How much do bloggers make? This is a question that often gets from readers. Do I make money blogging? The answer is both yes and no. It depends on your skills and dedication.
Some blogs make $500 M dollars a year, others $44M. on the other hand the majoiry of bloggers seem to make no money. Despite the ublelievable income disparity, you need to undersand the way to success.
Whatever you do, you need to focus on value. Without value, your website should not exist. What does it mean? Well, why are your audience on your blog? Let me guess? To see your website design?
Probably not! In fact, they are not there even to see you. (in most of the time) They are there to find a solution to the challenges, to find inspiration, or to get information. Unless you are ready to give them that, you can not be out of the no money makers group.
Therefore, content is the way to go. Create great content that is both useful and well organized. Create a blog that is a resource for your topic. This is tiresome and hard work. However, it will make you successful.
This means how much do bloggers make may have a direct relationship to the value they make. Let me give you an example. This might make you realize the power of hard work. Every blogger is inspired by HuffPost. Everyone learns from their successes and get inspiration.
What most of us miss is how much they work. The average blogger posts once a week, even once a month. This means 12 to 60 blog posts a year. Few bloggers post up to 5 posts a week. This gives us up to 240 posts a year.
In their begging phase, Huffington post used to post up to 1500 posts per day. That is not per week or yeat. That is per day. That amount of investment and work paid off fast.
Next to the market you choose, the knowledge and skills you acquired, what matters most is the work. At the end of this post, you will get answers to how much do bloggers make? How do they make money? Who are the top earners? Who are average earners?
Can you Actually Make Money With a Blog?
While discussing how much do bloggers make? I was reminded about what someone told me about how much a CEO of a company and advanced blogger make. He said, unfortunately, a blogger my make more than a CEO.
SO, how much do bloggers make? Is being a blogger the right path?
The average American salary is near 31k. This is nearly 2600 dollars per month. Many bloggers make much money in the first two years of their brand new blog.
Not only that, but the internet environment also has the potential to give you a passive income even when you are not working. The business also grows through time giving you more space and opportunity to make more.
I am not saying that you need to quit your job. In fact, that is the last thing to do. But once you start your blog as a part-time, depending on how much you make, decide how to leave your job.
Is Blogging Dying?
No one knows how the last days of blogging would be. Because no one guessed how the mighty forum days would diminish into oblivion. Some say social media killed forums.
We can’t say forums are dead. Some of those are still big in the shadows. Others have turned into something else.
Blogs are not dead. Blogging is adapting and changing. Short text blogs, three-page blogs, about everything blogs are leaving the market. Longer, valuable and guide blogs are taking the place.
The competition is very high as the cost of entree decreases with time. Anyone can set up a blog today. The question is not do you have a blog, but how valuable is your blog. What do you offer? what problem are you solving?
Even if my claim is false, I advise you to see your blog as a business rather than as a hobby. This means, don’t blog because you love something. As I said blogging is not about the blogger anymore.
No one cares about your life unless you are a risk-taker or a celebrity. Readers choose social media for such things.
Instead, the right way to choose a blog topic is to choose a problem. What is a problem that readers have? Can you take the time to solve it for them? Do you have the skills and the speed to learn before they do and give them the solution, and save their resources and time?
As long as you keep taking care of your audience, even if blogging dies today, you will stay valuable.
But the short answer for your first question is, NO, blogging is not dead. How much do bloggers make even today says blogging is alive and well.
How do Bloggers Get Paid?
How much do bloggers make depends on how do they make the money. No two sources are the same. Some are easy to implement, others are more money with less work.
1-Ads
Ads are the best option to make money for beginners. If you have traffic and content, register on medianet and adsense. These platforms may accept you even if you have not traffic at all. But it doesnot mean you will be rich with it.
Ads need much traffic even to produce a small amount of income. Many ads pay near 1 dollar per 1000 impressions. Impressions are displayed ads that readers viewed not clicked.
When you traffic grows above 10k, Adthrive becomes better option, with better payment.
how much do bloggers make: From few cents to hundreds of dollars based on traffic
2- Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a way to make money by promoting other’s products.
bloggers make money from amazon associates program by promoting products on their blogs. Amazon associates do not pay much for affiliates as the commissions are limited to less than 10 percent.
