They say those who were the first ones to do blogging are the lucky ones. Why? They make the most money, they get the most traction, they reap the best benefits. Almost a decade now since blogging started, nothing has changed that much. The rich grows richer and continues to thrive while those who were getting started never get past the startup stage.
I’d tell you what, I totally don’t agree with it. Im not rich, but I make good money and most people don’t. The equation has been still the same, 10% of bloggers make money, the rest don’t. Simple reason? There’s a big imbalance that’s happening right now. Let me explain it.
Guys like John Chow, Shoemoney and some others make good chunk of income through direct ad sales. And because of that, a lot of bloggers jumped into that without really having an idea of what to expect. You see the ratio is like for every 10,000 blogger selling space, there’s only 15 advertisers willing to shed money using blog advertising. Get my point?
Just the same as the already over AdSense Era. Some people revealed they earned good money by just copy pasting codes and poof. It’s been rehashed over and over and so basically what happened was it just became saturated. The guys who were making good with AdSense still make good up to now, while most are now disappointed because AdSense didn’t meet their expectation.
What Now?
We probably all heard the saying “Nothing is permanent”. In blogging, the things that worked about 2-3 years ago are probably obsolete by now. So too late to profit from blogging? Definitely not! The rules of the game is just simple! Destroy all those bloggers that are doing the same thing. Rise above the over saturated market with something unique. Take this, if everyone’s trying to make money from ads then why not go away from it and try different things? How about launching your own info product or maybe useful premium tools that would cater a certain market? Membership sites are still not dead too!
You see, there’s an unlimited option really. People make money because they think differently, they prefer to be discrete from the majority and more importantly they utilize it to their own advantage. Never be afraid to try out different schemes, different monetization models. After all, it’s not rocket science. Nothing in this world is rocket science I guess.
This post is guest blogged by Melvin Dichoso. Melvin is a young kid who’s been doing internet marketing and blogging for 2 years now. He blogs @ MelvinBlog.com where he shares all the good stuffs to his readers. And yes, he uses twitter as well so follow him!
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I beg to differ with the final statement. Last time I checked, rocket science is indeed rocket science.
I was gonna say the same thing!
hey kwan, you got me there.:) but rocket science is more of an expression rather than whatever, so i think my last line still makes sense
Rocket science is a combination of physics, chemistry, aerodynamics, thermodynamics, mechanical engineering and orbital mechanics.
Hahaha. Would have done better just to leave out that last sentence. Nonetheless, excellent post.
Hahaha… so are we in rocket science discussion now?
ehm..imbalance. Still not really understand. But its hard to balance our blogging todays.
Many bloggers never continue their bloggging. That’s the reason why they never make money
yep but then even if you continue blogging for the next 10 years isnt it you’re still not assured you’re gonna make money right? =p
If you are not making money from your blog for 10 years then I’d suggest you to change your domain name and try to find out why you never ever made money from your blog. If you made some money from your blog then you won’t have difficulties to make more money by duplicating what was successful for you.
Lol, If you learn how to target the right keywords and do even the slightest bit of seo and backlinking, your going to make money if your doing it for 10 years.
They don’t make money because they don’t know what they’re doing.
I think one of the most profitable ways I’m going to make money from my blog is when I launch my ebook in the next week. Advertising isn’t the only thing I can make money from using my blog.
PS… John you should update your “Recent Poll” widget. Maybe do a weekly poll?
Awesome post.
I started blogging a bit, but ran into a little slump when I went away on vacation. Had so much to do when I got back I never really “got back”, but am now slowly moving back into that groove.
everyone runs on a certain slump so i think that would just be fine..
Start a blog, write good articles daily or thrice a week and in a years time you will start getting some some money..from there you can shoot!!
Its still that simple..CONSISTENCY IS THE KEY
I totally agree with ya, I am doing my small, very newbie blog, and I can already see getting traffic from search engines and referring sites, 10-20 a day, and when I started 2 months ago, I had like 10 visitors a month. I can say from my own experience that blogging still can work for newbies. And that is from google page 2 for 4 keyword phrases… google page 1 is going to at least make me 50$ from adsense, and 20 blogs like that makes roughly 1000$ from adsense. Not to mention the power of placing some affiliate products, depending on your blog’s topic. I am quite sure I am not destined to make fortunes on the internet, meaning that I believe I will never make more than 1000-2000$ a month, but I feel that I can make at least that. And I WON’Tgive up, even if it takes 5-10 years for me to get there. And I think, I hope it won’t.
You have to stick at it and don’t be afraid to think outside the box.
Blogging takes time to see rewards and they’re often slow but upward trending as long as you stick to it consistently.
Nice post Melvin
thanks, glad you liked it.
Hey Melvin, that’s neat you had the opportunity to write a Guest Post on John Chow. Did it bring you alot of visitors?
I guess that would be for a different post..
I think the reason most new blogs fail is because people give-up too early! I’ve been blogging for over two years now and make a good income from my blog – but this didn’t start until the end of my first year.
