Can you make money from blogging?
Yes, you can – but it takes time.
Blogging can be one of the best and most rewarding side hustles that you can sink your teeth into, it’s easy to set up and it will not cost you more than £30/£40 to get started.
Writing about something that you are passionate about from the comfort of your own home, or from anywhere in the world whilst making a little extra cash on the side is a no-brainer.
But don’t expect to start making money overnight (I am a party pooper, I know), blogging will require planning, perseverance, dedication, sweat and maybe tears, so don’t think about quitting your day job anytime soon.
It’s easy to be fooled when seeing successful blogs with thousands of followers and millions of pageviews, millions of likes, or millions of shares on the content they share. However, the truth is that their success will have taken time to achieve and this is what you have to be prepared for.
Starting a blog in a niche that you understand and are passionate about is the best way to get started as it allows you to reach an audience who also share the same interest as you.
Another option, which has worked for me, is to team up with a few friends to create a multi-author blog that can cover several (related) topics under one roof.
For example, I love technology and finance, so I created an investing blog, where I (and others) keep readers up to date on the latest stocks and companies that are performing well in the financial markets. I run this blog as a side hustle and it pays.
My blog can make anything between £1000 to £2000 per month using a combination of display ads, affiliate ads and the occasional paid guest post.
While that may sound impressive to some, this did not happen overnight. I didn’t see a penny come my way for well over a year, mainly because the blog received very little traffic.
By the beginning of the second year, I knew it was time to begin working on my outreach strategy. I am not a fan of social media and I’ve always let readers do the sharing for me, so I decided to go old-school and use the power of news aggregators for quick exposure.
It took roughly 3–6 months to get approved by all four majors which include Bing News, Yahoo News, Google News and NewsNow. Bing takes the longest as they have rigorous checks in place.
I am no news reporter and I don’t really cover news but I have had to adapt some of my articles to keep in line with their publisher guidelines, after all, they are news aggregators.
But don’t let that put you off, I have come across a lot of content featured on these websites that have nothing to do with what’s going on in the world so you can get away with blogging about the next best side hustle or about your grandma’s delicious cakes. However, as sweet as it sounds, blogging about your grandma alone will simply not cut it, you have to try and keep up with trending topics within your niche to stand a chance and where possible write follow-up articles. The more you publish the more attention your blog will receive.
The real challenge is getting listed, you have to prove that your publication has been live for at least six months, that your content is current, that you publish daily and that you have a news section. Without a news section, it is very unlikely that your blog will be accepted.
So if you are starting out or planning to start blogging don’t be discouraged if no one reads your blog in the first year, if you put in the hard work you will be rewarded.
Have a strategy, stick to your strategy and they will come.