Author of Fake Steve Jobs blog (now discontinued) has an interesting article on Newseek. He thinks that blogs do not make money and bloggers shouldn’t have false hopes for making tons of money with their blogs.
For two years I was obsessed with trying to turn a blog into a business. I posted 10 or 20 items a day to my site, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, rarely taking a break. I blogged from cabs, using my BlackBerry. I blogged in the middle of the night, having awakened with an idea. I rationalized this insane behavior by telling myself that at the end of this rainbow I would find a huge pot of gold. But reality kept interfering with this fantasy. My first epiphany occurred in August 2007, when The New York Times ran a story revealing my identity, which until then I’d kept secret. On that day more than 500,000 people hit my site—by far the biggest day I’d ever had—and through Google’s AdSense program I earned about a hundred bucks. Over the course of that entire month, in which my site was visited by 1.5 million people, I earned a whopping total of $1,039.81. Soon after this I struck an advertising deal that paid better wages. But I never made enough to quit my day job. Eventually I shut down—not for financial reasons, but because Steve Jobs appeared to be in poor health. I walked away feeling burned out and weighing 20 pounds more than when I started. I also came away with a sneaking suspicion that while blogs can do many wonderful things, generating huge amounts of money isn’t one of them. read the full article
Well, I believe that it all depends on your objective of your blog actually. If your blog’s main objective is solely to make money then it’s a very difficult situation indeed. Because just like him, you may end up wasting your time blogging about something that is not really beneficial to you and won’t be of any benefit in the future. And when you shut down your blog, you will have this huge regret. Because it took away your precious time and effort, and all for nothing. But if you do blog for other reasons, for example to share your knowledge and expertise, to spread your idea and thoughts, to build and establish your brand etc. then, even if you shut down your blog in the future, you know that your time and effort spent for your blog was not in vain.
So, if you are blogging solely to make money, then spend some time thinking and formulating a strategy on how you can transform your blog from i-must-blog type of blog to i-enjoy-blogging. Making money should not be the only objective for your blog.
Here is two posts that I wrote while back that are very related to this topic:
You say it right, do it if you enjoy it, and that’s about the take-home message from the book Blog Blazers. I have not visited the Fake Steve Job blog, even though I came across it before. It doesn’t seem too relevant to me. I’m not a blogger, but speaking from a blog reader point of view, I think that relevancy is important to monetize the blog. I click on the ad on a blog page because google lead me to the page and the blog has the information I’m looking for and the ad is related to that.
I agree with you, Ades. Making money with a blog requires more than just having a blog with a lot of content. To suggest that blogs don’t make money is to ignore the countless blogs that do make money.
Sorry, It seems I am wrong.
I mainly blog for making money, but I try to provide something useful/helpful in order to get more people visiting my blog, subscribing to my blog, I blog about something I really interested in order to keep working without getting bored, correct me if I am wrong.
I’m still studying how to make money from blog until I find the good system to apply. Thanks for information.
Making money from what you like doing would be great, but it seems to be a utopia
They sure do, I think one problem is that people expect sponsors to come to them. Sometimes its as simple as emailing a list of sponsors.
I think The Regularly Update the Content and Promote the Blog in search engine then blog Make Money.
You have to blog about something you enjoy, otherwise it does just burn you out. There is no point writing about things that don’t interest you.
If you are setting up your blog to be a stand alone money maker, it is very difficult to do indeed.
But if you have a blog you think could be useful to a specific group, or community, you could hire a sales guy and start trying to sell ads the old fashioned way, by calling companies and trying to pitch your ideas.
If you are good saleman, your blog could be worth a lot more.
Countless blogs are making money out there, so it’s wrong to make a sweeping generalization that blogs don’t make money. But his basic premise is right – bloggers shouldn’t have false hopes for making tons of money with their blogs. But there is some money to be made. And I agree that making money shouldn’t be the sole reason for a blog’s existence.
How not to make money online should’ve perhaps been the title of this post There are many bloggers out there that are successful enough to proclaim that they are making money online, and they can’t all be lying! I am not saying that it is an easy process, and perhaps some people do glamorise their earnings and lfestyle a bit, but there is money out there.
I am quite confused by your statement. You mean to tell me, those that swear to have earned through their blogs are lying? I probably agree that blogging should not be your pot of gold but surely some blogs do earn.
Many loved to create a blog into a business. The problem is, it’s not easy to get “real” success in a business. So, we loved to learn and learn everyday from you all.
Thanks for this helpful info.
Yes, I believe so. Making money is really not that easy, blogging and money doesn’t always come together. there should always be a heart for the blog before something is reap on it. So you must be able to take good care of your blog to produce a good outcome in the end.
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