Do People Make Money Blogging?
Image of woman on mountain top
The internet is full of blogging sites on any subject you can imagine, but most bloggers are not achieving the success they wanted when they decided to try to make money blogging online. This is because many fail to search for and acquire the proper training in creating the right design, layout, content, and learn how to monetize and market their site.
Can you really make money blogging?
There are specific ways to build the blog that attracts visitors and allows you to make money. But like any other business, you need to know what you are doing and then do it consistently and persistently over time in order to reach success. It is imperative you learn to use the tools and resources that teach you the proper skills in website creation, content creation, and monetization and marketing of your blog site.
If you take the time and make the effort to learn these skills, then you will have a good chance to reach your success goals.
Successful Bloggers
Some of the top money making blog sites are:
But the site that has made the very most income is:
Huffington Post. This blog site (know now as Huffpost) is for liberal news, politics and opinions and currently brings in over $14 Million ecah month. It was founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, Jonah Peretti and support from Andrew Breitbart. But AOL purchased it in 2011 for $315 million. Yes, its hard to imagine one blog site creating that kidn of income but it does (mostly from sponsored Ads).
What are the Secrets of Blogging Success?
There are definitely reasons why some blogs are successful and some fail and fade away into the night. Some of these reasons are:
- It’s important that your blog niche is one you are passionate about and enjoy learning and writing about every day.
- Think and treat your blog as a business that requires hard work, skill and time.
- Figure out who your target audience is and build the design and layout and choose which social media to market on for that person(s).
- Learn how to create engaging content and monetize that content.
- Have a strategy for marketing to social media and creating a mailing list.
- Realize it will take time, be patient, keep learning, overcome the challenges and be confident that success will ultimately be yours.
Learn How to Write Great Content
Some of the things I’ve been learning about creating my content, both from my training at Wealthy Affiliate and also in my outside reading and studying about blogging and affiliate marketing are:
- Write every day – like anything else, practice writing makes better writing.
- Get past the fear and be bold, your readers want to know your opinion.
- Learn how to choose the right keywords and where to use them in your content.
- Use images for visual interest, making sure the image is relevant to your content.
- There are ways to increase the efficiency of creating your content, use them.
- Engagement via replying to comments is an important part of your content.
- Create engaging titles and subtitles and content that solves problems and gives great value to your readers.
- Design and layout including images, white space and titles make a big difference.
- Visualize your target audience or reader when creating your content.
- Write in a conversational tone with the mindset that you are wanting to “help” your reader address the challenges they may face in the subject area of your website.
Learn What to do to Monetize Your Blog Site
Once you have created a great looking design and layout, written lots of engaging content, and achieved lots of traffic to your blog site, you need to learn how to monetize it. There are various ways to do this, including:
- Creating your blog site as a “Membership Site” where visitors pay to have access to your content.
- Selling your own information such as ebooks, training, guides, templates, etc that can be downloaded.
- Selling services such as consulting and coaching.
- Selling physical products of your own or others.
- Affiliate Sales through promoting products and receiving commissions on sales.
- Selling yourself for speaking and presentations.
- Through Banner Ads. (not used much)
- Through paid posts.
- Through Flipin your successful blot site (selling it for profit)
- Through Job board, classified ads. (not used as much anymore)
Books I’ve Recently Read
Book Review: Write Blog Posts Readers Love: A Step-By-Step Guide
RATING: I would rate this book as 
This is a short book that I found interesting but a quick read. He discusses uncovering your own unique style of writing he calls “your writing voice” that baiscaly conveys your own impressions and opinions. He states:
“Great blogging comes down to having the courage to stand for something. It comes down to sharing your truth and your worldview.”
Henri gives suggestions on how to find your “ideal reader”, figuring out what he/she wants and what problem does he/she face in getting what he/she wants. You are to write to solve that problem(s). He discusses writing in an inspiring fashion and what steps are needed to do that. He also discusses how to generate ideas for new posts and where he goes to get these ideas and describes what he calls his “Drill Down Method”. I found this section very interesting. Then he goes into tips on writing compelling headlines that can pull your audience in. I like his idea of having a “swipe” file and that he considers his headlines to be a promise he has to fulfill in his writing of the rest of the post.
He gives six tips on making your posts easy to read.
I found this book interesting and a quick read. Most of this I already knew but there were a few gems hidden that I am glad to know. I give this a 3 star rating.
Book Review: ““How to Write Great Blog Posts that Engage Readers” By Steve Scott
RATING: I would rate this book as 
This book by Steve Scott starts off by listing his 19 types of blog posts which he divides into 2 different sections: Massive Value Posts (MVPS) which contain great amounts of value, are many words and take lots of time to create and Filler Posts (FPs) which are short, not many words but still give good value content. He states the key to engaging an audience is to create “insane” value in your content. He suggests you write what other authors “sell”, he says. I love that! He gives examples of some ways to create MVPs including using lists, case studies and resources and more. he talks about creating excellent Filler Posts that can be created in less time than the MVPs. I really liked what he writes about using contests as incentives to take action. Steve shares his suggestions on creating an following a Blog Post Schedule for your content writing of 2 MVP’s and 6 FPs each month. He also shares his 12 elements that should be included in each blog post. I found these 12 elements very helpful as a checklist when I create my content. Lastly, he provides a list of some great resources. I rate this book with 4 stars for the great information and ideas it includes.