Rakuten and ClickBank are places for digital products. These are like directories for affiliate products. You need to register and copy the products you want to promote with a unique link code. Every time you sell a product, they will send you a commission.
how much do bloggers make with the affiliate- from a few dollars to hundreds of dollars per product based on sales
3-Selling Courses
This is one of the best ways to make most of the money. Being an affiliate is a good income but the truth is that you cannot control the source. If the content owner decides to quit, you will quit with them.
Not only that, but the price range is also limited in affiliate marketing. You don’t say how much the product should sell. This may limit how much do bloggers make. This is different if you own the product.
You have the control to price the course at 200 or 2000. It is up to you.
First, you need to make your email list. Then promote your product, and tell people why they need to buy your product. Whenever someone purchases a product, you keep it to your self.
You can also allow affiliates to sell your courses. Even if this seems to diminish your income, it increases the sale. Imagine 100 affiliates each selling 3 of your product every day. This is 300 sales a day and 9000 a month.
For a 200 dollar product, if the affiliate takes half, you keep the 100. This means you make 90k per month without making a tiny effort. This translates to more than 1 million dollars a year. Selling courses are the best way to make money.
how much do bloggers make: thousands based on loyal audience
4- Selling Books and Products
Especially in the personal development niche, it is easy to be best selling author if you build your audience carefully. Books are a form of passive income since they make you an income even years after the published date.
I know bloggers who sold 500k and above a number of books in the first few months. This is a good source of money.
Amazon made publishing easy. The cover design is easy, content management is easy. Editing is easy. Grammarly saved the day. You only need to write a book.
Sell t-shirts or printable materials as well. If you have dedicated follower, they will buy any thing you ask them.
how much do bloggers make: few hundreds of dollars unless you sell 8 million copies like Mark Manson.
5- Speaking Gigs
When you become on top of your niche, organizations would send you a request to speak for them at a conference or at private meetings. Bloggers get paid thousands per day to speak.
how much do bloggers make: a few hundreds of dollars per speech based on how well you are known
How Much bloggers make a Month?
Unfortunately, almost 48 percent of all bloggers make less than 100 dollars per month. Only 10 percent make more than 1000 dollars a month. Less than 5 percent make above 10k.
Affiliate marketing contributes to most of their incomes. Sponsored posts and Ads also contribute to their income. As their traffic Increases, most blogs take advantage of advertisements.
A small number of bloggers hate the idea of Ads on blogs. They avoid them. Out of this small number of top bloggers, some of them use membership to make extra money every month.
Some sell courses, updates, and other resources for a dollar per Mont up to 200 dollars a month membership fee.
How much do bloggers make a month: Most don’t even make money. Few make thousands and even millions per year.
What Niche Makes The Most Money?
Niche matters. I believe this is the difference between successful bloggers and the rest. The successful do not follow a passion. Instead, they serve others.
Inorder to serve others, first you need to know their problems. This means unles there is a problem, you dont need to be in that niche. THis is the secret.
As a business person, you need to chase problems, not niches. What does this mean? You might enjoy blowing trumpet but you may be the only person in the world who wants to do that.
But if I tell you to write about diabetes, you know there are many people suffering from hat problem. And many of them are looking for diet plans, advice, and more.
Instead of fantasizing about trumpets, you will make some one’s day. I am not saying that only urgent problems pay. Any niche could pay you. But the ones that are urgent will pay you more.
Don’t get me wrong here. Both trumpet and diabetes have between 100k and a million searches from the US and Canada alone. Even trumpet high Ad demand.
Both my work as long as you find the problem. Someone may search trumpet on the internet only looking for inspiration, music on youtube. If that is the case, you may not make much on your blog. But someone who is sick would buy from you if you have the solution. Do you know what I mean?
Don’t chase a dream, chase a problem in any niche. Identify a problem.
Weight loss, diet, food, fashion, travel, money, relationship- all these markets work.
Now choose one of these markets and go deeper. For example in the relationship and dating market, you will get sub-topics such as divorce, new relationships, newly married, marriage, interracial marriage, dating Asians, dating Africans, and more.
With some research, you will embark on one of these. This does not mean you won’t talk about others, but for now, you need to be big with one of them. This will save you time and money. And this will create define your audience. You will grow slow.
Therefore, choose a broad domain name that will late you grow later.
Use google related and google ubersuggest to find what people are looking for. Keyword tools such as Google keyword planner are also great resources.