Those who think blogging is easy are the ones who get easily discouraged and quit before they ever find-out if their blog would have been a success!
Stick with writing about what you are passionate about and stay focused. At the end of the day it is good content that will make your blog a success.
totally right. i think there are about 5 posts on my blog where I emphasized “patience” a lot. Yeah I mean people think the money from blogging can happen overnight or over the weekend and stuffs but from the experience of EVRY blogger who’s actually making money, I know that the same things they would mention..
I have the feeling that Information about making money online are overloaded.
Yep, that’s been done and redone so many times it’s really hard to break into that niche.
There’s always a way to break into a niche. The weight loss niche is just as competitive as IM.
IMO anyway
“Destroy all those bloggers that are doing the same thing. Rise above the over saturated market with something unique.”
Absolutely right! That’s what I’m saying and I’m trying to do for more than 2 years. It’s hard but it’s doable. And, no, the AdSense era is not over. Local blogs don’t have that much success with affiliates.
Very nice post, keep it up. Thanks for sharing it.
I got into the blogging game rather late. For the life of me, I just couldn’t understand what the big deal was for the first 5 years or so.
Now, I’ve learned to use my blog to drive traffic to my website. I still don’t make much income from blogging, but then again, I really haven’t tried!
I don’t do much with boxes, I hardly ever update my MMO blog and I do no promotion. But it still makes me what I suppose would be a full time income for most people.
That’s a pretty decent income for doing nothing.
If you were to use a PPC platform what would you pick? Adsense?
For ppc and by ppc I mean advertising for contextual ads, I use adwords.
Tried a bunch more, you get a ton of traffic very low conversions, only useful for building a list to promote Free or Cheap (less than $25) products to.
I read somewhere “Look what everybody is doing and then walk into the other direction.” This is the reason why I am not jumping on the paid membership wagon and why I don’t have a classical email list, SY
SY
PS I don’t think Adsense is dead, I think there are just too many people around that don’t know how to use adsense properly
Adsense is not dead but for the effort of getting some decent high value clicks you’d be better off in affiliate marketing where you own your own list and can promote to it for free.
I never click on Adsense link unless It’s something new to me that I never read before on another blog. Adsense can work pretty well if you create site about iphone or other gadget as people are looking for the best price to purchase their favorite products… Of course there are scammy looking site that get a lot of click thanks to the way they display the ads but It’s not mu stuff, I don’t like to cheat people, and If I had Adsense campaign I wouldn’t like people to generate untargeted traffic because of such methods…
The scary thing about adsense is that your income is totally controlled by Google. They can sh@t can your account anytime they want. I used to think everyone who got their adsense account banned had to be doing something devious, but I’ve recently seen 2 people that had theirs banned and they did nothing wrong.
A list is a lot safer than relying on adsense for income.
Sometimes you can make a bunch of money in what seems like an over saturated market. All you have to do is hit it from another angle and boom, you’re makin some bank!
I think thats great thing to achieve in the market of blogging when it comes to add something unique and thats what the most unique thing about blogging.
Irony is the person who says No Ads on your sidebar has many on his !
Early movers in any industry usually win..
http://www.nibrasbawa.net/2009/11/early-riser-wins-so-does-early-mover.html
Many bloggers never continue their bloggging. That’s the reason why they never make money but affiliate marketing is a good way to make money online.
Well blogging itself is a very time consuming process, unless you really enjoy blogging about that particular subject then you wont make it
Just look at how many make money blogs there are today, if you check back in a week or two the number would have doubled but half of the original ones would be by then inactive….
There are a lot more niches out there than MMO blogging. I find it kind of funny that many people thing that the only way to make money blogging is to write about making money. There are at least 9,999,999 other niches waiting to be exploited.
that’s fact which i also believe in.. and about 10% blogger , i am sure i am one of them
We’ll have to admit that blogging was lucky for the old folks but still they had to face many problems such as they weren’t many blogging platforms, advertisers and hosting space and domains were expensive.
That is why you should not blog about bloggers blogging about being a blogger….you should offer a product, service or advice that real people need in a specific niche. There is no ad imbalance – there are plenty of products for that niche or you create the unique product that they need.
I see where you’re going with this, if anyone has ever read an ebook about ppc for e.g. they all say the same ting… use some keyword spy site, key in the url of the product you want to promote, steal the keyword list and use it to promote the same thing. Don’t say it’s not true because they all say it in some way or another….
Come on no wonder the going price for those keywords are so high it’s impossible to make a profit with
There are quite a few ways to block those kinds of tools, but the people who are really making money with PPC usually use keywords that most people wouldn’t think of using.
Like the “reverse cell phone lookup” niche, people were using “how to catch a cheating spouse” keywords at first and making a killing.
The biggest problem with many bloggers is that they don’t realize all the revenue streams that are possible. Sticking with any single source is total fail.
