your blog.
You want to make money too much
I have seen blogs where only promotional articles are written. Nothing is disinterested, nothing is written without promoting something. Yes, it’s incredible, it’s 2022 and some people still believe that in blogging you can write 20 articles one after the other like “Buy this phone” or “This vacuum cleaner is the best, worth buying”.
Bloggers who write on those blogs even though they write well, leave link after link, article after article, to all but all articles. Incredibly, all their articles are strictly profit-oriented.
The links aren’t even discreetly left there, they just run through the article about how good the product is, and all their articles are like that. Either way, you really can’t make a living from a blog. It is possible to catch a stray but in the long run, you will not be successful, and you will lose time. It’s normal to want to win, but you have to be more discreet.
Those bloggers are just starting or have some success and want to cash in on those few hundred unique a day. They just don’t realize that those articles are being written unnecessarily. They believe they will get sales. But they don’t get it, over time they learn that this is not how money is made from writing in blogging. Not promoting something in every article. You have to add value.
You don’t have the right niche
You write too many general or personal articles that do nothing to help the reader and that no one is interested in. Ok, my cat died too, why do I have to read your article about your cat, how much money does that make me? How is it useful to me? I better look for what interests me.
If generalist and personal writing work for big bloggers, for A-listers, it works because they’ve been writing for a very long time, and they’ve already formed their tribe. They read whatever the blogger gives them to read. But when you’re just at the beginning and you want to make money from it, you have to find a niche to write on, that you like, write with passion, and from which you can earn money.
You must not quit
Whatever it is, even if you are not making money from blogging, give it a try. Try to write more, or better, more interesting, more challenging. To improve the way, you recommend a product to the reader. Let’s not forget that we only learn by making mistakes. So, if you’re not making money for one of the reasons listed above, fix it, fix it.
And don’t forget, the most important thing is to write how and about what you like. Because at the end of the day, blogging is about writing, and a writer, be it a blogger, has to love what they do. It is felt in the writing. There are of course also days when you won’t like it, on those days write anyway and force yourself to write at least a few lines.
Be authentic, be passionate, and constantly evolve!