Why You’re Not Making Money With Your Blog

When I started blogging, I had no idea how to make money. Like a lot of newbies, I got suckered into believing all I needed was a website, a few words and the overarching desire to sip Mai Tais on the beach. And while I loved the idea of freedom, the one thing lacking in most in my early education was the truth.

The truth is, achieving overnight blogging success does not happen overnight. For me, it took nearly five years to finally cover all my bills through blogging. So my goal (in our short time together) is to help you avoid my mistakes and provide an actionable plan so you can start making money with your blog ASAP.

Why You’re Not Making Money With Your Blog

When I started blogging, my primary focus was generating traffic. To this end, I churned out dozens of blog articles weekly. And even though I knew very little about SEO, once I published around 50 articles, my blog started to rank. As a result, my unique visitor count slowly grew and eventually surpassed one-hundred visits per day.

Once I had traffic, I was ready to make money. Like most bloggers, I experimented with Google Adsense and also added affiliate links to my blog. Over the next few months, the clicks and sales eventually generated roughly one-hundred dollars in passive income.

While one-hundred dollars is not a lot of money, the experience proved that making money with your blog is possible. At the same time, I remember being frustrated. One-hundred dollars is not a lot of money. I needed a new strategy.

Build Your Audience

If you hang around enough professional bloggers, sooner or later you’ll hear someone echo the popular marketing mantra:

“The money is in your list.”

Even though I heard this over and over, I’m embarrassed to admit it took me months to realize what it meant. But when it comes to making money with your blog, your email subscriber list is your most valuable asset. This is because most of your readers are too busy to spend more than a few minutes on your blog.

Unless you make an effort to capture contact info, you may never see your readers again.

This is where email is helpful. Email allows you to turn a casual reader into an active subscriber. This in-turn allows you the opportunity to build a genuine, caring, email relationship with each subscriber, over time. Once you have the relationship, you can start emailing exciting, valuable offers directly to your subscribers.

To add email capture to your blog, I recommend utilizing a reputable third-party email marketing service such as Aweber, Mail Chimp, Constant Contact or one of the gazillion other providers. These services makes the whole process of creating email capture forms and managing your email subscribers easy.

Simplify Your Ethical Bribe

If you are like me, your email inbox is a twitter feed. As a result, you are reluctant to give out your email address to anybody. Your audience is the same. In order to create a subscriber, you must give away something valuable. Your valuable freebie is usually downloadable and is called an ethical bribe or lead magnet.

When I first started, I spent weeks creating the perfect lead magnet. It was a 21 part mini-course, delivered over several months. The problem was, most of my readers didn’t have time to invest in yet another mini-course, no matter how awesome the promise. As a result, my initial opt-ins were abysmal.

After months of testing, I eventually came to the conclusion that less is more. Your readers want something simple and digestible. So I recommend that instead of creating a comprehensive course, you limit your lead magnet to a one page PDF “toolkit” or “resource guide” or “checklist.”

As soon as I made this change, my opt-ins doubled. And over time, I grew my list to over ten-thousand subscribers, generating thousands of dollars in revenue per month.

If you’re having trouble making money with your blog, focus first on growing your subscribers. Once you have the subscribers, you can directly market any product or service that would legitimately help them. And that’s where the real money is made.