Every day hundreds (if not thousands) have the idea to start making money with a blog. While this is possible, it's still very unlikely. Of the 300+ million blogs that are currently out there, I would say less than 1% of them actually make any real money (at least $1,000 per year).
Before we break down why your blog isn't going to make money, we would first need to look at why people are starting blogs in the first place and to also think outside of the “WordPress training” and “make money online” niche blogs.
First thing first… it's easy to make money in the “WordPress Training” and “Affiliate / Make Money Online” space because everyone is kind of swapping the same information and we all have the same goal — which is to create a successful online business and make money. To make money in this space, all you need to do is look at successful sites and try to replicate their success and content, while building a brand following of your own.
Jump outside of these niche markets and you have a whole new world of people that are just creating content and really have no idea on how to effectively build backlinks, monetize their sizes and bring in new advertisers — herein lies the problem with most bloggers.
Without getting too overly complex and wasting your time, I'm going to break this concept down into three key points — which can be applied to EVERY failed blog out there.
Creating Content Will Only Waste Your Time
Blogging is all about “creating content”, right? Well, kind of… but creating content will only get you so far.
Back in the day when the web was young and there wasn't 300+ million blogs to compete against, relying on just content might have allowed you to build a successful web site or blog — today it WILL NOT.
Now bloggers need to focus on CONTENT PROMOTION and not just CONTENT CREATION.
The business model of creating five very high quality articles and spending the majority of your time promoting them, getting backlinks to them and spreading the word through social media will win almost every time versus writing a 500 word article everyday on your blog.
This is something I talked in detail with during my discussion with Brian Dean — who is one of the best sources out there for content promotion and what's currently working best.
Don't get me wrong, CONTENT IS STILL KING… but without content promotion, your king will be alone by himself in the kingdom!
[tweet_box design=”box_09″]Bloggers need to focus on content promotion and not just content creation![/tweet_box]
Your Content Has No Call to Action
Once again, I have to stress the importance of the content found on your site. If you don't have a call to action, what's the point of spending a couple hours on a killer blog post anyway.
I can't tell you how many blogs I see on a daily basis that don't have proper social sharing buttons on their site (which is a big mistake in itself), but even worse… quality blog posts with no call to action.
Recommended Reading: Content Machine: Use Content Marketing to Build a 7-figure Business With Zero Advertising
In most cases, people are reading the content on your site because they want to get better at something or find a solution to their problem. If you are giving away the answer or leaving them hanging, you are just hurting yourself.
This is the same principle I try to follow with all of my sites and blog posts.
A call to action can be any of the following:
- Share this post with your friends
- Subscribe to our mailing list below
- Click here to download my favorite blogging tools
- Recommend another service or product to solve a problem
- Provide a follow up / autoresponder service to keep them coming back
As you can see, you can really go multiple directions with your call to action — it's just important that you have one!
You Picked a Niche Without a Business Model
The last point is probably the most common cause for not making money with a blog, which is choosing a topic without any research and just creating content.
This one actually happens all the time. You get excited about a new idea, you then register a domain name and you start blogging and writing content. A new post is published every few days for a couple months… and still no money is made. Weeks later and your traffic still hasn't picked up, you are now miserable and decide to quite.
I'm sure many of us can relate with this concept.
The takeaway here is that if you want to make money with a blog, you need to TREAT IT LIKE A BUSINESS.
Here's a perfect example.
In my make money blogging guide, I lay out the complete process for how to create a blog, find a niche, how to see if it's profitable, building out your content and links… and then ultimately making money through the use of affiliate marketing. This is a business model that works, but you need to put in the time and effort to plan it out before just registering a domain name and hoping for the best.
Here's Your Call to Action!
Like I mentioned earlier… a post without a call to action is pretty useless. However, since I'm contributing to Ileane's blog, I'm not going to try and push my own services or offers! 🙂
My call to action is to look at your existing blog and write down a list of why it's currently failing or – not at performing at the level where it should be. This means going back and looking at all of your most popular and heavily trafficked posts and seeing if they each have a call to action.
After that is done, then think about the content promotion for your site. Are you focusing on just content creation and leaving out content promotion? If that's the case, you need to get to work on your guest blogging efforts and offering something of value to get your site visitors to join your mailing list.
I leave you with this…
It's easy to make a blog, but it's not easy to make money with a blog. If it was, 99% of the blogs out there would be making money… not just 1%.
Hey Zac,
Thanks for another eye opener here at BBT
I totally agree with you that the blogging and make money niche is toughly competitive and bloggers in this category know how to monetize. They try to practice what they preach.
Yes if you don’t promote, you end up being your only reader, reason why many blogs are very unsuccessful but promotion is even more difficult than content creation.
Brian of course is a crazy guy who has come up with exceptionally successful methods – sky crapper technic, guestographics, etc. I think he publishes one article per month or so and some of his posts get well over 700 comments.
My blog generates over $1000/m so I’m not part of the 99%. I’ll be blogging for 3 years by the 21st of this month, August 2015. You know how much you have played personally to take me to this point.
Thank you buddy 😉
Hope you are set for a wonderful weekend
Congrats on your success so far! It’s been great to see your blog and earnings grow with time!
It’s definitely all about the CONTENT PROMOTION and not just the CREATION. There is already so much out there, so just focus on creating the best stuff, and then getting it out there.
Valid points and great post. I think blogging does not always have to be about making money, especially for the many personal or travel blogs out there. Write about something you are really passionate about and visitors (and money eventually) will follow.
