Everybody seems to be doing it thinking it is easy making money blogging, but the reality hits home when you try your hand at it. Still you hear of stories of people making tons of money online by blogging. And then some says it is easy to this, easy to do that and blah, blah, blah.
Recently I received a newsletter from WebProNews and the pro bloggers themselves also talked about the “harsh realities” of blogging for money. The keypoint they noted about making money by blogging:
1. “Free” is not a business model.
2. The push-button Internet cash machine is on the fritz.
3. You are not scalable.
4. No one actually wants that much authenticity.
5. Social media hates selling. (and yet, you have to sell)
6. A blog is not a business.
7. No one is reading your blog
Everybody loves free stuff, but free is not a business model unless you find a way to monetize the freebies. And free content just like this personal blog, may be great for the readers like you but not to me, the blogger. So what we do we end up plastering the site with advertisement and affiliate links in the hope that some good readers out there would be so kind to click on it and view through the advertisement and hopefully eventually buy something to help us poor bloggers at least recoup the time and effort for doing the research, writing and posting and hopefully scrape enough for some Starbucks coffee for those late nights tapping away at the computer. Finally if we do hit on some good ideas and create a product for sale, it would be great if somebody would purchase it. Oh, well, still dreaming about it only working 4 hours a day and have the rest of days for leisure…
Push-Button Internet cash machine? Oh, get real. Even a franchise business or a vending machine is no overnight success. You still have to put in time, and you know the saying, time is money, and money can’t buy time, and you do need a steady income to pay for your living expenses. It takes time if not years before you may hit success and live off your personal blog.
You are not scalable. Interaction is great; you get to connect with your readers. As your site grows, you can’t connect with everybody. At some point you have to create your boundary between public and private time. Another thing, you are also a one man show, the site don’t run by itself, so the scalability is limited to how much time you can devote to your personal blog.
When they say “no one actually wants that much authenticity,” they mean that nobody cares about what you did last night, who you were with, what you had for breakfast, etc. In other words, don’t show everybody everything about yourself, because you’re not writing for you. You’re writing for them. Be who you want to be for your audience.
Selling, well who wouldn’t slam a door shut when a door-to-door salesman comes a knocking. Likewise if you are pitching products in your personal blog, which well, you would just like I do, it doesn’t really work. Kinda sucks, but you do need some mullahs to keep going to fund the website and pay off your expenses for the time spent running the personal blog.
A blog is not a business. It is more like a public journal about your opinions and information etc. If you want a blog to be business you have to treat it like one. In fact a general personal blogs won’t get you anywhere. Best if you look for a niche and narrow your blog post to those niche topics for a better go at personal blog success.
No one is reading your blog. Right, you are competing with millions of websites and personal blogs out there in the wild. Everybody wants to be heard in one way or another and many are in it for the money too. If you blog about inane topics, nobody will read your personal blogs. Least of all if your personal blog topics run here and there. Best way to go about building a good blog is to get your blog direction right.
That brings me to this, you probably don’t want to hear about it, but if you are into personal blogging to make some income, then give me an ear about this SBI or Sitesell’s Site Build It. I still have the best success using it. And amongst my several websites or blogs, the website that I’ve started with SBI is still the best income earner for me so far. It has all the tools to get you started, teaches you what you need to do, and use the tools effectively to promote your blog and ultimately gets you the website traffic and eventually monetization be it via advertising or affiliate click through or real life sales prospecting and sales closing.
Look through and see if SBI is what you expect it to be:
Would it be easier to blog or build a proper website?
Using content as a marketing tool
Nobody reading your blog? Then try SBI to bring in your web traffic
Should you use wordpress or SBI to make your website?
Cheers!