When I tell people I blog, almost unanimously I get a weird look followed by the question on everyone’s mind, “How much do bloggers make?”
To be honest, it’s a fair question.
When most people think of blogging, they often think of ‘mom bloggers’ or people that just do it for a hobby.
Heck, I thought the same thing when I first heard about it.
It took weeks of me researching and finding evidence to finally convince me that you can make a living from blogging.
Not only can you just make a living.. you can make a damn good living.
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The Top Earners
Just like any other job or business, there’s a huge spectrum of different amounts of money that these blogs are making.
The top burners however are making upwards of six figures… A month.
Here are some examples of blogs making the most money and their income reports.
There’s are just a few examples, but there are TONS of people making these kinds of numbers.
- Smart Passive Income – currently making over $100,000 per month.
- Pinch of Yum – Recipe blog making over $50,000 per month
- Making Sense of Cents – Owner Michelle is also making over $100,000 per month
The Other Guys
Okay but surely not everyone is making $100,000 or more a month right?
Very true.
The amount of money people make blogging, as I said before, varies widely.
There are people making $0 blogging and then, of course, a hundred thousand dollars or more a month (I’ve even seen $1mil+).. and then there’s everyone in between.
Now, don’t get me wrong.. not everyone that blogs makes any money.
There are a lot of people out there that don’t make squat.
Those people are doing it wrong.
A lot of people don’t understand how to make money blogging.
Most people find out that you can make money blogging and then run out buy a domain, get their blog up, and just start writing about things they think people are going to care about.
They act as if it’s the Field of Dreams… you know the whole “if you build it they will come”.
Yeah, that doesn’t apply in blogging.
I made that very mistake for almost a full year when I very first started blogging.
I picked a topic I knew about and then I just wrote things that I thought people would want to read.
Then I waited for the users to start rolling in and money to start falling from the sky..
Spoiler alert… It didn’t.
After a year I finally figured out that I was doing something wrong, bought myself a course on how to make money blogging (just like this one), and within a few months I was making a couple of thousand dollars a month from zero.
There’s a formula to making money by blogging and if you follow this formula and stay consistent you can make some serious bank.
How You Can Find Out How Much Bloggers Make
It’s not like these people are handing out their tax documents, right?
So…
How do we know how much they’re actually making?
Well to be honest there’s no way to know with 100% certainty, but we can use a few different tools to get pretty close.
The first tool we can use is to look if they put out an income report.
What’s an income report?
Honestly, it’s just a post made by the bloggers that outlines how much they made a month and how they made that money.
Here is an example income report from SmartPassiveIncome:
These are pretty cool to see, but always take them with a grain of salt because there’s really no way to prove that what they’re showing you on these income reports are the real numbers.
We can use other tools though to get a decent idea of how much bloggers make.
One way to find out is to look at how they’re monetizing their blog.
For example, if they’re selling products, how much are they selling the product for?
Do they have a lot of affiliate links within their posts and how much is the affiliate program paying out for those links?
Now, just because they’re linking and selling expensive products doesn’t mean that people are buying or clicking on them.
But again we can use another tool to see how much traffic their blog is getting in to get a better idea if their income report is accurate or not.
My favorite tool for analyzing a blog’s traffic is Ubersuggest.
Ubersuggest is an awesome tool where you can type in the URL and it will show you tons of information about how that blog is doing..
Aka their traffic, search rankings, etc.
How much do bloggers make on average?
Asking how much money you make blogging on average is like asking how much a business makes on average.
It really depends on if you’re blogging the right way..
And what is the right way exactly?
That’s a whole post in and of itself but from a high-level here are the things you want to focus on…
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Niche
Nice selection is uber important when it comes to how much money you will make blogging.
Your Niche is simply the overall topic of your blog.
Some blog niches are extremely profitable..
While others make nothing.
Here’s a post on how to pick the right niche for your blog and which blog niches make the most money.
Audience
If you write a blog and no one reads it does it even really exist?
I mean, technically, of course it exists but it’s definitely not going to make you any money.
One of the most important aspects of making money blogging is knowing and understanding who your audience is.
For example, if you have a weight loss blog..
Some people may think that it’s better to write in very generic terms with the idea that if you cast a wider net you’ll catch more fish.
This isn’t true when it comes to blogging.
The more you can focus on exactly who your reader is, the more engagement they will have with your blog..
And the more money you will ultimately make.
So in this example, instead of trying to talk in generic weight loss terms..
Try to think of one specific person that you’re speaking to.
For example, maybe your weight loss blog focuses on postpartum weight loss for women.
When you’re writing your blog post for that audience is going to sound different and have different advice than if you were talking to an 20-year-old male trying to lose 200 lb.
The reader will better identify with your post and is more likely to continue reading, share the post, and/or buy your product.
Monetization
How you monetize your blog will obviously have a significant impact on how much money you will make as a blogger.
What are your monetization options?
There are quite a few different ways but the main ways that people make money blogging are through ads, selling info products, affiliate marketing, and sponsored posts.
Each one of these can make great money on its own or be combined in different ways to make even more money.
There is no right answer and not all of them need to be used in each post.
It just depends on your niche, your audience, and the specific post you’re writing.
how much do bloggers make after costs?
When figuring out how much bloggers make it’s important to factor in their costs as well.
Are tons of different cost that can come with running a blog..
Again, this depends.
When you’re just starting out, it’s extremely cheap.
If you end up being huge and making millions of dollars a month, then you’ve probably hired a few people to help you at that point and your overhead costs are obviously going to be more.
Really the only things that you need when starting to blog are the following:
- Domain:
- A domain is just the name of your blog, the URL.
- You’ll need to buy one upfront before you can get your blog going.
- However, you can get them for extremely cheap, especially for the first year.
- You will need to renew your domain registration, but it’s usually less than 20 bucks a year.
- Hosting:
- Hosting your blog is basically paying to store your website on a server so that it is accessible via the internet.
- Some hosting plans can get rather pricey but here is one of my favorites with a great introductory discount for your first year.
- SiteGround is the hosting company I use for numerous reasons, but the main ones being price and speed!
- Email Marketing:
- The last thing that I would say is a must when starting your blog is an email marketing service.
- Email marketing services help you to collect emails (leads) from readers of your website and then automatically send them emails.
Is it worth your time to try and make money blogging?
That depends on what you want out of it.
If you like the idea of:
- A theoretical limitless income
- Control over how much money you make
- Flexibility to work when and where you want.
- To be your boss
- Spend time working on something that you built yourself and you care about.
And.. you understand that it will take a little bit of time to build up your audience enough to get to that point…
Then heck-freaking-yes.
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