I had to tell Lulu the truth…
Most bloggers don’t make money. Few are good enough, relevant enough or consistent enough to bring in enough readers who click on ads, or whatever else the blogger is recommending.
Yet countless sales types offer to show you how to make money blogging – for a fee of course. Before you give them one dime, read this, (here’s the PDF in case) from a multimillionaire who has a top blog, and who doesn’t need the money…
Thanks, Robin.
That said, if you do have a super strong point of view about something or someone, here are some useful tips on “how to write stuff worth reading.”
Hi Kim,
Thank you for always sharing so freely.
You always make me think…..and that’s good!
Keep up the great job of educating those wh choose to keep learning.
Lynn Rothfuss
http://www.youtube.com/lynnrothfuss
It’s downright difficult to make money from just a blog alone. You might generate a couple of dollars a month if you put adsense ads in your blog, but to me they just distract the visitor from your posts.
Our team uses blogs to establish our “street creds” and to position ourselves as professionals in our respective fields. Some even use them to establish personal rapport with visitors, showing that there’s a human being involved in their business and not just some signup-generating “robot” – which is very important.
Promises of “autopilot riches” and “blogging for dollars” are mostly just a lot of expensive hot air – the only dollars most see from those sort of things come from spreading the myth as an affiliate for the “blogging for dollars” information. Sort of a self-perpetuating “chain letter” syndrome.
But as Kim and Robin both know, a blog is an excellent team communication tool, as is the use of a wiki website such as WetPaint. With a wiki, all members can contribute to the overall site and form an online community unto itself. Great for inspirational stuff and sharing of success stories.
For what it’s worth, blogs do index quckly on Google and the other search engines, and can give you “findability” when people Google your name (and they do, whether you realize it or not). I found a way to meet that challenge too. Google my name and you’ll see what I mean.
Personally, I would not focus on blogging in and of itself as a way to make money until you get around 500 visitors a day. Then you can really monetize your blog. Until that point, I would focus on driving traffic to it.
Kurt Henninger
Oh, I wouldn’t SPEND MONEY – or very much money – for training. Training is free all over the internet.
And you can get the highest quality training for a fair price. ALA Kim’s wonderful trainings 🙂
Or just look what the big blogger girls are doing and adapt.
Blogging is a creative sport. I LOVE it.
There are many forms of income… not just the $ from adsense, but free PR, getting your name out there, putting the equivalent of a PDF file online free for easy access for whomever you want to see it, meeting and greeting new business partners, friends and customers online and in forums and other blogs, and developing and honing your communication and outreach skills.
With googles http://blogger.com you can make all sorts of free web pages. No webmaster hassle needed.
I put up a page to show you how easy it is to create a free fancy webpage with the blogging platform
http://FreeAndEasyWeb.blogspot.com
Our group is committed helping people learn with minimum outgo – especially while they are learning to get some in-come.
Pat Crosby
http://Pat.MentoringForFree.com
If you want a following all you have to do is one of two things: do something great or be someone great. If you want people to see you then you need to get yourself out in front of people.
Pat, nothing is free (training included) and you may or may not get what you pay for on the internet. I especially like Kim’s earlier training (like ‘the truth’ book and the audios like ‘So you want to be a networker’ – good value and still applicable).
Blogging can cost a lot of TIME with no guarantee of a payoff. This would be one of those cases where I would agree with Kim, ‘do it because you love it.’
Hi Kim:
I read the article and he is so on the money. It’s tough to do… but could work. Like anything it takes consistency. I remember learning a lot about blogging from a site that use to be up called “Blogzilla”. Is that still alive???
Debi
I agree with Kurt above about the need for driving traffic. You can have the best blog around but in order to make money from it, you need lots and lots of traffic.
While I do agree that you can get lots of free training online (I got a tremendous amount in the daily Live trainings at vzerb.veretekk.com), there are also some very good low-cost training materials out there as well. Many even let you share the ones you like (be an affiliate) so you can earn your money right back and then some.
I am developing a page to share those that I have personally used, and am using blogger to host that page (I agree with Pat that blogger is super easy to use – I have several blogs there).
It is lots of fun to blog and if you learn what to do with your blog, it can become an income generator for you.
Vicki
http://homebusinesstraffic.blogspot.com/ (only have about half of the programs I have used loaded.. so check back soon to see more)