The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: kmb501 on May 04, 2016, 06:04:03 PM
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Well,
I've started budgeting, but as part of getting and staying organized, I thought I would start writing down goals and keeping track of my everyday life. Why don't I do so using a blog? Perhaps I could kill two pheasants with one round by using the blog to generate a little extra income. I wanted to become a writer in college, but I chose teaching instead, because it supposedly had a steadier income.
Any advice would be appreciated.
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I don't know but I want to find out. Following along to figure out.
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Sure you can make money starting a blog. This one makes $400k/year. But there are hundreds of thousands of blogs out there, and most don't make anything. It'll take a lot of work, a good idea, and some luck.
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My blog (see my sig) generates beer money for me (or, realistically, cheap crap from China to tear apart money). It's made $60 or so in it's life (I've been posting for about a year). Most of that ($50 or so) came from one post, though.
So, yes, I legitimately make money with my blog. However, the bulk of the income I net from it comes from battery pack rebuilds, which my blog demonstrates I know how to do. That plus a contact form, and I have a steady stream of requests for pack rebuilds.
It helps to have something to offer people. I've found a niche doing detailed teardowns and analysis of ebike parts, plus random other posts on things I find interesting (electric long haul trucking, and soon a series on building a solar off grid office).
If your blog is "keeping track of everyday life," it's almost certainly going to be difficult to monetize, unless your everyday life is something exceptionally interesting.
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My blog (see my sig) generates beer money for me (or, realistically, cheap crap from China to tear apart money). It's made $60 or so in it's life (I've been posting for about a year). Most of that ($50 or so) came from one post, though.
So, yes, I legitimately make money with my blog. However, the bulk of the income I net from it comes from battery pack rebuilds, which my blog demonstrates I know how to do. That plus a contact form, and I have a steady stream of requests for pack rebuilds.
It helps to have something to offer people. I've found a niche doing detailed teardowns and analysis of ebike parts, plus random other posts on things I find interesting (electric long haul trucking, and soon a series on building a solar off grid office).
If your blog is "keeping track of everyday life," it's almost certainly going to be difficult to monetize, unless your everyday life is something exceptionally interesting.
Well,
I work at a detention center, and before this I worked as a substitute teacher in sometimes pretty rough schools. I could compare and contrast my general experiences in both settings. I could also talk about what programs I think would help students in inner-city schools; since I've been working extensively with this population, I should have real insight.
I also work as an ESL teacher part-time. I think we are slated to get some Syrian refugees pretty soon. It's an interesting contrast between what the media portrays is happening there and the lived experiences of the people. I could touch on that.
I could also just talk about teacher salaries and budgeting in general and what I'm doing to save money. Then again, I'm also a bit into green living, because I love the countryside. I could talk about how people could go green and help their wallets and the environment. I once moved to a friend's mini-farm and lived fairly comfortably without running water or much electricity for a few months. It was certainly a budget saving experience. The only things that got me in the end, in addition to the heat, were building codes that said it wasn't allowed.
I could also just talk about home improvement projects in general; I love to tinker. Unfortunately, I live in an apartment right now, so I haven't gotten the opportunity.
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What do you have to offer people? That is, what do you know how to do, etc. that an audience would feel they would learn (even a lifestyle thing) by reading your blog? Talking about your life won't do it, but teaching people something might. Ask yourself what your special niche would be -- something that not a lot of other people are blogging about, or an angle not a lot of other people are coming from.
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If you work really hard and get a little bit lucky, you could make money. Chances are you will make nothing for a long time. I've had a few blogs over the years, but I think I maxed out at 50-100 visitors per day, which generated a few cents per month in ad revenue.
In terms of revenue generated for how many hours I put into in, it was probably the lowest paying "job" I have ever had.
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A friend has a lifestyle blog that makes about $100k a year. She makes the money through affiliate link click throughs and sponsored posts (which she also gets free items for).
She works about 20 hours a week on her blog, including instagram, twitter, and facebook content.
The first few years she didn't make almost any money at all.
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If you work really hard and get a little bit lucky, you could make money. Chances are you will make nothing for a long time. I've had a few blogs over the years, but I think I maxed out at 50-100 visitors per day, which generated a few cents per month in ad revenue.
There are many websites/blogs that make a lot of money, but like AZDude mentioned it's going to take a lot of work, with little returns for some time. If you have chosen a niche you like and is profitable, enjoy writing about it DAILY, and know what's it's going to take to promote your site:
- list building
- guest posting
- Facebook Marketing
- Podcasts
- Video Marketing
to name just a few, it can be extremely profitable.
I had at one point over 60 micro-niche sites, with the top making as much as $1200 in one month with little to no work, but those days are over. Micro niche sites no longer work, and niche sites need to be thick. Authority sites like this one are the best. If google stopped indexing this site, it would still survive.
What main topic are you thinking about?
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Really you should try it, and see how it goes. I've learned a lot from starting blogs over the years, although none of them made any money.
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One of the best pieces of blogging advice that I've read is: Your blog isn't your business. A blog supports a business.
So the big question is: "What is your business?"
Related questions:
- What does your business sell?
- How can your blog draw customers to your products and then convert curiosity to sales?
Unless you're already famous or have a very unique proposition, you're going to need to have products that people want/need. Simply putting up blog posts and hoping that fractions of pennies per adclick are going to amount to something worth your time isn't going to work these days.
From your previous posts, you could consider an offshoot of one of these ideas:
- How recent immigrants can transition more easily to a new country (ebook, online course, etc.)
- How to pass your citizenship test (ebook, online course, etc.)
- How to deal with the US Immigration system (ebook, online course, etc.)
- How to NOT get back to a detention center (ebook, online course, etc.)
- How to get work at a detention center (ebook, online course, etc.)
- Teaching strategies for Inner City Teachers - what you didn't learn in college! (ebook, online course, etc.)
Go beyond your ideas to think about how you could monetize it. Best of luck.
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When I asked this on another forum the answer I got was basically 20% of your time writting the blog, 80% promoting it if you want to make any money.
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Smokystache has some good advice.
One of the best known names in Internet Marketing is Pat Flynn, and one of the few niche sites he still has that does well is a test preparation site for architects.
With said, a site along the line of helping someone immigrate into this country, would do well, but it would probably need to be done in other languages, or have a multi language site.
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The guy that created the Simple Dollar blog did not make $ for a few years and he worked at it f.t. But eventually it took off and he sold it for a lot of $.
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I am no expert and I am myself trying to establish our blog though we don't have any plans to make money out of it. Our motive to have the blog is to interact with like minded people and document our adventure post FI primarily for friends, family and our-self.
Lot of blogs make tons of money - MMM makes $400k yearly, http://www.cashflowdiaries.com/blog-income-report-and-traffic-stats-march-2016/ (Not making lot of money but he has just started his blog), http://rootofgood.com/april-2016-financial-update/ etc.
My view is that with blog you need to very patient, continue learning, keep making improvements and with a little bit of luck, you may end up with a very established blog :-)
Best of luck!