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If you’ve ever wondered if you can make a living blogging then you’ve no doubt wondered how hard it might be too. Truth be told, blogging isn’t that hard if you have the skill set and personality for the job.
Should you pursue blogging or should you take a pass? How hard is it and do you have what it takes to be successful?
Keep reading to find out if blogging is right for you.
Table of Contents
Can You Make A Living Blogging?
First, there is no one right answer here. Many factors go into whether or not you’d be right for the blogging world and how much money you can make.
Some people start a blog and our overnight superstars. For most of us, that’s not the case. We won’t be making 30K a month after only two years of blogging. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make great money as you work your way up to those incredible numbers.
I currently make a full-time income blogging. Although I don’t do an income report, I can tell you I ended the year making over $60K from blogging and my numbers continue to grow.
Skills Needed To Become A Successful Blogger
Bloggers come from all walks of life. Some were school teachers, lawyers, stay at home moms, and even fitness guru’s. And most if not all had no prior experience as writers or journalists. They just had a desire to share their knowledge and expertise with others.
So what skills are necessary?
1. Knowledge on a Subject Others Want To Learn
All the successful blogs out there teach something to others that others want to learn. Sure you can start a blog on how to filet a fish, but if no one is interested in learning how to filet a fish, you’ll pretty much have no audience.
Now this doesn’t mean you have to be an “expert” per say, although if your blog is successful, it will help to promote your credibility and make you an expert over time, but it does mean you need to know more about a subject matter than the audience who is reading your work.
I write about personal finance and home management. I have years of experience to share about my own personal journey getting out of debt and what worked and also how to run a successful home. If I were to write to an audience with more experience than myself, the blog would be a big fat failure. Instead, I write specifically to people who are looking to learn about both issues.
2. Ability To Write Authentically
You should be able to write and convey your thoughts from the heart. If you sound passionless, or like you’re writing a term paper, no one will want to come back and read more.
3. Be Passionate About The Topic You Want To Write About
Knowledge is great but passion, that comes through in your writing is the secret sauce. Here’s the thing – you can’t write well about a topic you’re not passionate about. It doesn’t work. When you have a blog, you’re writing three to four times a week about the things that matter most to you and your readers. It can get easy to not want to write at all if you don’t have a deep passion for your topic.
When that happens you’ll readers will see you don’t care and will leave in droves.
4. Love to Write
You need to love to write. If you don’t, the task will soon loose its appeal and your blog will be dead.
Skills Needed To Have A Profitable Blog
We’ve identified the skills needed to be a successful blogger, but those skills alone won’t necessarily mean you’ll make a great living. I know lots of bloggers who write way better than I do and with more wit and skill and aren’t making as much as I make. You need other skills too.
1. Ability to “Read” People
This spans a lot of different things but I’ll say this: you need to be able to understand what your audience wants and give it to them. Additionally, you want to be able to understand how to get folks to take action. Your goal as a blogger is to teach them and then move them to action. If you can’t or don’t understand how to do this, it will be difficult to make money blogging.
2. Good Business Sense
I’m fortunate that I spent over 35 years in business before I started blogging so I understand how to look at ROI (return on investment), when to outsource and when to keep something in house, time management, how to hire and supervise employees, and the many other facets of running a business.
Of course, these are all things you can learn, but you must be willing to learn them if you currently don’t have the skill set needed.
3. An Understanding of Marketing
Marketing is all about thinking about your customer needs and their satisfaction. It’s how goods and service move from concept to the end user. This doesn’t matter if your talking about your readers (one set of customers) or a company you’re writing a sponsored post for (another set of customers) or your affiliates (another set of customers).
Being able to understand how marketing works is extremely beneficial if you want to be earning a full-time living blogging.
So, you can make money from blogging if you:
- Have the skills needed to be a successful blogger.
- Have or can learn the skills needed to have a profitable blog.
- Have the time to spend at a minimum of ten hours a week blogging with the goal of increasing those hours as you grow your blog into a full-time business.
- Are willing to invest and reinvest resources back into your blog so you can get the training, tools and help you need.
If you find yourself shaking your head yes after reading those four bullet points then you have the drive and commitment to make blogging work for you.
So then, how much money can you make blogging?
First, you need to decide what your particular threshold is for full-time income. I make over 5K per month and because I have no debt and limited bills, I could actually drop this figure to something even lower and still consider myself making a “full time living”.
How much do you need to leave a job you hate or to replace other income that is making up your full time living? Only you can decide this, but for the purpose of this article I’m going to identify full-time income at $3,500.00 per month.
And so, Why Is It So Hard To Make A Living Blogging?
Blogging is a business and not everyone has the skill set they need to be successful. Most bloggers I know flounder around wondering what to do and how to do it. They are resistant to learn what they need to in order to be successful and start earning an income from their work.
How do you expect to be successful if you don’t learn the system and how to make your blog profitable?
Would you open a hair salon without training? Then you shouldn’t expect to have your blog go live without first learning how to make it the best blog out there.
When I first started blogging I thought all I had to do was hit publish, post it on Facebook and wait for the magic to happen. Boy, was I wrong!
I finally realized I needed help and that there must be a system out there to help someone like me. And there was.
I heard about Elite Blog Academy and signed up! EBA is currently not open right now so the best thing you can do is get on the waitlist here so you can be notified when the doors are open. Plus, Ruth, the instructor for EBA will send you some great resources to help you get started.
But first a word about you and your current job….
People ask me all the time if blogging is hard. Here’s the long and short of it.
Yes, but not as hard as your current job.
When I think about driving in traffic for over an hour to work for hideous people, cranky and often ungrateful employees not to mention all the other people I had to put up with in the course of the day and then come home and pay bills, keep the house clean, do the laundry and try to spend quality time with my daughter, well my life feels like a cake walk in comparison.
Now I get to make my own hours and live life on MY terms, no one else’s. I don’t have to put up with nasty people or be treated like an idiot by a boss who knows less about managing people than my dog.
I could never go back to those days and it’s the motivation I need to keep my blog going and to have it grow and grow!
Will blogging be easy?
No, it won’t, but it will never be as hard as your old job with all that comes with it. And, if you meet those four requirements above it will never feel like work again.
Because you’ll love what you’re doing.
You’ll live for those email from readers that tell you how you’ve changed their life. You’ll look forward to growing a business all your own into what you’ve dreamed it could be and you’ll finally be living life on your terms.
Just a few years ago I didn’t even know blogging was a way to make money. Now just a few short years later, I’m making a full-time income.
That my friends is how easy it is to make money blogging.
So are you ready?
Do you want to start a blog?
You can find a step by step guide to starting a blog written for all of us who are not technologically sophisticated here. And you can start a blog for as little as $5.95 a month!
Happy Blogging!
