There’s a lot out there about whether it’s possible to make a living blogging.  I enjoyed a rant recently from Andy Hobo about the current boom in people thinking they’re going to be able to pay for their travels with the Internet.  Can it be done?  Yes.  Is it easy?  No.  Here’s the downer - if you’re making your income from a blog or even a website, you’ll be WORKING while you travel.  If you just want to party and play, consider saving for a while and then taking time truly off.  If you don’t mind paying for your travel by taking longer so you can work while you go and not playing all day but setting aside several hours a day to work then you might try making money from blogging.
   Lots of people make lots of different amounts blogging.  This blog is not monetized and it is not my goal to make money from it.  I make my online money in other ways.  Some people can make over $100,000 a year from their blog but you better believe that they’re good business persons and marketers who employ other people to blog for them and who write to a large audience with 3-6 posts per day.  With some ingenuity and careful monetization and marketing strategies it should be within your grasp to make 1-3 thousand dollars a month from your blog.  Which, if you’re living or traveling in a cheap country can go very far. 
    To make money blogging you can expect the following: To post more than once per day, each and every single day.  Missing a day is death to a blogger trying to make money.  Death I tell you.  This is because if you don’t have a new post you will probably not get new traffic which will mean you won’t get new clicks on ads and your monthly traffic amount will go down.  Miss a couple of days or (like me) a month and expect to loose all but your most faithful blog readers. 
    You’ll also have to beef up your Google Reader account.  Or however you get your RSS feeds.  I recently switched to Google Reader because I read regularly about 100 blogs on travel that I comment on with links back to my site.  This is the number one way to build a community of readers and my faithful friends here are people I met because I read their blog first.  This is probably my favorite part of keeping up a blog.  If you don’t like it just have a blog for your own amusement and family to read.
    You’ll need to invest about 2-5 days of time (about 40 hrs to start) into learning how to write for Search Engine Optimization.  Then you’ll need to do it for each and every one of your blog posts even if you don’t want to.  This is where I slack of a ton at this blog.  SEO writing isn’t hard and it is a pretty scientific form of writing, but it takes time and effort and a different mindset.  Search Google for great tutorials, I’ve learned how to do it without ever buying an overpriced book at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
    Finally, you’ll have to make sure your ‘voice’ comes through loud and clear.  I’ve always had a strong written voice because I became a writer through writing speeches.  If you’re new to writing, get some books and learn to write for an hour every day just to develop your voice before you write anything that will be published or submitted in any form.  I especially liked Steven King’s book and Anne Lamont’s books on writing.
    If you think you’ve got it in you, go for it!  A word of warning to you though, your family and friends won’t know how to respond when you tell them you’re a professional blogger so be prepared to explain to Grandma what a blog is.  I love this type of work, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but it’s hard work.  To get a good idea of what you can make from your blog, do a Google search for “how much do you make from your blog” and you’ll find a group of people who include their monthly earnings as part of their blog each month.  Like I said, I don’t do that because I don’t run this blog for profit.
    Remember though, if you’re going to start a blog to make money you’re starting a small business.  And 7 out of 10 small businesses fail.  You’ve got a higher chance of success on the Internet because you’ve a larger audience potential, so it’s not like starting a restaurant, but you still need some business smarts to make it work.  And a lot of hard work.  Read Working Nomad’s ebook “How I did it and You Can Too” for the best step-by-step guide to paying for your travel through website development that I’ve ever read.  It got me started on thinking that this could be a possibility and now I telecommute full-time.  Not bad for working from a cafe outside Anaheim, CA while I enjoy the sun.

• Comments (6)

    Adsense by Google is the most popular monetization strategy for blogs because it is very easy to implement and understand.  However, before you go putting dozens of ad blocks all over your page, consider the following pros and cons to working with the Google Giant.
    Pro: Ease of Use
        Like so many things Google, it’s easy to use and understand Google Adsense from a publisher standpoint.  Putting in the html links is easy, finding the space is easy, it’s all easy.  Add to this the fact that they will give you reports on your click through ratio (CTR) and make it easy to get paid and Adsense makes it easy to get started in blog monetization.
    Con: No control
        Because it’s easy and automated to set up, you have very little control over which ads get shown on your website.  You can choose what style of ad shows up but you don’t get to choose whose ads get placed there.  Not being able to control this means that you’re at the mercy of Google to determine how much you will make from your clicks when you get them.  Rest assured though that Google is good at finding relevant ads, so they’ll match your content.
    Pro: Everyone Does It
        You know what you’re getting into with Adsense, everything is up front and spelled out.  Google’s good about this. 
    Con: Banner Blindness
        With Adsense your CTR is what will make your money.  If you have 1,000 daily visitors and only 1% click through at 5 cents a click you’re not going anywhere fast.  Because everyone uses Adsense, people are so used to seeing the ads that they simply ignore them.
    Pro: Help in placement
        Google will help you determine how to get better returns on your ads through better placement on your site, free of charge.  Of course it’s good for them because they’ll make more money that way, but it does help with boosting your CTR.
    Con: Income dependent on clicks.
        With other types of advertisement advertisers pay for placement, not for each click they get.  If your site isn’t running a high CTR on your adsense ads, or if you can’t figure out how to disguise them well, you might consider another advertising method.

Adsense success takes time and patience.  Consider always keeping at least one block on your page just to see how it does.  If it takes off, consider adding more.  If not, move it around and see if you can improve it.  One of the best placements I’ve ever worked with was a Wordpress design that put the ad block directly between posts or in the upper left corner of the top post.  The best strategy for any blog monetization is always to try lots of things, track them all, and see what works best for your community.

• Comments (3)

If the list on 43 things is any measurement, the goal of getting paid travels is a very popular one.  In the United States, the average vacation time allotted to an employee is 2 weeks a year.  This leaves a full 50 weeks a year for the cubicle ensconced to dream of a life that is exactly the opposite.  Unfortunately the goal of getting paid for your traveling is one that elicits a skeptical laugh and the inevitable “when you figure that out, let me know” response at parties and family gatherings.  Everyone knows that eventually you’ll give in and settle down like the rest of them for dreaming about your 2 weeks.  Won’t you?

More »

• Comments (3)