Is it still possible to make money with blogging? 11 truths you need to know
We all have seen those videos, advertisements, or articles from people showing how they’re on the beach, in their fancy house, or even working only four hours per week. There are also those people who recommend blogging as a vehicle to generate passive income.
Some may even tell you that blogging can earn passive income without doing any work!
You may have asked this question, “How making money with a blog can even be possible?”
It’s not possible to earn a passive income without doing any work
First off, let me ask you this question, “Do you think it’s possible to earn an income without doing any work?”
If we are true to ourselves, the real answer is “No”.
The amount of people looking for an easy way out to earn money is staggering. Just look on Quora and you will find lots of similar questions.
Unfortunately, we are naturally attracted to the promise of earning an income without doing any work at all. Who wouldn’t?
It’s all about instant gratification.
Falling for the shining objects and getting stuck in tactical hell
When we do go from one promise to another promise for making money, we will always be chasing the ‘shining objects’ that promises you money without doing much work.
We then get stuck in the tactical hell and wonder why we are not making any money at all after paying thousands and sinking in hours to learn the secret from ‘experts’ who have ‘made it’.
Now that they have made it, they want to show you how. If their secret is making them so much money, then why would the sell their secrets to you!
The 1st thing you need to know is that it is very easy to get caught up in tactical hell if you do not have a well-planned strategy. You must have a strategy formulated well before you start your journey.
It’s akin to a business plan for a company. Have you ever seen a company operating without a business plan and become successful?
The pray and hope strategy does not work
People do not plan to fail, but they fail to plan. Planning is the heart of any successful venture. Earning your personal income is no exception.
It does take time, effort, sacrifices, and commitment to be successful
There’s no such thing as luck, especially in today’s competitive business environment.
If anyone thinks that you can just pop up an online business presence and hoping that it will make you loads of money, then they’re lying or not telling you the full picture.
There is a lot of time, energy, and sacrifices that go into any business venture if you want to make it successful. People will not tell you how much they have individually invested.
The bottom-line is that there is no real easy way to earn passive income.
It does take time, significant effort and sacrifices, and commitment to enable a strong personal WHY and strategy to succeed.
That’s the 2nd thing you need to know.
There are lots of people selling their own courses on the promise that they could be helping you make passive income. When they are selling to you the dreams of becoming rich, they still need to put in the work.
Unfortunately, people like buying into dreams rather than actual success. They are hooked onto false promises without any intention of putting in the hard work in the first place.
Times have changed
The bad news is that you can’t just make money easily anymore like back in the old days. Back then, you could just build a webpage, sign-up for some affiliate offers (another common recommendation by people), you got some traffic, and then boom, you got money coming in like an instant ATM.
That’s the 3rd thing you need to know.
Times have changed and you must keep up with the times. Your strategy must adapt to these changing times in order for you to make money.
That’s why you need to keep abreast of the things that are happening around us. My blog seeks to provide you with the latest information for you to make informed decisions about the future and how you can make money.
As such, there are some things you must know about today that can hurt you if you still think that you can make passive income with blogging.
The Internet is a very crowded place
The 4th thing you need to know is that there are over 1 billion blogs and growing fast. If there are roughly 7 billion people, that’s about one blog for every seven people. It’s a really crowded space.
Do you think we need so many blogs in this world?
Perhaps the answer is “No”.
This is why Google is now ranking the freshest, the best information on the Internet. They don’t want to just rank whoever that has created content.
Fresh, valuable user content is king
This effectively means that once you are at the top of Google’s search ranking, they constantly want to make sure that you’re always providing the best information or valuable content to their readers.
Unfortunately, it’s not about you!
Google sells advertisements and they need eyeballs to their pages to make money.
So, the 5th thing you need to know is that if you don’t update your content regularly, you’re not going to maintain those rankings for long. When you do not get those visitors coming to your website, you’re not going to generate the passive income you were hoping for.
With every risk, there’s an opportunity.
If you can produce more valuable content than your competitors, then in time, you can be ranked above them. But it does take hard work over a long period of time. You have to constantly show up and do the hard work.
Older sites that are not updated can lose their ranking on Google. It is good news for you if you are new and want to be successful.
Google is also looking for authoritative content, not just any content
People want quality content they can trust and rely on. They want content that will give them complete answers to problems that they are facing.
That’s the 6th thing you need to know.
Picture this.
People are searching Google for a solution to their problem or answers to their question. The last thing they want to do is to spend unnecessary time going from one site to another, looking for the answer.
If you can provide well researched, high-quality, comprehensive answers to questions that people are looking for because of your deep understanding or knowledge of the subject matter, then your content will ultimately rank in Google. You are seen as an authority in that subject matter.
You need hard work to make it work, like anything else
The reality is that you cannot produce high quality, well research content if you do not plan to be an authority or expert in that subject matter.
While you may not have a university degree to your name, the Internet has levelled the playing field for genuine writers wanting to establish themselves as the go-to person to succeed via blogging.
Hence, the 7th thing you need to know is that Google is only looking for committed people who can produce high-quality answers and who are absolutely willing to put in the hard work to get there.
Google is constantly changing their algorithms to make it harder to rank on the first page. You may rank high one day and not at all the next day because of your content.
This will only mean one thing.
To be successful in blogging, you must strive and be committed to becoming THE expert or AUTHORITY in that subject matter or niche.
If you are not an expert or are not serious in becoming an expert or authority in your chosen niche, then blogging is not the vehicle for you to make money if you are starting out.