How do you make money blogging?
I know that question sits firmly inside the mind of most beginner bloggers. I wondered the same idea. How do you profit through your blog?
One particularly confusing aspect of blogging income levels most new bloggers. I had a tough time grasping this idea because I believed profiting online to be a study in following a few steps to earn money online.
However, profiting online proved to be confusing to me because grasping the truth of making money through my blog took me a while.
Why do new bloggers seem confused about profiting through blogging?
The confusing truth:
Bloggers make money through blogging by becoming *really* skilled at blogging. Bloggers become highly skilled bloggers after learning blogging from pros, creating and connecting for 1000’s of hours and wading through deep fears on their blogging journey.
Point blank; no pro blogger told me these things during my newbie blogger days 13 years ago. WAY back in 2008 I often received advice like:
- create value to become valuable
- earn reader trust by solving their problems
- stay on topic
- network
Each truth factors in to increasing your blogging income. But new, confused blogger me saw nothing consistent with my core statement above being bandied about by pros. No pro said I’d be spending 1000’s of hours creating and connecting. No pro said I’d be wading through deep fears. No pro said I’d need to become a highly skilled blogger in order to go pro. Never reading these specific buzzwords and concepts confused me because my success time frame seemed to span weeks, not 1000’s of hours, I had no clue blogging was a skill and no blogger taught me how to increase my emotional intelligence.
Blogging income increases as your blogging skills increase. Blogging skills increase *after* you create and connect for a long time. Professional blogger David Boozer became a professional by creating, connecting, persisting and making freeing but uncomfortable decisions. He went pro by remaining true to these fundamentals for a long time.
Hearing a phrase like “spending 1000’s of hours creating and connecting” cuts through any confusion you suffer through, as a beginner blogger. Now you know you will not become a pro after 3 months of creating and connecting. Plus you know going pro involves facing, feeling and releasing deep fears, meaning those uncomfortable feelings triggered are normal parts of the blogging journey. This confused me too. I had no idea emotional intelligence played a chief role in becoming a pro blogger. Bloggers told me what to do but my mindset never factored into the equation. Why did I avoid following pro blogger advice for a long time? I filled my mind with fear. Scared bloggers ignore successful advice and follow failing advice. Who taught me this? No one.
One reason why I wrote so many mindset eBooks is because I wanted to help bloggers avoid the errors I made and mistakes I suffered through by not having pros tell me mindset influenced blogging heavily.
Corey Hinde is another professional blogger who went pro by sticking to the basics for a long time through thick and thin. He embodies the entrepreneurial mindset of being generous, patient, persistent and quite dogged in creating content his readers want and connecting with folks intrigued by his niche.
Both David and Corey can assure you that no online entrepreneur experiences overnight success. This is a fun and freeing journey but it is long, sometimes scary and always dependent on becoming highly skilled through persistent practice, via creating and connecting. The blogging money comes only after you pay your dues in these areas.
Resources
Hey Ryan, You explained very well.
We have to produce high quality content before thinking about the traffic and income. Once you have the high quality contetn on your site, you can get traffic and compensation from different sources.
Thank you Ryan this post. I am very impressed with including fellow bloggers in your posts. Great job Ryan.
High quality content draws in quality visitors. Quality aligns with quality. Thanks bro.