Wriging

I want to make money, like full-time money!

Then what you need is a job, not blogging.

Haha, no greater substitute than actual work that pays the bills, even if a hobby that gives you a few bucks to spend is tempting. :)

I get some money from Google every few months or more. Nothing to brag about. My writing itself earns my hosting though because someone was kind enough to offer me whatever I needed being part of 9rules. That's love of blogging for you.

Where the rest of my money comes from though was when I was waitering 4 hour shifts 5 days a week. Raked in quite a bit too considering.

I like some aspects of blogging but, I'll admit, I want to make money, like full-time money!

If you don't start loving it it'll be nothing more than a job to you. And that would suck, big time.

I don't speak for all the guys at 9rules here, but I believe most, if not all, of the 9rulers are passionate about what they blog about. It just shows, and it seeps into their writing, their blogs, the way they respond to comments. If you don't overcome this first hurdle ... well.

Blogging will be quite a chore.

I'd like to propose a distinction between blogging professionally and blogging full-time.

At work, we regularly update our sites too, and soon one of the sites will launch as what should become a full-fledged education and tutorial site. I'm convinced that blogging there will be an important element in the success of the site.

That would make me someone who gets to blog professionally, but not all the time.

I think that blogging full-time because you have to, because it means bread on the table or bust, would become very stressful and very boring very soon.

I have a sneaky suspicion there are more 9rules members out there that are full-time bloggers making real money...

Really, I doubt it. Lots of professionals here, lots of experts and great writers, but pro bloggers? Hands up please.

I don't count myself as a pro blogger, and I must say... if being a pro blogger means being among Darren Rowse and other such "pro bloggers", I'll politely decline the invitation.

I wish I was making money from my blog. I can't even afford to pay the $27.90 bill they just sent me at the moment, so I'm going to be sans-blog for a while. (I'm wondering who Kami's anonymous beneficiary is now!)

Seriously though, I could never blog full-time, with my income depending on it. Blogging is a distraction, in the same way Scrabble and jerking off are. Could you jerk off 24/7?

Could you jerk off 24/7?

Was that a rhetorical question?

@Josh: heh, indeed.

Also, there is no such thing as "pro blogging". That's just a fancy name for churning out the same spammy looking dreg every other "get rich quick on the web" guy is.

The tipping point - to get back on topic - for me was when I created content that wasn't free.

When you work hard on something, like a book, a course, or a membership site that has a high, real value, you don't just give it away. No one does.

My blog is not my main business. It is the "face" of the business and a way to show I am a real person, not a spammer, and not a dreg pusher.

My clients come from my reading list the blog has generated 100%. This is true for many bloggers.

The blog itself isn't the business. It is incredibly hard to monetize a blog by itself unless it gets to the Techcrunch level of traffic. They now charge $10,000 a month for 125x125 ad spots on their theme.

Most of us here will never, nor will strive to, have the kind of mass appeal of the larger sites which can sustain advertising profits to make a living from.

So the other model is building a following with great content, building a reputation, gaining trust, and picking great affiliate products for them that will CONTINUE to build trust and not to just make a buck and burn your readers.

Turn that income into a buffer while you get your own product, software, service, book, membership, consulting, or whatever into production and then sell that to your very loyal and appreciative readership.

Thanks Friday,

Again it looks like you are the only person to provide experienced insight.

I appreciate the other comments but I have heard, "you need to provide great content and it will work out" before. I joined 9rules because I thought I could get more mature and thoughtful comments.

Also, I understand that many people blog as a distraction or an outlet, that is great!

But, if the comments on this note are any indication, it seems that the majority of members of 9rules don't want to make money blogging or don't think it is possible so they say it should be done for the love of blogging, giving, expressing...and not as a business.

That reminds me of the conversation I had with my corporate boss during a particularly overworked and underpaid period...

"do it for the company deeter" ... work 12 hours a day this week because you love what you do, right?

Trust me, I enjoy challenging secular work... but not for free!

Any more of you willing to share their "tipping point(s)"?

I appreciate the other comments but I have heard, "you need to provide great content and it will work out" before. I joined 9rules because I thought I could get more mature and thoughtful comments.

