Anyone blogging or doing affiliate marketing for extra income?

[Airhog]

So I just recently got into blogging. Read a great post on reddit about someone who pulls in about 30k+ a year from blogging.


Just wondering if we have anyone else here who does this sort of thing to make cash. I feel kinda like the underpants gnomes.

1. Blog
2. ????
3. Make Money


Anyways, I have a few ideas that I have gotten from that post, but would love to talk shop with anyone else doing that sort of thing

[Noop]

The people who make money seem to make their money by selling their methods to make money. I took one method which was to write an ebook and I have applied it to what I am interested in. When i release the book I will let you know if it sells.

[Matthean]

http://www.johnchow.com/

He's the guy who I best know of making money via their own website.

Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging - ProBlogger

Also somebody to check into if you want to do it.

[Icy]

You can make money blogging and/or with other kind of online advertising (mainstream, gambling, pron, etc). It has been my way of life/job since 10+ years ago, with some pros (working from home, freedom, no schedule, no boss) and cons (working more hours than the average worker, working when you are sick, sometimes not having enough time for family or hobbies, the headaches of running a business with good and bad times, no secure salary, etc).

In fact it's so easy to get started, you just need to signup for Google adsense program and place some code in your blog. It will display related ads to your surfers and Google will pay you based on the clicks generated on those ads.

There are also multiple advertising networks that offer you a commission based on the ads you place in your site (clickbank.com, cj.com, etc)

Now, one thing is to earn enough to buy a pack of beers and another to become rich. For the first, just do what i wrote earlier, for the second, you need to become a professional and either to have a really successful blog already (and i mean huge) or to invest a good amount of money like in any business.

This is not the early 90s anymore, Internet is so professional now, everybody can make money, but only those with a lot of money already to invest, or those with a brilliant idea and that can get investors to invest on it (facebook, twitter, youtube etc) are the ones who get a good return.

If you want to become an internet marketeer, a good start is hxxp://www.warriorforum.com/ (replace xx with tt) that is the biggest internet affiliate marketing forum, but be careful, it's also full of liars trying to get money from newbies with gold rush dreams. Also get ready to work full time, expend tons of hours learning etc, as i said before, it's a full time business like any other, don't be fooled by those who say that you can make thousands working 1 hour per day while sitting in the W.C.

Originally Posted by Noop

The people who make money seem to make their money by selling their methods to make money. I took one method which was to write an ebook and I have applied it to what I am interested in. When i release the book I will let you know if it sells.

Not far from reality, avoid those paid curses at any cost, they will just teach you the basic stuff that you can learn in any forum or doing a google search, not any real marketeer will tell you his secrets, every new competitor means another person to split the cake with.

[RainMaker]

The thing with blogs and affiliate marketing is that 99.9% are unsuccesful and .1% are.

The people who are succesful are the ones that have good blogs. Not salesy garbage aimed at making you buy an e-book. They also are experts on the topic and interesting. My suggestion for you is to find a topic you love, maybe already have vast knowledge on, and write a blog for people. Just get people to the blog by your high quality writing and you'll find ways at some point to monetize it. People get too caught up in how to make money from a blog when the key is how to get traffic to a blog. Monetization is the easy part, traffic is the hard part.

I don't do blogs necessarily although my company owns a lot of web properties and some e-commerce stores. The best advice I heard for those writing blogs was to write every post as if it was being read by a million people. Even if you have 3 people coming to your site. The one great thing about the web is that it's a true democracy. At some point, if your blog is good enough, people will come to read it.

[Matthean]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

The thing with blogs and affiliate marketing is that 99.9% are unsuccesful and .1% are.

The people who are succesful are the ones that have good blogs. Not salesy garbage aimed at making you buy an e-book. They also are experts on the topic and interesting.

The interesting thing reading Crush it is that oh so very critical part where he says you need to have a quality product/content. This is what separates the dreamers versus the people who make it. I think his story would be interesting to see what would have happened if he wasn't using wine as his thing to push and it was something that had a far smaller ceiling in terms of profit. Yes, I know he's ultimately pushing his brand which is himself, but without that wine to feed off of far fewer people care about the brand he's selling.

[DanGarion]

I make enough to pay for my hosting a about 1 dinner a month with my blogging. It's a hobby. But I do get invited to free preview dinners and events because of my specific blog.

[MacroGuru]

I do...I pull in enough monthly to pay for hosting and a few other bills...

I need to work at them more, I have neglected them lately and it is beginning to show.

[Airhog]

Ive been really busy the past two weeks, and I have fallen behind. I had a couple of reasons to start blogging, the first, because I am a developer to blog about development, and use that as leverage when I have to find a new job.

