[Making Money] Making money off a blog

Wreckingball

Wreckingball

Pelican
Catholic
Selling products
McQueen sells his own books, and Vegas trips.
Roosh sells his books on his blogs.
Victor Pride sells books

Or Advertising:
Medhi from stronglifts has his innercircle forum(paid), and gets money through advertising of his mobile app.
 
peterthephoenix

peterthephoenix

Woodpecker
Be prepared for the long term hustle. Mike, Victor and Chris were all blogging for around 3 years before things started to take off. Christian I believe took a little less time.

- Mike runs a juicer review site, and make a little amazon affiliate coin off D&P
- Chris runs a Kratom online store(HappyHippo), and makes affiliate money off his bathmate reviews
- Victor runs affiliate sites not sure which, and sells his own books, clothing. And runs a network site setting up blogs for people (BADNET)
- Christian sells his own books, does coaching calls and Vegas Hangover/Pool Party weekend coaching events

The blogging they really do for the passion as there's no big gain in the short term. Blog for the fun of it, but figure out a way to make some money on the side.
 
Seth_Rose

Seth_Rose

Pelican
Gold Member
I strongly disagree with your conclusion that most blogs make money off ads. You're not going to make any significant money via advertising unless you're pulling in a ton of traffic. ROK has ads for just that reason. A run of the mill blog will only make peanuts from ads, but it makes your site look tacky so there's really no point to it.

Peter did a good job explaining above me, but most of the big names make their money off selling their own products or other peoples products.

Also, I just finished reading Matt Forney's 'Confessions of an Online Hustler' yesterday. I definitely recommend it if you want to make money off blogging. It should answer most of your questions.
 
M

MikeCF

Crow
Gold Member
It's simple but not easy.

#1 Become a trusted authority.
Once you're a trusted authority, people will but your ebooks and other products that you recommend (affiliate marketing).
http://www.dangerandplay.com/2014/07/24/affiliate-marketing-or-advertising/

#2 Never abuse that trust.
Don't take short cuts. Don't lie to people. If you get caught up in something or make a mistake, own it. 99% of people will forgive you. Once.

#3. Never forget rule #2.
 
B

berserk

 
Banned
I think the way Victor Pride does it is quite clever. First he built a site with a huge following by giving away good stuff like his Spartan Workout book - which he now charges for. Then he turned his blog posts and life into products. Then he did a couple of straight up affiliate sells for select products including the Kratom biz. He can do this because because he does it rarely and only with products he vouches for. Having that huge list of email and blasting once in 10 mails with an offer compared to all the spam blogs is a good formula. Lately he has been offering to set blogs for people - to do as he does - through his own service and even has a very cheap (or is it free) service to set up a blog, but he pockets the affiliate commissions from hosting which can be quite high $50-$100 pr. sale.

Overall, I don't think most people should go into blogging with an intent to get rich. You need a large audience, simply by doing the math, because you can't and shouldn't push products on people all the time, at least not in the beginning.

If you just want to make money online and think you have what it takes, then straight up go for affiliate marketing and learn that business and all the subniches within that.
 
G

Glider

 
Banned
Dont waste 3 years of your life trying to build traffic to your blog.

Monetize first, then bring the traffic. If you create a product, split test pricing and and work on conversion rate optimization you can just buy the traffic.

Secondly an email list is the most important thing you can have.
 
W

worldwidetraveler

Hummingbird
Gold Member
I would only do a blog if I loved writing and it was part of a creative outlet. Otherwise I would skip it if blogging was just a way to make money.

I don't enjoy writing so I am bias in that sense. I rather pay for traffic and run that traffic through a sales funnel.
 
M

MikeCF

Crow
Gold Member
Glider said:
Dont waste 3 years of your life trying to build traffic to your blog.

Monetize first, then bring the traffic. If you create a product, split test pricing and and work on conversion rate optimization you can just buy the traffic.

Secondly an email list is the most important thing you can have.
Click to expand...

This is great advice...On how to run the rat race of being an Internet marketer.

Run on a treadmill, buy traffic, try new ads, deal with chargebacks....