Well, that's pretty much the answer there. You aren't going to make money with shitty content. There is no exact formula that is going to instantaneously generate you a sustainable income from blogging alone. If that was the truth than everyone and their mother would be doing it.

Personally I think that the majority of the reason people end up making a large profit with their blog is super content plus a shitload of luck. Not to mention tons of connections with people who can influence traffic to your site and other helpful marketing stuff.

Point is, if you have something unique, valuable (to your visitors) and marketable you'll be sure to make some money. Enough to live on? Maybe if you're lucky, but probably not.

I think you also have to loose the currency = success mind set. You can get other indirect earnings from your blog. Personally, one of my blogs has brought me clients as its about design. I don't have advertising but considering 80% of my work seems to come from my blog directly or indirectly, you could say I earn a full time wage from my blog.

Yes the content is the most important answer has been said before, but it is because its right. Link bait blogs or advertising drenched blogs get seen through. I don't agree with the hobby can be bad as full time notion, but I do work that I consider a hobby also and for me earning a living doing something I love works.

Sorry we disappointed you there, Deeter.

I thought one of our rules (yes, they really exist) was: work hard, play hard.

Now excuse the rest of us while we go back to being immature. We won't trouble you with our little unthoughtful and inexperienced jokes in otherwise well-meant comments again.

@Nils: I second that. Internet is Serious Business.

*giggles* Tongue firmly planted in cheek, Vidar ...

How many ads do you click on in a month? Me . . . zero. Hence: very few people really make money off ads. It's a scam. They get adverstisement for their products and writers/bloggers get a bunch of lame clutter on their blogs.

I say: get a job and blog for YOU. There's the tipping point, if you'll take the tip.

very few people really make money off ads. It's a scam.

I always thought so too. Funnily enough, it seems viable. Google seems to do well.

But, true: I don't understand who clicks adverts and why companies keep paying for them.

I'm glad they do, because 95% of the internet runs on them.

Admittedly, I do click adverts sometimes. Like here on 9r, just to show my support...

Admittedly, I do click adverts sometimes. Like here on 9r, just to show my support...

Careful, Nils. The Google Police are going to show up at your house and arrest you for clicking on an ad that you weren't interested in!

I think a big distinction that needs to be made here is between being a "problogger full-time" and "a person who runs a website full-time" because one has slightly negative connotations and the other is what many of us do for a living. TechCrunch is a blog but it's also a content network, a job site, startup forums, conference organizer, etc., in short... it's a business that happens to depend heavily on frequently published content. If you're going to call TechCrunch a blog then we might as well call CNET a blog as well, since they both have lots of traffic, they both do things other than display content, and they both have staffs of full-time writers.

Personally I think that the majority of the reason people end up making a large profit with their blog is super content plus a shitload of luck. Not to mention tons of connections with people who can influence traffic to your site and other helpful marketing stuff.

I think another thing that is worth a mention is that when I think of pro-bloggers I think of people trying to build something from nothing without a clear path to achieving what they want, people who think their site is "just a blog" instead of a brand or a business. For example, I don't consider Yaro a "pro-blogger" because what he's doing is a lot more than that. He does run a blog that runs ads, but he also consults and teaches people about the business side of blogging, he has blog-related businesses that he runs, and he markets himself extremely well and clearly has planned much of what he's accomplished so far. He makes about $10k USD per month as of September, and I can only think that it will continue in an upward trend. I don't know what connections he has, but from reading many of his entries over the past year or so, I can say that he works extremely hard, and that reminds me of my all-time favorite quote: "the harder I work, the luckier I get."

But, true: I don't understand who clicks adverts and why companies keep paying for them.

Well companies advertise on the web for a number of different reasons, and only one of those reasons is for clicks. When Nike advertise their new sneaker while you're watching ESPN SportsCenter, they're not expecting you to jump in your car and head down to the store to purchase it. Instead, they're hoping that after seeing the sneaker ad a few times you can recognize the sneaker if you saw it, and would think of that particular sneaker (or at least notice it on a shelf) if you were the market for buying a sneaker sometime in the near future.