I think I have a good idea about how to go about making money blogging, just haven't had a lot of time to put a plan into place

[lordscarlet]

Coding Horror: Blogging about Blogging

[Maple Leafs]

My best advice: Treat blogging as a hobby and go in expecting to make zero dollars. That way, anything you do make will be a nice bonus.

As a hobby, blogging is great. Most hobbies cost money, while blogging is free and can even bring in some income. But if you treat it like a business, you'll be disappointed by what you make and will probably give up before you can build any kind of audience. If your goal is income then I guarantee you'll be disappointed after your first year.

Blog because you'd do it for free, and if you're good and very lucky some day you won't have to.

[ColtCrazy]

I did sports blogging for about a year. I started on Bleacher Report and had a modest following (about 1,000-1500 per article posted, high over 6,000). I enjoyed it, but I was really only writing for the fun of it...BR doesn't pay unless you end up being one of the editors.


From BR, I ended up getting some offers for some pay sites. One was called MTR Media. It offered money based on the number of clicks to your site. But I don't see why anyone would read articles from there when there's so many better sports sites (including BR, which should tell you something). I wrote 2 articles and stopped, mainly because I got my summer job in England making writing difficult, and also because site had no traffic. My first articles at BR generated several hundred hits....MTR generated a couple dozen.

Blogging is fun, but not profitable unless you get in with a leading site.

[MikeVic]

Blogging eh? So let's say I want to start a blog about some topic... what is the best site to do this, and how would other people find my blog?

edit: I don't want to make money, I just feel like getting some thoughts down on the internet.

[Rizon]

"The only thing more boring than a college kid's web blog is a documentary about a college kid's web blog." -My friend in 2001.

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by MikeVic

Blogging eh? So let's say I want to start a blog about some topic... what is the best site to do this, and how would other people find my blog?

edit: I don't want to make money, I just feel like getting some thoughts down on the internet.

Wordpress is the go to blogging system nowadays. Other then that there is Blogger and some others.

[Airhog]

Originally Posted by MikeVic

Blogging eh? So let's say I want to start a blog about some topic... what is the best site to do this, and how would other people find my blog?

edit: I don't want to make money, I just feel like getting some thoughts down on the internet.

You have to market your blog just like anything else. You want to try and get your blog on the front page, or even better, the top result for google search for the keywords your blog targets. There are other things you can do, but thats key. You get your page to the top by getting other sites to link to your blog.

For example, in a very narrow search term, with very little traffic, it took me two weeks to reach the front page for a particular set of keywords. all I did to promote the site was to register on forums that were likely to need the information on my blog, and by posting it to that blog. I've now started to generate search traffic from google itself.

[Edward64]

I was looking through my library of travel pics & food I've eaten, and think I'll start blogging.

This is just to do it, share it with family, and don't care about the broader public right now. I want to learn how to do it. I'm not really thinking I'll make any money through affiliate links but am interested to know if anyone here have a successful blog (what X number of people that means) and have made nice pocket change?

Or is the money in tik tok (thinking about you Claudia Conway) or more contemporary social media?

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Edward64

I was looking through my library of travel pics & food I've eaten, and think I'll start blogging.

This is just to do it, share it with family, and don't care about the broader public right now. I want to learn how to do it. I'm not really thinking I'll make any money through affiliate links but am interested to know if anyone here have a successful blog (what X number of people that means) and have made nice pocket change?

Or is the money in tik tok (thinking about you Claudia Conway) or more contemporary social media?

Me? No.

I know a couple people who have, and have one degree of separation from a couple others. Common benchmarks seem to be 100k followers, maybe 500k, and then 1 million.

The money most of them have made have come from sponsorships / paid placements moreso than affiliate links and such but that's probably categorical/niche influenced.

The one thing I've kinda learned from those folks is that a lot of things are categorical. What benchmarks matter for a video game blogger/vlogger are different than the ones for makeup/fashion bloggers for example. There's more money available in certain niches, there's also different standards to hit based on the size of the audience for a niche.

[Edward64]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Me? No.

I know a couple people who have, and have one degree of separation from a couple others. Common benchmarks seem to be 100k followers, maybe 500k, and then 1 million.

The money most of them have made have come from sponsorships / paid placements moreso than affiliate links and such but that's probably categorical/niche influenced.

The one thing I've kinda learned from those folks is that a lot of things are categorical. What benchmarks matter for a video game blogger/vlogger are different than the ones for makeup/fashion bloggers for example. There's more money available in certain niches, there's also different standards to hit based on the size of the audience for a niche.

Thanks.

There goes my retirement supplemental income plan

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Edward64

Thanks.