- 16 Profitable Niche Market that Makes Money on the Internet
- A Guide to a Successful Niche that Makes Money
- A Guide to Topic for a Blog That Makes a Difference
- 20 Examples of a Blog Post and Step By Step Guide (And a Free Download)
how much do bloggers make by niche- all niches have potential but the ones with urgency may make more
How Much do Bloggers Make? Top Blogs
Do you even call these webistes blogs? The webstes that I listed below are rather new websites. these have very differnt character from niche websites. For example, these have no specific sub niche.
They discussions everything under their market. They work on trends and news. If they are not blogs today, they at least began as one. Then let us see how much do bloggers make on top?
Blogs | Niche | Traffic (yearly) | Income (yearly) |
HuffPost | News | 1 Billion | 146 million |
Engadget | Tech | 349 M | 18.3 M |
Gizmodo | Tech | 231.6 M | 14.2 M |
TechCrunch | Tech | 177.6 M | 14 M |
Mashable | Tech | 162 M | 15 M |
Tuts+ | Tutorial | 115.2 M | 16 M |
Moz | SEO | 40.8 M | 2.5 M |
Smashing Magazine | Web design and development | 24 M | 475 K |
PerezHilton | Celebrity | 21.6 M | 892 K |
Copyblogger | Writing | 5.9 M | 496 K |
How much do bloggers make; the senior blogs make millions
Huffpost was founded in 2005 by Arianna Huffington. In 6 years it was acquired by AOL for 315 million dollars. It even won a Pulitzer prize in 2012.
Engadget is a multilingual blog and it blogs on gadgets and consumer electronics. This blog began near 2004 and it got prizes as technorati top 100 and time magazine top blogs.
Techcrunch started in 2005, and later sold to AOL for 25 million dollars.
How Much Do Bloggers Make: Cases
Can you become one of these? That is an interesting question. I would rather learn from them than competing with them. Because these blogs have been around for more than a decade. They have many writers.
HuffPost for example, produce up to 1500 posts per day. I said per day. That means they produce up to 60,000 posts per month. How many can you write as a beginner? Or how many posts are your writing on your blogs? If not 1000 per day, it is better to stop competing with them.
Let’s see smaller blogs with great income and a large audience. Some of them you can beat with SEO keywords. Even if you can not beat them as a website, you can still rank in some of the keywords they are ranking today.
Eofire
Began in 2012 Eofire has been working on teaching entrepreneurs how to become successful. Today with a podcast on business and lots of interviews and books, the blog is killing it.
Niche: Business, money
how much do bloggers make- 70 k
PinchofYum
Pinch of Yum has been around for almost a decade. The website is about cooking and is full of beautiful pictures of food. She talks about recipes and diet.
Niche-Food, recipes
how much do bloggers make- 430k annual
Owner- Lindsay Ostrom
thesartorialist
Founded by a photographer, the sartorialist focus on fashion trends in different parts of the world. He focuses on pictures to portray his ideas. His books are also an inspiration.
Niche: Photography + fashion
how much do bloggers make : 42k yearly
Owner: Scott Schuman
Sprudge
Sprudge is a coffee news and trends blog that has been around since 2009.
Niche: coffee
how much do bloggers make : 42k yearly
Owner: Scott Schuman
Treehugger
Treehugger was founded by Graham Hill in 2004. Using his background in architecture, the started blogging about sustainability and climate issues. Only 3 years from its launch, it was listed as the top 25 top blogs on time magazine.
The same year the site was acquired by discovery communications, by mother nature network in 2012 and later by dotdash in 2020.
Niche: sustainability
how much do bloggers make : 455k yearly
Owner: Graham HIll
Boingboing
Dating as far as 1995 as a website, Boing Boing blogs about tech, Gadgets and politics.
Niche: Gadget
how much do bloggers make: 1 M per year
Owner: Carla Sinclair, Mark FrauenfelderÂ
How much do Bloggers make: up to a million dollars
Conclusion, How Much do Bloggers Make
Bloggers make much more than you can imagine. There is a potential to earn more. Unfortunately, almost half of the bloggers in the world don’t even make 100 dollars.
If your blog is less than a year old, you probably won’t make money unless you spend money on advertisement. It takes time to make money. But if you are a year and older, then you need to make money.
Top blogs make millions of dollars a year. These blogs have many writers and editors. It takes good content to get traffic to make money.
Now you know how much do bloggers make. And this is your time to make one.