We have already covered the issue of whether blogging can really be a way to make money. It does not have a very good reputation on this, since stats appear to show that only a small minority of bloggers manage to earn a full time income off their websites.
Many bloggers only earn very small incomes, or sometimes nothing at all. However if you dig into these cases, you will find that there was most likely certain things which they didn’t do which made it impossible for their sites to succeed.
However when done properly and by a certain method – creating a decent looking site on WordPress, writing lots of high quality content on carefully researched keywords, and being very patient – blogs and niche sites can be an excellent way to earn a little (and potentially a lot) of side income to support you and your family.
If someone builds their website correctly, puts up enough content in low competition keyword searches, and is prepared to wait up to a year for Google to rank the articles, then blogs can indeed draw enough traffic to make good money.
Let’s look at some ways blogs can help you financially if built in the correct way.
1. Blogs Can Supplement Your Income From Your Main Job
Of course the earnings potential of any website depends on so many factors, like the niche and the amount and quality of the content produced, but pretty much most blogs can be built up to at least a couple of hundred dollars a month if approached correctly and given enough time.
This can come in very handy as extra side income to supplement any income from your main jobs, for paying bills and covering other expenses. If your blog just helps to pay one particular bill every month, it is still worth having in our opinion and leaves you with more money in your pocket to do what you want with.
Similarly, many people are also having problems with not being unemployed so much as underemployed – not being able to get the hours or overtime they want to bring in the money they need to meet their monthly expenses.
In these cases blogging can also be an excellent way to cover this gap between actual and desired monthly income, though it does require some patience, work and a little upfront investment to get to this point. See our full article on supplementing part time income with blogging.
2. Blogging Can Become Your Full Time Income
Many blogs can also be built up to earn not just a few hundred dollars a month but a few thousand instead if they are in a good niche and the owner is persistent in creating lots of content to drive lots of traffic to their site over time.
The more fortunate bloggers who get to this stage find they can quit their main jobs altogether and go full time with their niche websites. This allows you to devote even more time to making your blog an authority or top notch, trusted resource in your niche that stands out from all the rest.
Taking this step of going full time can also allow you to create a portfolio of niche blogs which can generate even more income over time. The most successful bloggers who go full time can become millionaires with this approach, though it does take many years of work to get to this point.
3. Blogging For The Unemployed
Blogging is also a superb option for people out of work altogether, who are maybe claiming welfare/benefits but stuck in the rut of searching through the same jobs on the same websites every day which they are not qualified for or have no interest in doing.
Setting up a niche website can again give them a project to focus on which pulls them out of this depressing “looking for work but can’t find anything” cycle and can also in time again pull in the extra income required to get them back on their feet financially
The real benefit here is that unemployed people do have the time that is needed to really sink into building a good blog with lots of good content that really reap rewards 9-12 months down the line.
Of course the upfront costs required to start a blog can be a problem for people out of work, but compared to other lines of work they are really still small. You can get started with hosting and domains for the first year for under $100; around $150 can get you set up for 3 years.
Selling some unwanted stuff out your garage, getting rid of TVs, games consoles or any other distractions and cancelling subscriptions can help get you started here; the initial investment required is really tiny compared to the potential long term rewards.
4. Blogs Can Be Bought and Sold Like Assets
Another benefit of building a portfolio of passive income sites is that they can actually be bought and sold like anything else. If you have built a niche site up to the point where it is earning a good monthly income, but perhaps have lost a bit of interest in the topic or have other projects you want to focus on, you can sell your blog and bring in some serious cash.
There are websites like Empire Flippers and Flippa which are designed specifically for buying and selling websites. It is totally possible for blog sites to sell for 25-30 times monthly income. If you have put the work in to build your site up to several thousand dollars a month, you can see how selling it could rake in a nice windfall you could do plenty of things with!
