Which Blogs Make Money Online?
May 18, 2009 by Vern
Filed under making money online
If your blogging focus is making money then you must have a blog that can make money.
There are blogs that make money within a year and blogs that don’t. The difference between them is whether the audience your blog attracts is focused on some niche area that is easily monetized or not. The difference in money-making capacity between blogs from the two different lists below can be the difference between success and failure for the online business entrepreneur.
Blogs with this Focus Are NOT Easily Monetized within a Year:
- Diaries, personal accounts of blogger’s life – unless famous
- Personal Development
- Motivational blogs.
- Individual sports: bicycling, running, tennis, triathlon
- Traveling (wide focus)
- Writing
- Saving money
- Music
- Wide focus blogs. See my AimforAwesome.com site – it’s a collection of positive articles with all sorts of subjects. Tough to monetize.
- Food
- Kids, pregnancy, some health issue like cancer, hepatitus, diabetes
- Politics
Blogs with this Focus ARE More Easily Monetized within a Year:
- Making money – teaching others to do it
- Blogging – teaching others to blog successfully
- Technology – a narrow focus like iPhones, or product group, like “netbook computers”. Photography, video, mobile phones of all sorts.
- Online games. You may not play them, but there are millions that do.
- Addiction, overcoming bad habits, self help
- Blog themes (WordPress, MySpace), mobile themes – anything to do with customization – personalization of some popular online activity. If Facebook ever opens up to custom backgrounds… wow.
- Applications. iPhone applications are selling like crazy right now – and if you can tell people how to get into that space you’ll make a lot of $ right now. Any Mac app, Windows app, Nokia s60 app blog will do well.
- Team sports – National and college teams. Sports that are on tv and attract a lot of viewers.
I chose to focus these lists on realistic topics that someone could become successful with in a short time with a lot of effort. It doesn’t take really high traffic numbers to make a decent amount of money with the topics I chose as easily monetizable. Bloggers on the second list can choose from many products to offer to customers and have a much better chance of selling to their visitors than do bloggers on the first list.
Now, there are some blogs in the first list that might make a lot of money depending on how many people arrive at the site. Huge traffic can still bring you a lot of cash from Google Adsense if you get thousands of people each day to your site. Big traffic usually takes a few years of effort and if you’re in it for the long-haul – like you should be, you can pick a topic like politics – and really be cranking in 2-3 years.
One of the top blogs on the planet is StevePavlina.com. His is a personal development blog that he started about 4 years ago that is filled with over 600 articles – many of them very interesting and thought provoking. You can do that too – but you’re looking at the very long-term for success with such a blog. If that’s where your interest is – go for it!
The thing is… you can probably make money with any blog that gets huge amounts of traffic. That’s a given. Big traffic takes time – couple years as a minimum.
In the short term you cannot make decent money online with blogs that aren’t focused on an area that’s easily monetizable.
So, ask yourself – are you in it for the long-haul online or do you want to be making money as fast as possible online?
There’s something to be said for both options…
What Blog Topics Ooze Success?
May 3, 2009 by Vern
Filed under starting an ebusiness
There are some topics you can focus your blog on and you’ll probably have great success if you stick to it for a year or so, writing 500 words per day about the topic with few days missed.
Most blog topics are ill-chosen and don’t lead to success. Blogging about your life is what most bloggers seem to get the most personal satisfaction out of. Unfortunately it won’t pay the bills – trust me.
If you’re serious about making your blog your business you MUST stay away from your personal life. There are very few people that can blog about their lives and make it interesting enough that anybody cares. If you’re not already skirting super stardom – don’t bother blogging about your life.
Here’s an excellent article about WHAT to blog about if you don’t have a business blog focused on particular products or services.
There are 15 great topics with a lot of sub-niche areas you could choose to blog about and have a higher probability of success than with other topics.
