Make Money Writing about Topics You Love
Welcome to ProBlogger - a blog that is all about helping bloggers improve their blogs and make money while doing it. I’m Darren Rowse from Melbourne Australia and I’m a full time blogger.
Blogs have become incredibly popular over the last few years - to the point where experts believe that one starts every second. Along with this rise in interest in blogging is the increase in numbers of those attemping to make a living from the medium.
My Story
I started blogging 3 years ago on a personal blog and at that time had no idea that a few years later I’d be earning enough to live from my blogging activities. In fact blogging has not only become a way to pay my family’s bills - it’s become a way for us to get ahead and pay off our house which is freeing us up to do some of the things we’ve always wanted to do with our lives and be more generous with our time and resources.
The most exciting thing about blogging as a business is that you actually have the potential to earn money by simply writing about the things that you love or are interested in. If someone had told me I’d make a living by surfing the web, writing about my hobbies and meeting great people a few years ago I’d have laughed at them - now I’m laughing for a different reason!
How do Bloggers Earn Money?
There are many ways to earn an income from your blog and this page cannot possibly explain them all but to put it most simply, most bloggers make their money by writing quality content on a niche topic and then running advertisments on it that relate to the topic at hand.
I use a variety of income sources on my blogs - in fact three of them bring in around 95% of the income that I make between them. They are Chitika eMiniMalls, Text Link Ads and Google’s AdSense (click the blue button over on the left hand sidebar).
As I say - these three ad programs are the key ones for me - but by no means are they they only way to earn an income from blogging. Explore this blog further for many more methods.
Perspective
One of the lies I see many people writing about making money online telling is that you can ‘Get Rich Quickly’ through online activities. You’ve probably seen many web sites claiming you can make thousands of dollars a day in just a few weeks by simply following the steps outlined in courses, books or membership sites. It’s ‘Easy Money’ the scream!
While I’ve no doubt that quite a few people make a lot of money online (and I am happy to report it’s possible from personal experience) I always caution readers that the ‘easy’ money people often talk about actually takes a lot of ‘hard’ work.
I’ve been blogging for three years, the last 18 months of which has been full time (working long hours). The rewards have been great - but by no means has it been easy.
The fact is that most bloggers don’t make thousands a day - in fact many only make a dollar or two (if anything).
This is a reality check that bloggers wanting to make a living online need to hear. It IS possible - but it takes time and for some the dream of a full time living is not a reality and perhaps the dream of covering your internet connection costs, or the dream of a new laptop, or the dream of paying for a holiday might be more realistic.
ProBlogger.net
Whatever your reasons - I hope that this blog will help you reach them. ProBlogger.net is a free resource with over 2000 pages of content with news, tips and stories of how people make money online via their blogs. There are a lot of pages so you might want to set some time aside to do some serious reading.
You might also like to speed the learning process up by enrolling in a course I’ve designed with another experienced blogger (Andy Wibbels) called Six Figure Blogging which is designed as an introduction to the idea of making money online. It’s a six session course with loads of information from our own experience.
