How much money can you make with a blog?

This question is very specific. It deals with the amount of money one can make with just one blog. And that’s the exact question I got asked the other day by an old time friend.

We just met after years of not knowing the where about of each other. My friend has grown so big, a father of 2 too and an accountant in a company here in Douala.

My immediate answer to him was “you can make from zero to thousands of dollars”. A lot of factors are involved and that’s what I want us to discuss in this post.

If you use your blog as a money making tool, you can generate a bag of bank notes but again, there are so many things to put together. Now let me establish some facts first;

You cannot make money blogging! hhhoooooooooooo!

That’s like contradicting the very reason why I blog right? But before you start throwing stones at me, let me explain…

Blogging is simply the activity of creating content and publishing on one or more blogs.  This activity in itself cannot earn money. You can be a blogging expert, pulling thousands of visitors to your blog per day but still walking away with not even a cent. That’s simply because blogging does not make money. Period!How much money can you make with a blog

Now let’s go back to the question “How much money can you make with a blog?

You can make nothing or thousands of dollars with a single blog. The one foundation you need is targeted traffic. Though traffic alone does not guarantee earnings, it’s the foundation and most required factor.

NB: Remember we are talking about making money with one blog. Not making money as a blogger. That’s being opened to more channels; Bloggers make money from their blogs and other blogging activities surrounding their blogs;

Check out this post on 15 ways bloggers can make money

Targeted traffic first

Now let me talk a bit about traffic. This is all about people (1) coming to your blog and (2) spending time and reading your contents.

1 – People coming to your blog;

There are generally 2 ways to pull traffic to your blog;

  • Search engines: That means you have to create search engine friendly articles. A lot has changed in the SEO industry these days. Concentrating on keyword density and sometimes trying to manipulate search spiders no longer work as it used to. Check out this article on how to increase your search engine traffic
  • From referral sources: This is traffic from social media, banner ads, blogging communities, comments on other blogs, guest posts, etc You have to be an active blogger in the industry to witness an increase in referral traffic.

In addition, you can get direct traffic (people read your blog url on printed papers, business cards, billboards, etc) and traffic from emails (newsletters, email signatures).

2 – People spending time and reading your content;

Now this is a very important aspect of blogging. After attracting visitors to your blog, one of your immediate objectives is to keep them longer. If people visit your blog and don’t spend time (reading the article on the landing page and clicking to read more articles), it sends a negative signal. There are a couple of things you must do to keep visitors on your blog;

  • Don’t use misleading titles.
  • Be sure to have a good looking blog.
  • Avoid adverts everywhere.
  • Avoid annoying popups.
  • Write great articles.
  • Start with captivating introductions.
  • Use captivating images.
  • Optimize your blog speed for fast loading.
  • Master your language.
  • Avoid long sentences.
  • Do proper formatting.
  • Etc

Now you have visitors coming to your blog and reading your articles. How does the money come in and how much?

Monetizing your blog

I established above that blogging in itself does not generally make the money.What brings in earnings is your monetizing strategy. There are literally many ways to empower your blog to make you money. However, the question here is how much?

Let’s see some factors that can affect the amount of money you can make from a blog;

  1. Amount of traffic – Generally, the more the traffic, the more money you can make
  2. How targeted is your traffic too can affect how much you can make
  3. Traffic source – Search engine traffic converts more
  4. Your content – If your content is good enough to keep readers, it can affect the amount of money you can make.
  5. The age of your blog – For the more part, older blogs have more readership, more content, more traffic and more money making objects
  6. Monetizing strategies – There are different ways to monetize your blog. Some generate heavier amounts than others. Generally, you will be thinking of Affiliate banners, direct advertising, Adsense, paid posts, selling your own products, etc.

One blog Vs Many

Some people have argued that it’s not a possibility to earn 6 figure with a single blog. I think they are completely missing the point. The strategy is to grow your business around one single blog. Most of the top bloggers that earn huge focus on one blog and develop a business around it. I don’t believe in creating many blogs and struggling to maintain them except you are working in a team that makes content creation easier.

Over to you…

How many blogs do you have? Do you think you can make enough money with just  one blog? Let me hear you out in the comment box below.

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