The Problem with Making Money in Blogging is Exactly That.
Again, you can't get there from here... (but I've got some lessons you can take.)
Because while some people do make money from their blogs, it's again that extreme few who simply fall into a niche and a pattern others can't easily follow.
It took me years to figure this out. And finally a friend inadvertantly pointed it out to me. The blog is not the product.
Meaning, you have to exchange a produce or service with someone else in order to allow them to give you some exchange for that which will improve your life.
So where do blogs fit in? The people who are "making money" are really providing entertaniment. (Well info-tainment, or edu-tainment.) They are making money from selling advertisements, because the traffic to their site is so high businesses want a piece of that pie.
Now you hear of people selling info-products and affiliate products and so on. Are bloggers doing this? Sure. And if you look at their site, you'll see plenty of places where they are getting you to sign up for this or that mailing list and even get this or that ebook or product.
But what they are doing is marketing. Lots of interesting articles about stuff that people will sign up for. Finding a demand and then filling it with something valuable they will give you money for.
It's not blogging that's making money, it's marketing.
OK - enough of the rant. Sure, I've made some money by blogging - but it wasn't because people paid me to blog. It was because I sent them to places where I either sold a product (like my storefront of books) or sent them to someone who would give me a percentage of any sale.
The service was in the honest reviews so people could make up their own minds.
And in that process I've built so many blogs I can't keep up with them. (But check out the list on that storefront - lower right) and you'll get an idea. The blogroll on this page has many of them as well. I have literally lost track of many of them.
So I know a bit about how to start a blog and how to keep them going. I know the basics of how to make money from using them as part of a concerted marketing campaign.
It's a lot of hard work (unless you inherited a set of over-prolific fingers like mine...)
These lessons will take you from nothing to something. And after that, you're on your own.
And I reserve the right to amend these as I continue to find out more and more about blogging.
Here's the How To Roll Your Own Blog Lessons:
Lesson 1 - The End in View - What You're After
Lesson 2. Something to write about
Lesson 3. Persuasive Content: How to write effectively and memorably
Lesson 4. Reverse Promotion: How to use social media to get your message out
Lesson 5. Re-branding Yourself or Others: Find network associates and interconnect
Lesson 7. You are now a published author: Re-purpose your content to articles
Lesson 8. Connections and interchange: The Good Old Boys had it right.
Lesson 9. Go Pro: Use what you learned to make yourself a real job.
Lesson 10. Summary – and where to from here?
