One of the best types of return there is, without a doubt, the economic one: making money with your activity.
Even with the explosion of online marketing and the “solopreneurs” (solo entrepreneurs) that is happening and the success they are having, maybe you are thinking from the beginning about creating a blog to generate income because you see the idea of online entrepreneurship as very attractive.
But there are also many fears, that of generating significant income with a simple blog sounds like a tall tale to many people.
So today we are going to talk about how to make money with a blog.
How much money can you make with a blog?
Maybe you are one of those people who still find it hard to believe that earning significant amounts of money with a blog is a real possibility.
I’m going to be brief: yes it can and, if you know how to do it well, a lot.
Without going any further, this very blog already broke the 6-digit annual profit (not turnover) barrier in 2016.
Revenues continue to grow every year at a good pace and that’s because there are only two of us (my wife Raquel and I) who work on it, plus a group of occasional collaborators. And there are many more cases of blogs with significant revenues, some of which we have interviewed here.
So, I think this is something that everyone should think about, especially young people just out of college or people who have become unemployed and are discriminated in the labor market because of their age.
Believe me, although the recovery in the traditional economy is faltering and there is already talk of the next bubble, the Internet economy is still booming.
That’s why there have never been more opportunities and options than now to build a working future that is, moreover, in your own hands. Moreover, entrepreneurship in the Internet economy is much easier for “normal” people than in the traditional economy. That is why there are so many “solopreneurs”.
But before we get into the nitty-gritty, a word of warning:
If what you are looking for are quick and easy formulas to make money on the Internet (which is very lawful), this post is not the one for you.
Here we are going to talk about starting a blog and that means hard work, time and patience.
This kind of quick formulas exist and there are plenty of posts about them that you can find on Google. But be clear that, although they can be useful to get out of a hurry, that way you will hardly get neither decent income, nor satisfaction with your activity.
Here I will explain all the important things you need to know about the genetics of a profitable web project, what are the concrete steps to take to make it happen. But you have to put the entrepreneurial mentality.
Real examples of blogs with important incomes
If you have not yet moved in this world and do not know about real cases, you may still find it hard to believe that what I have told you before is really true and that it is really possible to make money with a blog.
So, to definitively clear your doubts, let’s talk about real examples; both more humble examples (more real if you want), as well as others that are really spectacular.
Caricatures a la carte, by Jordi Arasa
We start with a humble example, that of Jordi Arasa with Caricaturas a la Carta.
Jordi is a caricaturist by profession, illustrator and cartoonist, with more than thirty years of experience in his field.
His case is a very simple example of how a blog can be a great showcase to amplify a professional activity you are already doing.
Jordi has used his blog to attract clients to sell services to by using it as a catalog of the work he has already done. As simple as that.
This, over time, has allowed him to become totally independent from third parties. At the time of the interview (2015) his income was already higher than what he received working for graphic design studios or advertising companies and many collaborations in the press.
Orielo’s Kitchen, by Juanjo Fernández
The case of Juanjo Fernández, from the blog Orielo’s Kitchen is an example of one of the most popular topics to create a blog, cooking recipes, but with a very interesting twist: specializing in lactose-free recipes.
The idea was born when he himself developed lactose intolerance a few years ago, which meant that he could not try pizza, ice cream, cheese, milk, sauces, … and so many appetizing foods that, without knowing it, have lactose as an additive.
However, Juanjo did not resign himself to this situation; he put all his efforts and energy into continuing to enjoy food and, almost without knowing how to cook, he gradually adapted the dishes he used to eat and liked the most; he created his blog to share his experiences and, recipe by recipe, he made it grow.
At the time of the interview (2016) she was already halfway to living entirely from this activity, apart from having even won several awards for her blog.
Along with the blog, he has also created a YouTube channel (as it is logical and more than recommendable for a subject like this) that has about 150,000 subscribers at the moment.
Revolutionary Fitness, by Marcos Vázquez
Now let’s take a leap in terms of results and talk about blogs that move in the realm of 6-digit income per year.
I start with the blog Fitness Revolucionario, by Marcos Vázquez, one of the top influencers in the fitness and nutrition niche in Spain.
At the time of the interview, in 2016, Marcos had already surpassed €100,000 in annual revenue and was still growing very strongly. So you can imagine where he is at the moment…
A curious and atypical thing in his niche is that Marcos, to this day, has not created a YouTube channel for his project. He has achieved these results only through the blog.
Ecoagricultor, by Julio Infante and Carolina Fernández
In the same income league we also have Julio Infante and Carolina Fernández of Ecoagricultor.
Julio and Carolina created their website in 2012, after having lived several years in the UK and other countries, where to access these organic products it was enough to go to the supermarket.
We are talking about food that comes from organic farming; it looks at the soil and the land, respects the natural rhythms, consumes fewer resources and does not admit synthetic chemicals.
Seeing that in Spain it was not so easy to locate these products and their producers, they decided to create their website to facilitate access to them.
Therefore, their organic store is, together with the blog itself, an integral part of their project and a good example of how to integrate in a totally logical and natural way a blog and an online store in the same website.
