Never Start Blogging if You Want to be Rich

Never Start Blogging if You Want to be Rich

A few days ago I learned why you should never start blogging if you want to be rich the hard way. It’s a personal article which may present me in the worst egoistic light possible, but this is how it is.

Punchline

I’m that kind of guy who likes to watch, listen and read the “make an online business”, “get rich easy peasy scheme”, “top 10 insights on how to make trillions of dollars doing nothing”. I enjoy watching this type of content purely for entertainment purposes, however, there is something about it.

These ladies and gentlemen share the get-rich-quick schemes that are absolutely outdated, wrong or illogical and usually look something like this.

Dig you get it? No. Well, that is how it’s supposed to work. That’s how the scheme works. The cool thing about such tricky content is that these people don’t make money leveraging the strategy they taught you, they make money selling you the idea that it is possible to earn billions of dollars in a week. You buy a comforting feeling of accomplishment that one day you can make it too. Don’t worry. I bought into it too.

If you think about it for a second, you’ll soon find out that you can make money too by doing what they do. This is so easy! But why doesn’t it all work for you? Ah, yeah, because you have a 9/5 job that you hate, you’re building somebody else’s future, you’re wasting your life. Sounds familiar right?

That’s how most affiliate marketing videos start, and that is how all “do these easy 5 things to start your own business today” begin.

What happened to me after watching tons of these videos

Since I started working as a content writer for an SEO agency, I was watching this crap every day. The world of marketing, ads, affiliates and seamless cash flow struck me right in the face. In this environment though, the strategies were getting more and more sophisticated and I could literally see how people were actually generating something.

“Interesting”, I thought. “How does it all work?” I wondered. It was all about establishing an online presence which means it’s all about being found on the internet. Guess what? As a content writer in an SEO agency, my job was to make our website visible on Google by teaching people how to make their website visible on Google. That’s funny.

During the work, I learned that blogging was one of the most effective strategies that attracts website visitors. I even had the proof. All these stats from Hubspot, such as:

“These are damn huge numbers”, I thought. “Is it all about blogging?” If that’s the case, it would be amazing if I could do that. Oh, wait a second, I am a blogger.

It was time to take action

I started thinking about building my own website. I committed to researching this topic to details as hard I possibly could. I found many great promising resources that were screaming: “It’s easy!”, “Start today!”, “Loser, stop drinking tea and build your business!”, “You’re wasting your life!”.

Alright, alright… So I kept researching the topic. Now, I knew that I want to blog and I also know how to do that. The problem was that I needed to come up with something to blog about. I knew that marketing and SEO was the most competitive niche which is just impossible to hype in without huge marketing budget. Moreover, I was fed up with all this marketing crap and SEO. Ironically, I’m writing about it right here in this post.

My choice fell on depression, self-development, relationships, and skills. This fantastic four has contributed to shaping my character and making me who I am today. Chronologically it looks something like that:

I created this site because I wanted to make billions of dollars blogging about depression, self-development, and relationships. I thought that by sharing my not-really-humble opinion I will make tons of money helping “somebody”. I was determined to provide “value”. That’s what every marketer will tell you.

Find a problem to solve. Solve bigger problems. Provide value.

Haven’t found a problem to solve? Create one and solve. It’s all about people, relationships and solving problems. Have you ever worked in a marketing department? Do you know what happens behind the scenes?

It’s like a two-faced person is talking to you. You know, like you have an angel and the devil on your shoulders.

• The angel says: “Customers are our priority. We go beyond just product creation. We focus on creating an experience.”
• The devil says: “Fucking stop. It’s too much value; now you need to create a bait! Works like a charm. Focus on growth hacking. Attract more traffic.”

Damn this is creepy. I might not have yet developed my “marketing-business-like” mindset, but that’s how it is. It’s hard not to “BAIT” in such an atmosphere. So I did.

Do bloggers even make money?

They certainly do. For example, the Huffington Post makes $14,000,000 per month, according to Target Internet. That’s a hell lot of money. The Huffington Post is one of the most successful blogs out there.

With individual bloggers, the situation is different. Most blogs (22.6%) make from $1 to $10,000 while 69.4% make nothing, according to Blog Tyrant.

I didn’t know that when I started blogging. I may not have wanted to know that. However, I certainly wanted to watch more videos on how to run your business or generate tons of money in a week. I fell in love with the idea that my blog can be making a huge profit while I can just be writing my opinion-based crap in one evening.

Haven’t you ever questioned your current financial status when you’re working your ass off at your 5/9 job while somebody is sitting at how and films something like “cutting water 10 hours.” Really?

