When to Start Making Money from your Blog

I’m going against most of the advice you read about blogging with this post, but stay with me, because what you’re about to read is based on facts – and recent ones at that. I started this blog in December 2008, and it has made money from the the moment it went live.

What you are about the read is the order in which I added income streams to this site and the others in my blogging stable. I don’t suggest it will work for every niche, but it has certainly worked for me:

Adsense

The purists will tell you that income from Adsense is insignificant for a new blog, and that you shouldn’t bother. Well, they’re wrong. I put Adsense adverts on this site from day one, and yes, the income was very low, but it paid for my hosting (which was shared at the time) and other charges, and it meant I could keep going at a time when money was very tight. It’s true that Adsense adverts don’t make a blog look attractive, and also that they only earn a few cents a day. But in the first month of this blog, they brought almost $26. And yes, I had to wait until month 3 before I was paid the money ( due to Adsense having a $100 payout minimum) but nevertheless it was earned income I could bank on.

In month 2 I earned a around $40 and in month 3 close to $50. I know this is nothing to get excited about, but set against outgoings of less than $10 a month for shared hosting, it at least meant that the blog wasn’t actually costing me money.

For this reason I would advocate using Adsense on a new blog. Even if you’re only earning a dollar a week, it will give you a small psychological boost to know there is something coming in as a reward for the incredible hard work you need to put into a new blog

I stopped Adsense on this blog in month four. Partly to improve to look, but also because other income streams meant that I didn’t need to use valuable real estate on the site for Adsense. I have, however left it on my other blogs, and will review them as they move forward into the areas I describe below.

Affiliations

I’ve developed a personal rule which is that I will only offer affiliations on products that I have bought (at full price) and have really benefitted from. My first offering was with my then web host Servage, who I recommended for new bloggers. Next I added Aweber, who offer the best email service for bloggers, and when I moved my hosting to a Virtual Private network, I started to recommend Inmotion Hosting, who I have been really pleased with.

Affiliate offers, unless you have a huge readership, don’t offer a “quick buck".” What they do give you is a steady, fairly consistent income. Most of the affiliations I mentioned pay me some commission every week, as people find my posts through search. The beauty is, once they’re set up, they bring in income without you doing anything, except perhaps linking in new, relevant posts, which I have done in this one.

Sponsorship

I moved into offering sponsorship (basically image adverts with links) across all my sites in about month three. I was aware that I was offering low levels of traffic, so I kept the price low – on this blog $20 a month and on my others $10 a month. I have around 15 sponsors across the three blogs at the moment, and they know the pricing will increase as the traffic does. I’m very careful to feed them data every month on views and clicks on their adverts.

I see this as being a good steady area to focus on for the future –it won’t make a fortune, but it will provide a good base income. I’ve been quite direct in my approach to sponsors and so far it has paid off.

Own Products / Membership Site

This is where I intend to make my real future income from blogging. I’ve already started with my book Living in Lanzarote which I promoted across all three blogs. It’s available in Ebook and paperback format, and while it won’t make me rich, it provides a steady (remarkably steady!) income of around $500 a month.

I’ve also recently launched a membership program which runs for three months and starts on 1st June. That will provide around $2000 a month, and is almost fully subscribed. It’s called The Beginner’s Guide to Blogging. My next project is a Beginner’s Guide to Twitter, which will be an EBook, and that will be followed by another membership program, The Intermediates Guide to Blogging, although I’m not sure of the title yet!

There’s no doubt that the way to earn serious income from blogging is through selling your own products and through membership programs, and whilst the top three areas above provide a good baseline income, the last two are the way to go. The beauty of building up a stable of your own products, together with a membership program, is that you effectively only write the content once. Sure, you’ll make additions and revisions, but once you’ve done the hard work, you can keep on re selling.

Philosophy

My philosophy is somewhat different to many bloggers. I aim to really benefit from the power of the internet, and I plan to keep my prices very low. I want people to see a product on Mike’s Life and to think “Hell, why not?” Rather than “That’s interesting, but I just can’t afford it!”

I also intend to offer 10% of everything I produce free of charge to bloggers who genuinely can’t afford the product. I do this by inviting people to email me with their situation. Every time I sell ten books, the eleventh will go to someone on that list. In the same way I have made 6 places out of the 60 available on Beginner’s Guide to Blogging free of charge.

So those are my plans, and that’s my philosophy. Over time you’ll see that all these things will appear in my online shop, which I’m working on now. But, and here’s a big but – Mike’s Life will continue to offer lots and lots of what I hope is great content, free of charge. And I hope the community of readers who enjoy that content will continue to grow and grow. I know that without a really solid readership base, most of whom may never buy anything, Mike’s Life will never become the success I am aiming for.

If you haven’t already subscribed to Mike’s Life, please do so. As well as the free E-Book, I send out a roundup of all the posts every so often and a personal email to the community every week, which gives you a much deeper insight into what I’m doing and how things are going. Just put your first name and email address into the form top right.

What are you doing to create income from your blog? I’d really like to know what your plans are, so please comment, and I’ll go and have a look at your site.

You might also like to have a look at:

1/ Making money from your blog – remember to have fun!

2/ The Beginners Guide to Blogging

3/ Eight essential tools for bloggers