So here we have another case that I recommend you to investigate and browse calmly in our interview.
How to monetize a blog: The strategies of the cracks
Let’s talk now about how to get a blog like the examples we have just seen and of which, nowadays, you can find hundreds of similar examples.
Let’s start by laying the foundations. To do so, I want you to keep two very clear ideas in mind:
You’re not going to achieve anything without a proper strategy.
These strategies are not very complicated, but they require solid preparation and many hours of work.
In fact, the most characteristic of the “cracks” is that they are pragmatic people, they take action.
And yes, “take action” is a hackneyed phrase, but that does not detract one iota of truth. Successful people get on with things, don’t give a thousand laps and, above all, don’t look for excuses not to do what needs to be done. They just do it.
It seems like a no-brainer, what everyone is supposed to do, but it’s not. Experience has shown me that this is where more than 90% of people fail, and even with ridiculously trivial things.
The 3 basic conditions to make money with your blog
Although it is common sense, you have to be very clear that the type of blog you are going to create or have created will also determine its monetization potential.
Some topics are easier to monetize, others are more difficult and some are practically impossible.
What determines this?
I don’t think it’s an easy question to answer, but I suggest you examine whether your blog meets these three conditions:
That it has a well-defined and in-demand topic.
That your content solves problems.
That your contents generate, in turn, “monetizable” needs.
If these conditions are met, you can be almost 100% sure that your blog can be monetized. This is not to say that, for example, blogs with entertainment content are not monetizable, but, in general, it will cost much more than those that meet these three conditions.
Let’s look at what each means and why this is so:
People very rarely randomly browse the web. They either come to a website because they follow it, or because, after a search, a piece of your content appears in the search results.
To have an audience that follows you, you need a well-defined theme, and for people to visit you on a recurring basis, you have to meet their expectations of your site. And that, with a site with “random” content, is simply not possible.
If you follow a wine site because you are a wine lover, you expect posts about wine, you don’t want to find one day a post about politics, another day one about a new car model that has come out and another day one about fashion.
Therefore, sites without a defined theme, with random content cannot build a large loyal audience, unless it is Paula EchevarrÃa or Cristiano Ronaldo, of course.
On the other hand, if they have come from a search, they usually expect to solve a problem, be entertained or find a certain information.
And people don’t search for just anything, there are topics that are searched about and others that are not, no matter how interesting they may be, but people don’t think to search about it. That’s the key.
The good thing is that this is something you can find out with the SEO tools I talk about below. That is, you can know in advance if there is demand for your topic or not. Use this information.
If you have followed these guidelines to solve problems for which there is a clear demand, you will be well on your way to making money with your blog.
Now, the next step is to identify what the user needs to solve these problems. And here is the opportunity to monetize in different ways, for example, with products or training courses that are the solution to what they need.
Do this test now with the success stories above and you will see how they all pass with flying colors.
Services versus “passive income
The next fundamental question in your vision that you need to be very clear about is the difference between active versus passive income, which of these two quite opposite strategies you want to go for, or whether to adopt a mixed model.
But what is passive income?
In an active income model you are exchanging your hours for money. The typical example is a salaried job or services you perform in person, with hours of your own work. If you stop performing the activity, your income stops.
An equivalent online example would be a website to make yourself known to clients to whom you then provide a service (e.g. consulting services), or a product sales activity that requires your permanent active intervention (e.g. a small online store).
Here, if you miss a few days, you start to run out of stock, you accumulate problems with customers, etc. and everything falls apart.
In a passive income model, you are not exchanging your hours for money. A “classic” example would be buying an apartment to generate recurring income by renting it. You make a very important previous effort, but then you get recurring income in autopilot mode for life.
An example of passive income online business would be a niche website in which you invest significant work to create content, position it on Google, etc.. But once it has traffic, it generates recurring income for you every month through ads, affiliate links, etc.
Here you go away for six months and everything will continue to work exactly the same. You won’t even notice.
My personal opinion is that, as a business and in general terms, a passive model seems to me to be far superior. By not having the ceiling of your available hours, it scales better (in terms of potential income) while providing you with more quality of life.
This blog, Citizen 2.0, is a perfect example: it is 100% based on affiliate marketing (a form of passive income, more on that later). I see it practically impossible to reach our current level of income and quality of life with a model in which Raquel and I would provide services, for example.
However, there is one more vital factor in this: what you like to do. That is, if what really motivates you happens to be a certain activity and that activity happens to be active income, go for it. In the end, what matters is what really makes you the happiest.
So, I’m not saying that you have to go for a passive income model, but I am saying that you should take into account its advantages because they are very important…
Anyway, my advice would be to always look for, at least, a hybrid model.
That is, if you decide to provide services because it is really your vocation, try to complement them with a line of passive income that covers a minimum income.
This will give you an economic freedom that will also have a very positive impact on the provision of services, because it will allow you to provide them to those who really interest you and in the conditions that really interest you and not be a slave to have to swallow whatever it takes to make ends meet.