On the web it's really no different. When a Mac shareware company advertises in our Apple Community they could be doing so for a number of different reasons, and perhaps brand recognition and product awareness is more important than clicks or purchases. Maybe they're trying to get more people to buy their app, or maybe they're hoping their name will stick out in your mind in the future if they release another app or a major new version. Perhaps down the road you'll be reading a Mac software blog that mentions their company name and you'll say, "oh yeah I remember seeing them advertising at 9rules" and *then* you'll click and check them out. Tracking brand awareness campaigns is a little trickier than simply calculating click-through rates, but they're useful in different ways. (Note: Stunt Software did not pay me to write that last paragraph, I just thought it was a good example of marketing for different purposes. Also note that this is an editor's note, and makes me feel really big and important. That is all.)

Not to beat the horse to death, but this discussion about ads reminds me of a BlackBerry advertisement I saw on the web a few months back. It was a Flash ad that was nearly impossible to "click-through" — instead when you clicked, it showed product information inside the ad itself and had a scrolling photo gallery. You had to really try and find a way to go from the ad to BlackBerry's website, so essentially the ad wasn't meant to have any click-throughs but was meant for you to just see and checkout information about their phone, and that's it. That was the first time I had ever seen an advertisement like that and it really made an impression (ba-da-bum!) on me.

The way I see it is that if you really want something sustainable, as in, if you're really convinced you're in it for the money, do it first by validating your credibility. I know Tyme has talked about this sometime in the past. I remember it was a link to a podcast talking about how the bulk of the money isn't in the ads, but in what you write about and what you create in your blog that generates a business model.

But what Mike has said holds true, if any of us actually want to generate money out of what we write, we have to think about it more than just being a blog. I've talked about this enough that I'm tired of it (hence my original comment). The moment you want to monetize your blog, it becomes a business and as far as business ideas go on the net, only that which hasn't been done to death and gets there first are the ones that will go far.

The thing about most people here in 9rules which I will defend is that, yes we blog because it is our outlet for self expression. And because of that, a lot of us are good at what we do. If what we're good at doing provides us an opportunity to expand beyond simple expression, turning it into a revenue is only the next logical move.

Right now, a lot of us do not have the opportunity and time to invest on things like that. I'm saying this because that's what you need to earn a stable living from your blog.

You need the credibility, the original idea, the opportunity, the time and the perseverance to build your product (the words you write), your readership, your contacts and your source of stable income.

That I believe is the tipping point. Whether most of us here have all that, is a different story altogether.

Any more of you willing to share their "tipping point(s)"?

When they started treating their blog like a business...because that is what the blog would be. The thinking, planning, implementation, etc. is completely different. For example, the blogger than wants to work full-time from their blog will know exactly what they want to accomplish from their blog...meaning is the blog a tool to make money elsewhere or will the blog itself be the revenue earner? Or a 3rd option of the blog being a tool and a revenue earner which is a form of diversification.

Anyway, the thought process is core for the foundation needed to build upon and that plays an important role in credibility.

The greatest advice I've ever read about monetizing a blog was at stevepavlina.com Basically his main advice is to primarily concentrate on offering original unique value to your readers. I have always wondered myself how original unique value is created. It's simpler than you might think, and I posted about it here

Thank you for the great comments Mike, Kamigoroshi and others... Sorry for the somewhat snidely comment earlier.

I have gleaned quite a few valuable points from what you all have said, for example...

blogging full-time because you have to, because it means bread on the table or bust, would become very stressful and very boring

-nils

The tipping point ... for me was when I created content that wasn't free.

-friday

people who think their site is "just a blog" instead of a brand or a business.

-mike

if any of us actually want to generate money out of what we write, we have to think about it more than just being a blog.

-kamigoroshi

the blogger than wants to work full-time from their blog will know exactly what they want to accomplish from their blog...

-tyme

Brilliant insights!

Thanks deeter. I've given your response a lot of thought and I think you are right. As long as the ads pay for the thing that I enjoy, then how can that be a bad thing? I guess when you brig money into the arena of something you love, you risk making the writing drudgery. Keeping it fresh and fun for me the writer is my biggest challenge in MMOL. Thank you again, and to all the other comments they were very educational.

Hi,
I'll say check this out and maybe you too can make money. A blog can generate money if you use it for that purpose. Let say you click on this link

mypowermall.com/biz/home/96640

I'll let you know how much I make if you click on these links. I promise.

ask John Chow

(i cant stand him, sorry)