Since I started becoming a permanent traveler I thought long and hard about how I can sustain myself financially without needing to rely on anyone else or be limited with what I can do.
The logical answer, for me at least, was to become a blogger. A person with an online business that can be run anywhere in the world with a laptop and an internet connection.
But do blogs actually make money? Yes, they do. A good blog can easily make $4,000 to $25,000 per month through advertising, affiliate marketing, and selling your own products. This depends on many factors, like how much you write, how good it is, how informative, how popular it is, etc. A good blog with a hundred articles can achieve this.
So you still want to create a blog? Do you want to know more about the money side of things too? Ok, let’s dive into it in a little more detail…
What do I want from blogging?
You need to ask this before deciding that you want to have a blog paying you $50,000 a month. Yes that figure is possible, but it will take you years and many thousands of hours of hard work to get to that stage BUT it is possible, exciting eh?
So what do you want from your blog and how much time do you want to invest? If you are looking to create a side income of up to $1,000 then you can do this with a minimal investment in time and money.
If you want to be more serious about it then you will need to invest more time. If you are working then you can work around that quite easily, in fact until you are earning enough money to replace your job you should not quit.
I recommend you spend if you have time, 1-2 hours per day. This does not have to be in one big chunk, you can spend 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes at lunch, and then an hour in the evening if that works for you. I personally prefer to do mine in one sitting as I spend less time packing and unpacking my laptop and cables.
The bulk of this time will be spent writing so if you hate writing then this may not be for you, although there are some great free speech-to-text apps out there such as the one in Google Docs.
How much can I expect to earn?
Sadly this is more of a ‘how long is a piece of string’ answer. It depends on so many factors that it’s nearly impossible to answer exactly how much you will earn. What I can do is highlight an example and show you how much you could earn.
So you have found an interesting topic to blog about (if not go here to see what you could write about) now let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. You need a domain name, a website name fitting for your blog.
Avoid something too specific like bestlawnmowers2019.com it’s quickly dated in just one year, it sounds awful and it will be off-putting to potential visitors. If you have a gardening site, for example, promoting lawnmowers then try something like lawnlovers.com it sounds more appealing, relevant, and authentic.
You need hosting so you can show your site off to the world. You can sign up for Bluehost below, I use them and they are great. The service is good and the support is excellent
So now you have a domain and hosting You can begin writing. If you spend 2 hours per day writing and you can write an article of 1,500 words in 1-2 hours then you can expect to add 6 or 7 articles to your site each week.
After you have written 10-15 articles of 1,500 words move on to the next batch of more in-depth articles of 2,500 words each, Write 15 of these too. Now the hard part, is 15 articles of 3,500 words on a really in-depth subject.
After 2-3 months you should have written your articles. Now you can slow down a bit on the writing and commit to writing 1 article of each type per month or 1 article per week.
After about 6-8 months your articles will begin to rank and at this stage, assuming you have written good content and added ads and articles about promoting products, you should be looking at visitor traffic of around 30,000 after your first year.
If you assume advertising revenue of $12 per thousand and 3% of your visitors go to your promoted products site and 10% of them buy making you a rough commission of $3 per sale, you could earn:
- YEAR 1
- Advertising – $360
- Affiliate sales – $270
- Total earnings = $630
Ok, that doesn’t sound like a life-changing sum but if you add your own product such as a mower buyers guide for $5 and you keep writing for the second year. You could be looking at 80,000 visitors or more coming to your site. Let’s crunch those numbers assuming just 1% buy your guide and you have now jumped to a higher earnings band of $15 from advertising due to the traffic growth.
- YEAR 2
- Advertising – $1,200
- Affiliate sales – $720
- Buyers Guide – $4,000
- Total earnings – $5,920
So now we are talking! With just a bit of effort at the beginning and a steady trickle of effort throughout the following months, you could end up with a blog that could replace your salary. I have 5 websites, imagine doing that 5 times. After your first website has been completed you can start another and another, there is no limit to your earnings potential.
I’m not a good writer
That’s ok, you don’t have to be. You just need to write from your heart and in your own style. Of course, you need to avoid too much slang and other modes of speech such as being too ‘street’ as nobody will see you as authoritative if you say things like ‘yeah bruh, it’s wicked good right?’
Luckily there are many spell checkers and grammar checkers too. Just try to use your everyday words and you will be fine. It’s important for your readers to feel like they know you. When they feel this then trust will be built, your opinions respected and your sales pitches were taken up.
You will learn in time by reading other people’s work and more importantly your own to get an idea of what works and what doesn’t.
Imagine you have 60 articles on your blog and 15 of them are getting 80% of the traffic, you look at them and can see there are more facts, and more helpful tips, and the articles are longer, what can you do?
Well you can re-write or add content to the other articles to make them more helpful and longer to see how that changes them, you don’t need to write something from scratch and you have the data to show you how it has and will perform, for free!
What’s the best way to start blogging?
The best way to start is to go to Bluehost by clicking on the link below and get yourself some cheap hosting and a domain name, you can do both at the same time so it’s really quick.
Choose the WordPress option and after installing your website you can start right away.
The best way to start blogging is to start. I know it sounds a bit of a crummy thing to say but it’s true. If someone told you that you have had your own business for the price of a trip to Starbucks and you could make $6,000 a month would you do it? Of course, you would, why wouldn’t you?
Blogging is undoubtedly one of the cheapest ways of starting and running a business. Try and think of a business you can run for less than $20 a month that has the potential to make you $6,000 a month and you will struggle to think of many if any.
Try to avoid buying other tools like research tools which can add up fast and bring you little to no return, despite the blogger’s work saying otherwise. Most tools rely on Google for their data so with the right know-how you can access this information for free
How much will it cost to start?
As mentioned, less than you think. After you have paid for your domain name which can be discounted to a few dollars you only have to worry about hosting. This can be very cheap, under $10 a month to begin with.
The only other cost is in your time. You will need to spend many hours writing to build your blog, traffic, and reputation before the money starts rolling in but with some concerted effort, I believe that within 12 months with 1-2 hours of work per day, you will have written enough to bring in an income which could replace your salary.
Final thoughts
As a blogger, I can really recommend you start your own blog. It’s fun and interesting. When you begin to see visitors returning to your site you know you are helping so many people. This is a reward in its own right
If you want to do more things in life, go more places, see more people, and do more things then blogging is most definitely for you.
Even if you don’t want to travel around the world and just want some good family stability it can give you that too. Imagine being your own boss and writing your own checks each month for how much you feel you are worth rather than what someone else can get away with paying you. That’s freedom!
So why not give it a shot, help others with their queries, and let them help you in turn by visiting your blog and making you money? My last point of note before I finish is that this is called passive income.
If you stop writing after you have achieved success then the money keeps rolling in, even if you take some time out. Passive income is not active income, it earns for you when you are sleeping, eating, writing, or even chilling with a beer in front of the tv. Passive income frees up your time to do things you want to do. So what do you want?
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