Make Money Blogging? Or Make Money Because You Blog?

There are a couple ways of looking at starting a blog or thinking about the role of your current blog in your business.

Some blogs make money in and of themselves. These blogs do this with:

1. Advertising
2. CPA offers
3. Affiliate product recommendations
4. Selling links

Some people who blog make money because they blog.

There really is a difference.  These “people who happen to have successful blogs” make money in far different ways than the bloggers above:

1. Book sales
2. Consulting gigs
3. Speaking gigs
4. Writing gigs
5. Coaching gigs
6. Membership sites
7. Product sales

The first group of blogs makes money on the sheer value of their content and their following.  They are basically paid to put advertising of different kinds in front of their audience.  They have an audience because their blog hits a nerve with a significant demographic.  Their full-time job is creating content and marketing their blog.

The second group benefits from the same type of following and popularity, but they leverage the attention their blog gives them to pick up lucrative “outside” jobs and sell their own products or services.  They blog, but they also fulfill product delivery, write books, fly to conferences, interview or get interviewed a lot, and get hired to be consultants, coaches, writers or any number of other things.

Each type of blog can have advertising on it.

But while the first type of blog requires it, the second can be profitable with no advertising at all except for links to the blogger’s products, services, samples, and “hire me” pages.

Seth Godin’s blog is a perfect example of the latter.  He sells his expertise and a huge line of books he’s authored.  And really, you’d be hard pressed to find many places on his blog where he outright asks his readers to buy a book.  But no one disputes his success.  Nor the fact that his blog is responsible for a good deal of it.

Boing Boing is a good example of the former.  They write, have a massive following and readership, and advertisers pay them to get in front of that readership.

The Third Blog

Many blogs are “crossovers” and do both, like Dooce.com.  Heather has ads and she also has books and t-shirts of her own to sell.

The point of all this is that you need to keep your goals straight for having a blog.

Is it to get organic search engine listings and links from all over to funnel traffic to affiliate offers or to click on ads?  Because that’s different than a blog set up to do much the same job as writing a book these days:  prove your expertise in an area and get consulting jobs or sell your own books, products, training, or services.

Even if you are one of those crossover blogs and do some of both, one of those is going to be the core money maker and the other is just going to be icing on the cake.

If you’ve been told the only way to make money with a blog is to sell advertising or affiliate products, you’ve been lied to.  And if you’ve been told to give up on blogging unless you are only doing it to build your reputation as an expert (not to make money directly from the blog itself) you’ve been lied to again.

Just Know This:  There are options!

Your market demographics and your expertise or skill in that market, among other things, will utlimately determine what category you place your blog into.  And if you haven’t thought long about this, that could explain why you might be trying to do some or all of the above and not making nearly the money you thought you would be making by now!

Tagged as: crossover blogging, expert blogging, make money blogging, money blogging