There's a reason most Internet Marketers (even big time ones) all burn out and go into hiding.

It's a rat race being run without passion.

As far as list-building goes, look at the data. Is the money in the list?
 
G

Glider

 
Banned
I would imagine most internet marketers would hang around much longer and make much much more than bloggers Mike.

And most internet marketers know how to pivot when circumstances require it. Blogging worked for you and that is great! but surely you cant advise people to go into blogging as a profit play? A value play maybe.

You seem to really have a passionate dislike for Internet Marketers which I believe clouds your judgement here. No offense.
 
M

MikeCF

Crow
Gold Member
Glider said:
I would imagine most internet marketers would hang around much longer and make much much more than bloggers Mike.

And most internet marketers know how to pivot when circumstances require it. Blogging worked for you and that is great! but surely you cant advise people to go into blogging as a profit play? A value play maybe.

You seem to really have a passionate dislike for Internet Marketers which I believe clouds your judgement here. No offense.
Click to expand...

Profit margins are huge. I invest my time but unless I do fancy header/logo work, it's a couple hundred a month to run my sites.

Once SEO is set up, yep, it's a great profit play. I have multiple posts making me the equivalent of the income I'd receive from rental properties.

I treat posts like rental properties. Passive income. I put a few hours into them and the income comes in monthly. All profit. No money down.

Plus, my SEO is all organic. I don't run scared at Panda updates or need to go to more get-rich-quick seminars to learn the latest and greatest tricks.

I've never bought an ad or backlink or anything else.

I product excellent content on a consistent basis, improve the lives of men, and yes make money.

Can everyone do it? Of course not. But a man with a plan can do the same thing I've been doing.
 
W

worldwidetraveler

Hummingbird
Gold Member
Glider said:
I would imagine most internet marketers would hang around much longer and make much much more than bloggers Mike.

And most internet marketers know how to pivot when circumstances require it. Blogging worked for you and that is great! but surely you cant advise people to go into blogging as a profit play? A value play maybe.

You seem to really have a passionate dislike for Internet Marketers which I believe clouds your judgement here. No offense.
Click to expand...

Internet marketing is more about biz op these days. We are just talking marketing and mostly direct marketing at that. It's been done before the internet even existed but the internet has made getting to your prospects much more attainable for everyone.

There are plenty of ways to make money online. Blogging is one way. Creating and selling your own products is another.

I don't get the treadmill stuff because if you create what is called evergreen products (meaning it won't change much throughout time), those will be as passive as a blog.

Sure, there is customer support, refunds but it isn't that big of a deal and that can be outsourced to someone who takes care of it. I haven't come across anything that will be completely hands off but you can do a lot with tech and outsourcing these days.
 
J

jamaicabound

Pelican
Honestly unless you have a passion for writing and have some SEO, web design, skills don't waste your time. I personally think if your just getting into blogging and affiliate marketing these days you missed the heyday a few years back things were much better on everyting from adsense payouts to the length of cookies on affiliates like ebay and amazon. Heck back when netflix was first getting popular I believe they were paying $20 per free trial and if I'm not mistaken the user didn't even have to enter a credit card back then. The other thing about back then is web design actually took some skill and knowledge as opposed to now where with point and click drag and drop web builders really anyone can build a site. Dont get me wrong I'm not saying it doesn't take skill now but afiliate marketin and blogging was an entirely different animal a few years back.

I've had a couple blogs that for a while would make me $200 to $300 a month but that was me putting in a fair bit of time and effort and in the middle of a fad my blogs were based on. These days I don't put much time or effort into it but still I'm scraping to make $100 a month to get a payout from adsense or affiliates. You also got sites like amazon not allowing people from various states to do affiliate stuff anymore because of conflicts over sales tax laws.

Ultimately if you actuallyw ant a chance at making real money online you need to create your own product, have a strong mailing list and knowledge of mailing lists, landing pages all that jazz. It's a tough hustle. The Roosh's and those like him are rare they are like the Lebron James of bloggers, its very hard to build and monetize a following like they do.
 
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