Great post and valid points! Thanks Zac. Yes I totally agree. Actually its catch-22 situation where great content is useless without marketing and great marketing is useless without great content. Your blogging efforts can work only if you select the right niche before you start your campaign.
Definitely. Each ties into each other very well and you will see most of the successful blogs out there aren’t loading up their sites with ads any more, but instead lead gen to build a relationship and then monetize later on in the process.
Now this is what got my attention in this article “CONTENT IS STILL KING… but without content promotion, your king will be alone by himself in the kingdom!” in my own word I would say “content is king…but without content promotion your king will never be known” . I appreciate your writeup
I believe that writing quality content is a skill that you shape in time. The same happens with marketing skills.
Hi Zac
People that are starting a blog just to make money are not blogger very long. It is very hard to ear money on a blog if that is your only focus. Of cause some niche’s are easier then others. The most successful bloggers I know of are them who have something interesting to tell and are good to build online relationship with other bloggers.
You are so right about social sharing buttons. If I can’t find them I am not going to share your post even if it is awesome.
Knowing the audience of your blog will mean a world of difference when trying to find success or make money online. For example, if you are trying to teach people how to make money online, it’s important to realize most of the people are coming to your site are willing to take action, but might not have a lot of money to invest in the process.
That is why I like using Call To Action Buttons, to achieve better conversion and sales. To make money from a blog I also create engaging landing pages.
It’s amazing how much of a difference using the words “click here” can make!
Hi Zac,
Nice to meet you here on BBT,
My first year as a blogger was spent in a state I would never forget so quick in hurry, because I was told that “CONTENT IS KING” and like a child getting handout from his parent, I followed in that direction and was doing all I can to publish something good everyday or so.
But I was lonely, and it appeared am just the only one reading my good stuffs. This got me frustrated, and I started looking for other answers.
Then I discover that content is only king if there are effective marketing channels to get this king out to the public, without that this king will only be ruling an empty empire.
Thanks Zac for everything, am so grateful.
Great to hear from you. You are right, what good is being King if no one in the empire! Keep up the great work.
Zac, this is something that Google fails to emphasize. You can create the best content there is, but if there is little marketing done on it, both onsite or offsite, then you will never see the success you deserve.
Hey Zac loved your post here on Ileane’s blog, found myself nodding and agreeing with a lot of your points here. Hey we all start from somewhere and we have to make some pretty big mistakes to hopefully get us on the right track to earning a little bit of income from blogging.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes in the last 5 years, started over 3 times as well. I now make just under 1k per month from my blog each month, but it’s growing slowly, however my blog doesn’t earn the money, I have to work for it, so I’m making money through my blog by providing services, so I couldn’t agree with you more in regards with looking at your blog as a “business model” and not just as an “automated money making machine”.
Creating great content is amazing but if no one can find it then what would be the point as you pointed out, I write 1 post per week, the rest of the time I’m promoting the life out of it.
Have a great rest of the week mate.
thanks for this post, I work with my new blog and find that it’s very hard to get new visitors.
Excellent post, I agree with you Zac! Even though you have a great content if you do not promote well you cannot get any traffic to your site and also you have to pick the right niche these day to be successful
An eye opener indeed. I want a little suggestion Zac, I have my own domain and blog on Life, Money and Love. But most of the time, I do creative writing. Does creative writing has any scope in monetary gain out of blog ?
I have tried writing articles which could ‘Sell’, but in reality, creative articles are my forte.
I would love to get some tips from you which could help me and millions like me out here 🙂
Thanks,
Gaurav
My first thought was “this sounds like a no-win situation.” Then almost every time I read a headline like this, I say to myself, “I am so glad I enjoy what I write about.” It is nice to have regular readers too.
With the above statement out the way, I still have to commend you on your facts and in relating how important it is to do “content promotion.” And I mean a lot of it!
Kind regards, J.
Hi Zac! Nice to see you on Ileane’s blog.
(Ileane, thanks for having Zac!)
Loved this point…
“The business model of creating five very high quality articles and spending the majority of your time promoting them, getting backlinks to them and spreading the word through social media will win almost every time versus writing a 500 word article everyday on your blog.”
I tried an experiment on my own blog in June and July. I went from publishing 1-2x a week to publishing 4-5x a week.
You know what I found?
My traffic, social shares and blog comments remained pretty much the same as April and May… just spread out over a larger number of posts.
I spent all the available time I had around my client workload writing and publishing new content instead of promoting it and building relationships.
Now I’m focusing on publishing 3-4x monthly, and ensuring I only produce ‘top shelf’ material.
Have a great week to you both!
Brent
Great article, but be careful on putting stats together and speculating unless you can back them up. I believe more than 1% are making at least $1000, but who knows… need more solid stats. 😉
I think every blogger should have a business blueprint where they know how they will be making money, content creation and promotion. Your list make sense and newbie bloggers like me get to know blogging pit falls.
I just sent this website to someone who’s just a newbie to blogging, am sure she’ll find these posts most helpful because i find it’s detailed and easy to understand. Great post Zac, blogging keeps getting more and more interesting for me.
Hey Zac
You have written such an awesome article here at BBT.
I really appreciate with you that ” Bloggers need to focus on content promotion and not just content creation “.
It is the most important point which every blogger should learn. Nowadays bloggers are just focusing on content creation so frequently which isn’t beneficial anymore.
We shouldn’t create content If we don’t have any reader to read that piece of content.
Your tips are so helpful and I’ll definitely follow your call to action which you have given in this article.
Thanks for sharing such a great piece of content. 😀
Happy Blogging 😉