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Can You Make a Living by Blogging?

If you’re passionate about a subject and you have decent writing skills, blogging definitely could be an alternative career path for you. The short answer is, yes! It is possible to make a living by blogging.

On the other hand though, the hard truth is most of the millions of bloggers today don’t make enough to support themselves just with their blogs.

Can you really make a living by blogging?

There are two main approaches to professional blogging: You could be a freelance or employed blogger for an established company or website, or you can start your own blog from scratch.

Getting a job as a professional blogger is much easier than starting at ground zero with your own blog. Those who get a job with an established company can earn a good living right off the bat.

Setting up and monetising your own blog, however, takes a lot more work, like starting your own business. There’s no real career path or trajectory to base expectations on. Some people have made hundreds of thousands of dollars writing their blog (or sold their blogs for millions), while others have yet to make a cent from theirs.

The truth is, it’s not as easy to carve out your space on the web and make a name for yourself as a blogger today, as it was back when blogging was brand new. It also takes a lot of time to build your audience to the point where it’s successful. So it’s definitely not something you can get rich quickly with, though many people do work on their blogs full time.

How much can you earn?

Salaries for bloggers vary widely. Anything from $19K to $79K a year, while 14% of bloggers who earn a salary make, on average, $24K a year.

Likewise, freelance bloggers can make anything from under $10 a post to $100 or more for a relatively short post.

As for running your own blog, 17% are able to sustain their lifestyle or support their family with their blogs, while 81% never make even $100 from blogging. The other 2% spend less than 2 hours a day blogging but make more than $150K.

How much you could make would depend on several factors, including how often you blog, the quality of your content, how competitive your topic is and how effective you are at building an audience and generating traffic. Plus a generous sprinkling of luck.

A blog itself isn’t really a business. It’s more of a platform for other income streams. Your content alone won’t likely make you money. Instead, you’ll have to get advertisers, sell services like consulting or speaking, use affiliate marketing to get a percentage of sales from links people click on your blog, or maybe offer products like e-books or premium content to actually generate income.

Success won’t come quickly or easily

Don’t let this discourage you, but just know it could take months, if not years, to start making a living from your blog. You have to make sure you are committed and passionate about what you’re blogging about.

Focus first on quality content and bringing in traffic. But if you NEED the money, like NOW, don’t start a blog. Get a day job. Give yourself at least 6 months before you start pulling in an income. And even then, it’ll most likely be coffee money.

The other reality is, you’ll probably have to produce a ton of content to generate meaningful income – and that’s a significant time investment. Writing at least one post a day is best, but that one post could take hours of research, writing and editing, depending on the content. It’s hard work.

If you do this on the side, it’s also possible to rake in a substantial amount of money, perhaps enough so you can finally do it full time. If not, there are still reasons to jump in and blog, from improving your chances of getting a job to simply sharing your passion.

It’s fine for you to have a blog that gives you an outlet for your creativity, allows you to talk about things that are important to you and lets you stay connected to friends and family. You don’t have to try to monetise your joy.