Book Review: Blogging: How To Write Blog Posts That Go Viral Without Selling Out: Attract A Raving Fan Base, Understand Your First Viral Hit, And Discover Your Unique Blogging Voice
RATING: I would rate this book as
I found this book very helpful. It is organized well and covers a lot of material in useful steps to take when creating your blog content. The author gives his “proven” 3-step process to inspire his fanbase. The author describes what he calls Massive Value Blog Posts and Filler Blog Posts and describes each type post and its purpose. He also provides 10 ideas on writing your Massive Value Posts. I found his 10 Secret Key Factors to include in your post very interesting and helpful also. This book is definitely worth reading and has good information in it.
Book Review: Blog Writing: Blogging Basics: 32 Useful Tips on How to Write Great Blog Content
RATING: I would rate this book as
This short book (46 pages) contains 32 chapters, in which the author talks about one of his useful tips. I found after reading the book, I was already familiar with most of the 32 tips, but I did find just a few that were new to me and it definitely gave me something new to think about and consider in my writing. One thing that I learned was about using hashtags in my keywords – that was pretty interesting and I had not thought about that before.
Online Training
Udemy is one of the better online training platforms where you can find training in a wide variety of fields and subjects, including blogging, WordPress, and affiliate marketing.
Prices vary for each course and you can signup for emails to learn when specials are available that offer awesome discounts regularly.
Wealthy Affiliate Training is the top method I would advise to learn how to create WordPress blog sites and monetize them. I have created a detailed review of this online training site that you can read on this site.
Conclusion
Online blogging can be a great success or an entire flop depending on how you go about it. Training is imperative so you will know what you are doing and how to create a successful blog with great content and learn to monetize and market it. A successful blog will require great commitment and effort on your part but is certainly a goal that can be reached and has been reached by many, many bloggers.
Comments
I thank you for visiting my blog site and reading my post. If you have any comments or questions, please use the form below. I would love to know what you think about this post and my website. – Shirley
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I’ve just checked it using the Chrome browser and see no issues now. Thanks for your comment though – Shirley
I would like to affirm one of the reasons why a blog site is successful is because of the relationship of the blogger and his site. You mentioned in particular that a niche must be something the blogger is passionate about and I totally agree with it.
Being a newbie in the online entrepreneur and site development I thought I could manage to have three sites, only to know that it’s difficult to write content especially when you are not knowledgeable of your niche. What happens is time goes by but nothing is added due to writer’s block.
It’s so inspiring to know that a single site can earn millions in a month maybe because the writer enjoys and knows what to write that can serve the interest of particular group.
Hi there Jimmy, thanks for checking out my blog site and post. I know I found it amazing when I learned about that very successful site and I agree that we need to be choosing a niche that we are truly interested, even passionate about so we will never have problems finding something neat to write about. Good luck with your own blogging journey and feel free to visit me again. – Shirley
Hello,
here is a lot of valuable blog information. I think for blogging is the best choice the niche you like, so much can be written and given good information and advice.
If it is written with a heart and not primarily for money, then that can be a great blog that will for a while generating profit.
Very instructive. Thanks for this great post.
Best regards.
Maja, nice to meet you and thank you for checking out my blog site and my post. Your comment is so true, selecting the perfect blogging subject or “niche” is so important. Having a passion for your niche makes it much easier to seek out more learning, resources and studying about it as much as you can. The more you like your niche topic, the more you will want to help others with the content you create to answer questions they have as well as those you have had yourself. Thanks again for your comment and please come back again and ask questions or comment at another time too. Have a great day – Shirley
Blogging is earning people a lot of money. Especially those who have quality content when it comes to affiliate marketing. And it takes courage as you say.
I certainly agree that earning money, even lots of it is possible and that the key is quality content, hard work, and persistence. It is not a get rich quick deal, but sometimes the journey that is “turtle-like” – slow and methodical. Thank you for checking out my site and your comment. – Shirley
Thank you for sharing how to make money through blogging. I totally agree. Wealthy Affiliate Training is very important to me. Otherwise I would be lost and give up quickly. There’s a lot of writing involved. I am not a writer so the training with support helped me with my writing tremendously.
Thank you for your recommendations on the books for blogging. I would definitely check them out.
Hello Roda, yes, WA is important to me also. I love the training, the community and the excellent hosting platform. It is simply the best place to learn and share. Writing can be a little daunting at first, but Kyle and Carson are great at teaching us how to write efficiently and give us lots of tips on breaking our writing down into sections that can be filled in easily. Check out those books on Amazon, most are not expensive and if you have Amazon Prime you can read them free from Prime Unlimited. Best wishes on your own blogging efforts – stay strong and determined. – Shirley
An excellent summary of blogging. The article describes extensively how to write high-quality content and how you can make blogging as a successful business. In my opinion, the core thing that crystallizes in writing quality content is how to find an “ideal reader” and what are his problems / questions. The blogger must write content that will solve the reader’s problems.
Kari, you are so right. As a blogger, my greatest wish is to be able to help others and answer the questions they have about this lifestyle and the subject of my blog site or “niche”. Writing content is both challenging and exciting as you endeavor to put your words together in a way that is easy to read and to understand and that can help the visitors to your blog site. Thank you so much for visiting my blog site and for your comments. Have a great day and come back anytime you want and ask questions or comment again. I look forward to interacting with you in the future. – Shirley
Hello Shirley
Great article full of information for new bloggers. I am really amazed to know that a blog site can earn such a huge amount. I learned a lot from your article, proper training is very important.
Thanks a ton for sharing this it’s really helpful for upcoming bloggers and people who want to earn through blogs.
Bini, yes it is amazing the success that some bloggers have achieved, 14 million is a lot of zeros! Thank you for visiting my blog site and for your comment. I urge you to keep up your own efforts and with hard work and patience, you will see lots of zeros in your success also. Thanks again. – Shirley