I agree, partly, I start of with ione way of monetizing a new blog / web site and increase the offers as the visitor numbers increase. Too much choice too early might lead to that your visitors — click nothing
SY
Totally agree with you, most people look at JC for e.g. and think that he makes most of his money from selling ads on this blog, although he does make a ton of money from selling ads on this blog looking at his income reports he makes way more money in affiliate comissions then for e.g. reviews or text links
Yeah, that is the point. No all blogger know every possible think to make money online. That’s why the most know way become saturated.
Yep, you have to diversify or you may see all of your revenue dry up. It’s not a good thing to only have 1 revenue stream.
John mentioned in one of his last videos, adressing a new blogger “you are there where we were some years ago” and that sums it up beautifully for me. Provide useful content, be persevering and value your readers — and your readers will value you and buy from you, be it ad space or products / service or simply follow your recommendations and buy something you get commission for. No big secret there, just common sense, SY
Although this post actually makes sense, it’s nothing new for most of us, we all know this, it would have been better you shared some of your ideas then tell us we need to be original
That is planned as my second guest post on this blog.
Stay tuned!
Agree with most of it. You do have to think differently and you need to pick a great niche that’s still not saturated. It’s all about researching trends and untapped niches.
Plus like some of you said, try new ways of monetizing. Google isn’t the only way to make coin from your blog.
I agree with John. I checked out your free course and I also agree that:
1. on the top of all lists is having great content period. When someone out of now where get’s amazing hits on a article or entry it’s almost always for the simple reason people are interested in it.
2. Write about what you like and create compelling content around that. One internet marketer told me that it’s not even so much how your content looks, it’s the content; in other words a great book is a great book not because of the cover which maybe cool but because of the plot and the writing and how they hold the readers attention.
3. Like with almost anything it seems like things start slow and reach a critical point and the most important thing is to keep on going.
Thanks for a cool blog John!
Actually it’s not the content so kuch as it is the backlinks.
You don’t have to be a John Chow or a Shoemoney wot make money blogging. You don’t have to write about how to make money, there are 10 million niches available to blog about. John and Shoe don’t have the corner on making bank.
Yeah, do disruptive strategy, and make your blog in top.
I think this post is great because the things change in blogging. People who use to make thousands per month make now hardly some Adsense money. I think you are right about that it is never too late. I think moving towards new things in blogging is important. It is good to go with the flow but some time you got to move against the stream. I think it is about the niche of blogging. The earnings depend on the niches. Thanks for sharing.
Not really but yea, if you’re not ready for the quick changes then prepare to be doomed.. lols..
Another interesting post John
Great article John. Thanks for posting it.
I like the idea that we live in a changeable world and nothing can be repeated one in one.We must see tendencies and take opportunities the changes bring.
People tend to fail because they give up after a short while. This isn’t their fault. People are doomed to fail if the reason they get into the game is because of some internet marketer lying about how they make $30K a day…. It takes time and effort, but above all else, perseverance.
The fact remains, the easiest way to get a successful blog up is being at the right place at the right time. I’d love to say my biggest success was skill, but I just happened to get a site up about a product that became one of the biggest sellers of recent years.
Of course I agree that it is possible to build up a secondary income, but without serious time and investment it is so tough to topple an established site from its position. Not impossible, but tough.
It’s a shame that established site owners rarely admit this, but I guess it’s harder to “sell” the dream if they did!
Great article! My goal is to make $1 a month from my blog! Now, the market can not be that saturated right?
This post is so true. But the fact is that 90% are still followers and playing catch up with the 10% are still the leaders.
Blogging is the great leveler. Just know what you are good at, find your niche, and start blogging and making money.
I think the proportion 90-10 is universal.90% of participants of business versus 10% of ieaders.That is not only in blogging just in all spheres.
yeah i know.. but this article mainly just revolves around blogging and making money through it..
to thoes 10% bloggers who could make money by blogging, i admire them .but the feeling of imblancement is not very obvious,for i think there mightbe uneffective ways of blogging you are using.not everying success is easy,including blogging.
Hardest thing with creating a successful blog is sticking to it. After blogging for 2 months with any success to show for it, the majority will give up.
I agree with this too.. Just by looking at the top bloggers you could see they went on to blog for what, a year? before starting to make money..
can people do that?
Thats with any make money online program. Thats why so many people either call it a scam or that the method doesn’t work. There is no real overnight success with anything online. It take time and consistency. But with all the hype that everyone sees about how you can do XXX.XX in 5 hours, it’s hard to fault people who don’t take the time to know any better.
Great article John…
Thanks
Mladen
Any suggestions on getting started? On targeting advertisers? On drawing readers? On destroying competition??
Find a niche that is profiatble and has a low competition, write excellent, original content that you update regularly, build back links and monetize your traffic with the offers your readers are prepared to buy, don’t offer apples when your visitors want to buy pears
That’s all the secret there is, SY
I agree – niches=riches. It’s stupid to try and be John Chow now – we need to do something totally different, real and value added in a very specific category and realize that it’s going to take time to build a presence and customer base who trusts you.
Yes it is really so.And in the nearest future the situation can hardly be changed.
Yap. I agree. We should know how to balance our blogging ways.
The only thing that is rocket science is rocket science.