Some people also make a living out of “flipping niche websites”, buying blogs with potential up for cheap prices, building their income up, and then selling them on for a nice margin. The key here is to be able to spot “low hanging fruit” in the form of websites which aren’t earning much but could easily earn more by taking a few steps to improve content, monetization, design etc.
5. Blogs Can Help You Pay Your Way Through College
This is a huge potential benefit for young people who want to go to college but are rightly reticent about burying themselves in mountains of student debt with the ever increasing tuition fees and living expenses.
Setting up a blog can be a superb of helping out with some (perhaps all) of these expenses by providing some good passive income which can support you through your studies. Anyone planning to go to college should seriously think about setting up one or more blog websites as a way of supporting themselves financially through these years.
6. Blogs Can Provide an Emergency Buffer in Your Finances
Another huge advantage of building up a side income through blogging is that it gives you a financial buffer and options in the case of any unexpected events or life changes, like the loss of a job or some other sudden medical or other expense which crops up out of nowhere.
Having that extra income can be vital in covering any surprise events that turn up, especially when you have kids. They can also provide extra money for holidays, trips away, medical bills, opticians, car accidents and repairs and so on.
7. Blogs Can Help You Fund a Transition Later in Life
As well as helping younger students pay their way through studies, having side income from a blog can also help older people who may decide to go back to school later in life to retrain in another field.
Again paying your way through with savings and/or side income is much more preferable to taking out mountains of debt to pay for university or other courses. Building up a good passive income through blogs can help you make these life transitions without racking up large amounts of debt.
In addition, having this extra income can also help you prepare for other potential shifts on the horizon. There may be redundancies or cutbacks coming in your current profession and having passive income sources can support you through any transition periods as you maybe retrain in other areas or seek out new lines of work.
Having this side income can also simply give you more options in life, especially when working for others. Some people have a better ride of it than others in the people they work under in their jobs, but reports of bullying, belligerent bosses and workplace politics only seem to get worse over time, not better.
Building up full time incomes in blogs and niche sites can give you the option to simply back out of toxic work environments instead of having to tolerate them because you need the money to pay the bills. It is never a good idea to be at the mercy of your employer in this way and so having income from different sources gives you more options and power over your life in general.
8. Encourage All Young People to Set up a Blog
Regardless of whether they are planning to go to university or not, we believe it is a good idea for parents to encourage all young people to think about monetizing their passions and setting up a blog about something they are interested in.
It has the dual benefit of introducing them to the basics of working online, which will be an ever increasing sector of the economy going forward, and also earning them some extra income to make them more independent and self supporting. Younger people also tend to be less afraid of technology and so can make the leap into working online very easily.
It can take a while for young people to really figure out what they want to do in life. Setting up a passive income site can be an excellent way of supporting them through their late teens and early twenties, while they try out different things and decide what they really want to pursue for a career.
Ready To Start?
If you are sold on the potential long term financial benefits of blogging, then we always recommend the approach of Income School for people new to this field. Jim and Ricky provide a simple, non technical, down to earth approach to building passive income sites which is perfect for people who want to monetize a passion or interest of theirs in the hope of generating some side income.
Of course there are plenty of other people online who have their own approaches and courses. We recommend Income School over all of them simply because their approach is simple and effective, but also honest, with a strong emphasis on simply producing great content as a way of driving traffic to a site.
There is no emphasis on “Black Hat” SEO trickery to try and fool Google into ranking your site more quickly, which means their approach may take longer to pay off, but in the end acts as a more stable long term method for generating passive income than using some of the fancy tricks you will hear about which Google will penalize if they discover.
See the video below for a basic introduction to their approach to building websites which has worked for them time and again and which their Project 24 program allows you to replicate in a systematic, step by step way that can be taken at your own pace
Their Project 24 program is a comprehensive starter guide for making money online, which takes you through a 60 step process to build a passive income site from scratch. Jim and Ricky are always also on hand to help any members out, as well as the growing community of members who are following the process.
Click here to visit the sign up page for Project 24.
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