There goes my retirement supplemental income plan

Absolute minimum for anything like that is at least 10k best I've learned ... which is why it ain't a supplemental income source for me either lol

I've turned down some offers to buy their way onto my YouTube playlist stuff (typically in the $150 - $300 per song range) but that's been it.

[sterlingice]

Unfortunately, most sports blogging has been sucked up by the B-Rs, SBNations, and Fansideds of the world and the pay is pretty miserable.

How SB Nation Profits Off An Army Of Exploited Workers (and the like)

Every once in a while, someone gets on a major national masthead - (extremely talented) doofs like Sean McIndoe - but not most people.

SI

[Vince, Pt. II]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

Unfortunately, most sports blogging has been sucked up by the B-Rs, SBNations, and Fansideds of the world and the pay is pretty miserable.

How SB Nation Profits Off An Army Of Exploited Workers (and the like)

Every once in a while, someone gets on a major national masthead - (extremely talented) doofs like Sean McIndoe - but not most people.

SI

Yup - fun to look at Sean's post above from ten years ago knowing where he's at now.

[Icy]

Funny seeing my post 10 years ago saying I was living from affiliate marketing for 10 yers already... when I was just working from home on that on my own these days as affiliate... and ended running my own online marketing group of companies with more than 150 employees across 3 countries. It was definitely possible to make a life out of it it would be much harder to start from scratch right now than it was 10 or 20 years ago.

[Edward64]

Originally Posted by Icy

Funny seeing my post 10 years ago saying I was living from affiliate marketing for 10 yers already... when I was just working from home on that on my own these days as affiliate... and ended running my own online marketing group of companies with more than 150 employees across 3 countries. It was definitely possible to make a life out of it it would be much harder to start from scratch right now than it was 10 or 20 years ago.

Sorry for being ignorant, but what is an "online marketing group of companies"? What do you sell and how do you sell it?

[Icy]

I started 20 years ago doing affiliate marketing on my own (selling whatever could be sold online for a commission).

Evolved and professionalized over the years, specially the last 10 ones, creating 1st one online marketing company (as intermediary, buying advertising space in other's people webs/blogs and selling it to whoever wanted to advertise anything online using technology developed in house by my programmers team) and then creating a bigger group of companies with other partners and acquiring other companies as well, all related to technology and online marketing over the years.

Now we have several companies doing all things related to online marketing, from performance marketing (again selling stuff for a commission) to social advertising agency for big brands (advertising big brands in facebook, instagram, tiktok, snapchat etc for a % of the investment) video advertising (buying youtube/tiktok/facebook video space and selling it to other companies) to ecommerce (buying imported goods from China and advertising/selling them in Social networks) to app installs (being paid for getting app installs to app developers), to our own apps development, etc.

All using our own technology based on high traffic management, big data, machine learning, etc and of course also using sales teams.

Some of our companies if you are curious are listed under our parent company: Kimia - Online Advertising Group

Our latest projects not yet listed there: Biddeo - Successfully optimize your video campaigns adport.io - Push Notification Ad Network

Again it was easier if you started 20 years ago when it was like the wild wide west, now it's much more professional with big companies having it easier, but there are still new companies popping up all the time and doing well.

[Edward64]

Wow, looks great. Congratulations to you.

The obvious question now for me, anything I can do for you part-time when I'm retired and travelling the world?

[Maple Leafs]

Wow, this thread is a blast from the past. My blogspot site would have been two years old at this point.

In the ten years since my post up above, I've turned writing into a career, had two book deals, travelled around North America, been on TV and radio more times than I could count, become friends with some of the biggest names in sportswriting, and today I do this as a full-time job for a very livable salary. It's pretty much been everything I would have hoped for a decade ago, and more.

I still have no idea how to make money on an actual blog.

Like, none. Sorry. I know that answer sucks. And I'm sure there's a way to do it -- I've just never been able to get it to work. I've dabbled in third-party ads and Amazon links and a handful of other things, but it never added up to much. Also, and maybe this is important: I am lazy and a quitter, so if sticking with it is the key to success then I'll never find out.

So my advice is to do the blog, have fun, build an audience, and then find somebody else who's willing to pay for that.

[Edward64]

Reserved my domain name and started playing with Wordpress on BlueHost this past weekend.

On Mon I had about 10 spam calls and text messages offering to help build my wordpress site or come up with a logo. Also had 4 emails. I should have paid extra for privacy with BlueHost.

[sterlingice]

I don't know if this helps with website hosting (maybe) but I create a new Gmail account and Google Voice account when I do something like buying a car where I have to give out information that's going to be spammed all to hell.

SI

[Edward64]

Yeah, I got a junk email that I used. I didn't get a junk phone# though. My mistake.