So, I also thought my shit was going to hype. For the last 3-4 months, it hasn’t hyped yet.

This is where my mood started swinging pretty damn hard. When illusions started to fade, hehe. How’s that I am not making anything from my blog? Where are my trillions of subscribers and zillions of dollars? They promised it would be easy!

Don’t start blogging because you want to make money

Here is the problem. I would have never experienced slight depression interferences from my blog being unable to hype if it wasn’t about money. My only purpose was to make money from this blog.

Nope. It doesn’t work like that. If you’re like me, very soon will you experience that feeling where you think that you’ve already lost the game. Money is bad motivation. It doesn’t really get you anywhere. The problem is that you want to get your shit ton of money right now, but it doesn’t happen overnight, and it may not happen at all because of many factors such as your marketing budget and experience, quality of content, niche competition and your own determination.

However, I’ve also found a solution for this “money-driven” problem.

I am a former tracer; I was doing parkour. Parkour is still in my head, and when I walk in the street I see all those walls, rails, staircases, and awesome imaginary jumps. It was my lifestyle, I was breathing parkour. Why?

Parkour is about challenging yourself every day. It’s about testing your skills and your mindset. Sometimes when you’re about to make a long jump you’ve never done before you need to trust your skills more than your mind. And sometimes, when your guts tell you that you’re not ready, then you’re not ready.

So, one day I saw a guy doing a backflip. I needed to learn that too. Why? Because it’s so damn cool. I trained for a half a year to finally land on my knees. It took me another half a year to finally land this like a pro. Can you imagine? It took me 1 year to master one skill. One jump.

If it was about money I would have never landed this jump. I would give up tomorrow because I haven’t yet earned fame, gratitude or a million dollars. Instead, I had something bigger. I could say to myself “I can do that. I thought it was impossible. Good job, bro”. That feeling has something that money can’t buy. It goes beyond materialistic needs. The feeling of accomplishment, self-respect and a fair portion of everyday determination. Isn’t it awesome?

Yeah, it is. The end.

Alright, hold on a second. What if you don’t have a money-driven mindset but you wouldn’t like to miss out on a blog monetization opportunity. You need to provide for yourself, and if there is an opportunity to do that would you be foolish enough to miss that? Of course not.

How you can monetize your blog

Easy! Just follow these 5 simple steps to make your first million dollars. Just kidding.

For an informational blog like Life to Make I consider a few most effective monetization strategies that should work. For now I have no idea, but theoretically it might work:

Ads

Ads are the most common example of making money from a blog. If you can attract around 100,000 readers or more to your site, you can start running ads and partner up with some ad companies.

Approximately, you need 100,000 page views a day, and 1,000 clicks a day to earn $100,000 a year with Google Adsense, as Minterest suggests.

The problem with Life to Make is that it’s mostly about depression. Google doesn’t allow to run ads on healthcare, depression and suicide topics which they clearly state in their Google Ads policies. Just make sure you avoid other restricted niches if you want to profit from running ads.

Affiliate links

That’s classic. There are a bunch of ways this site could be making money with affiliate links. Oftentimes, I recommend books that I read myself, courses that I sometimes run into and other info products.

Well, how much can you expect? Obviously, not much. Even if you get a 10% commission for each $10 book you sell you can make as little as $1 per successful transaction. Without a decent number of visitors, you can’t expect any high earning potential. Selling information that somebody else has created is not going to make you rich. So?

Info Products

Create your own info product. That is something that can make you a decent amount of money. There is a YouTube channel called Income School. In their video about info products, Jim and Ricky make it pretty clear why you need an info product.

Anything can become an info product. It can be a pdf, book, kindle or online course which you can design and present to your website visitors. It does take time to create, and it’s not easy. If it was easy nobody would buy this shit from you. An info product may range from $1 to as much as $2,000+. For example, Neil Patel sells his marketing course for $997 and he also tested the flexibility of the prices which means that he was selling it way below $997 and well as above $997 and it still worked for him.

Conclusions

I’ve started this website because I wanted to make money, and that was the only thing I had on my mind. Whenever I wrote an article, I thought yeah, now “the traffic” will come.

What I realized in the process, which I knew long before but have just forgotten, is that money motivation will not get you far. It doesn’t work if you’re playing a long-term game such as building your audience and gaining authority in a niche. It didn’t work for me, at least. Money is one of the reasons not to blog.

When I’m writing this article now, I’m no longer money-driven. I’m inspired to do my thing without expecting much from it except for one little detail. Relationships. Connecting to amazing people from all across the world is an experience which I can’t trade for money. Whatever your craft is, do it with love. Stay awesome!