It’s been about 6 years since I first started blogging, and I have to say, it’s been a hell of a journey. I’ve experienced all sorts of highs and lows with this career, but it’s been really rewarding. I’d like to share a few of my experiences for you here.
What is blogging really like?
Well, I’m not going to make it sound like some amazing dream career, although it can feel like that at times. No, I’d say blogging is similar to other careers and jobs in the sense that you do work, and at one point or another (hopefully) you get paid for that work.
The real difference I guess comes down to a few things:
- How reliable the income is
- How much you earn
- When/where/how often you work
- And what you actually write about
Those things can vary WILDLY with bloggers. For example, you could have someone writing 6 articles a day, but getting paid NOTHING (if they don’t gain traction, write badly, or something else). But then you could also have someone who writes maybe one article a month and somehow gets a full time income because the articles do really well.
The people that do the latter (the lucky ones) seem to write LONG articles about interesting topics, the sorts of articles that would go viral, NOT the articles you might be used to reading about which makeup brush is better to use if you’re in a rush, or how to choose the best game for Xbox this year.
No, the bloggers that really have success are the ones who write well.
It’s not surprise really, to hear that the ones who achieve blogging success are the ones who are good at blogging and writing, yet millions of people still seem to be misguided.
They think that writing an article, ANY article every week will somehow get the to where they want to e in terms of income and lifestyle. That’s just not the case. As you’ll see in this article, blogging has its lows and highs, just like anything else. The only difference I would say, is the freedom of it all, but I’ll get to that.
How much do you earn from blogging?
The actual amount a blogger can earn varies massively, just like the amount a person can earn in general varies, depending on what job they do. Well, with bloggers, it really depends on what you write about, how often you write, and how well you write. There are of course other things like luck, connections with other prolific bloggers, the right marketing etc..
But for this post, let’s keep it simple. You need to be getting at least 10,000 views on your blog per month to really start to earn a full time income, and even then it depends on so many things. For example, you can have a site getting 100,000 views a week and still not earning anything, or you could get a site earning $2K a month and it only gets 1000 views.
It depends mainly on what you’re selling and HOW you’re monetising the blog. For example if you’re a member of some good affiliate and advertising networks, and you write well, you can’t go FAR wrong if you’re getting 10K views a month. To actually get to being a full time income, you really can’t predict how long it will take, so it’s always better to build a blog up on the SIDE of your day job.
How easy is it to earn a full time income?
Not really. I mean, once you’re there, it feels easy and because it’s all passive, you can trick yourself into thinking that you’ve made it, and it will last forever, but that’s just not the case. Some websites stand the test of time, but not many. There will always be new articles, fresh ideas, and better marketing coming along to kick you from the top. That’s why it’s better to KEEP writing and building, and never get too comfortable.
Does it get boring?
Not boring as such. If you’re always writing about the same things, then you might reach a point where you’ve just talked about everything in your topic that there is to cover. If that’s the case, just start a new blog, or improve existing articles. The best blogs are ones like this where you can just write about anything if it relates to personal development, lifestyle or travel.. which is MOST things!
Also it’s more interesting when your brand or blog can cover a wide range of topics, because you can very easily pivot and just start focusing on something new. For example, this website used to be a pure personal development website but I’ve branched it out into doing reviews of cool products, travel blogs, travel guides, and nootropics and veganism/health articles. I’ve recently been making travel vlogs like these.
Because the brand of ‘Transcend Your Limits’ is so general and vague, it could relate to ANYTHING that involves improving your life, finances, or health.
So that’s what I’d suggest, think about the wider areas of your interest, that you can branch out into later on. For example, if you’re into climbing, don’t JUST make a climbing website (although you well might), maybe make a health focused website that can talk about and cover climbing, but can also cover food, or exercise, or reviews, or even travel!
A few notes and warnings about blogging
There are a few things that need to be said about blogging. These things aren’t really in any sort of order, so this is just going to be a brain dump loosely organised into sections:
1: Your friends might be confused
One of the most interesting things I’ve found as a blogger or a website owner is that my friends are always amazed or confused about it! They just don’t understand how I can fund my lifestyle with websites alone, but when you think about it, it’s the easiest way long term.
You’ve got an entire internet of people all searching for things and buying things online, every second of every day. If you’re going to find success ANYWHERE in the business world it’s going to be online. If you can’t succeed when your target market is EVERYONE on the internet, you probably can’t succeed in many places. The odds are stacked in your favour provided you write well, write often, and have something to sell or promote.
So don’t be annoyed when you have to have the same conversations with your friends about how you earn an income, why you write or blog, and why you don’t want to get a normal job. Normal jobs are very overrated and a waste of time in most cases anyway 😉
2: It’s super easy to get comfortable
This is probably one of the downsides of succeeding as a website owner. Let’s say you’ve been working hard for a few years, and you’ve built up some websites, that are doing pretty well. You’re making money and living comfortably, but then what happens? You start to think ‘Well, the money’s coming in, I can take today off!’. And you do.. Then what happens?
You take the next day off, maybe even a month off, after all why not? The money’s coming in anyway, and you’ve worked hard for this..
Right. Sort of. You have worked hard and the beauty of passive online income is that you don’t need to work all the time if you don’t want to, but the real danger is when you don’t work at all for an extended period of time. Because what happens is people start to come up round you, young coders or bloggers who can write faster than you..
People who read about the success of bloggers online, and want it MORE than you ever did. People who are willing to delay sleep and travel and friends in order to get the success you have. And more often than not, they overtake you. Their articles outrank yours, their products become better than yours..
And you’re left right back at the start. So it’s very important to never get too comfortable. Invest the money you make, build new project, diversify. Build assets like real estate, email lists, products, customer lists, brand recognition and so on.
Because if all you’ve built is a high ranking Amazon affiliate site, what’s going to happen?
Someone like me or another, much bigger competitor is going to start a site, and build it faster and better, and push you out. But in a way, that’s motivating! It inspires you to build better, bigger and faster.
Have a balance
That all being said, it’s VERY important to have a balance. After all, the whole point of being a blogger is being able to live a life that we love, and do the things we love, like traveling and whatever else. So don’t forget that, and make sure to enjoy your life as well as working hard at your blog or website. That’s my take on it all anyway.
Inspire YOURSELF!
I’ve always been able to do really good work when I enjoy it. Even when I was a kid, I would do the best work when I really got involved with what I was doing, gave it my all and ENJOYED it. That’s key, and the best thing you can do I think, to success as a blogger is just to find something you really do love thinking or writing about.
Do that, and nothing will feel like work, because it’s what you enjoy doing. Find something that you enjoy so much that you’d happily write about it or do it even if you NEVER made any money from it, and that’s what’s going to bring you success long term.
Right at the start of my blogging career which was still only about 6 years ago, I was inspired by people like Steve Pavlina and other personal development bloggers. These people are still around today and still writing today and that’s what makes a great blogger. You just keep writing and keep finding things that inspire you that you need to share with the world.
How I would start again
If I suddenly had to start everything I’ve ever worked on again from scratch, I know exactly how I’d do it. Now I can’t share too many details because I don’t want to inspire my competition, but once you’ve been writing for about 6 years you really get a sense of what works and what doesn’t work. You know what you should spend time on, and you can look back and realise the things you spent time on that didn’t really matter or make a difference (cough Weebly cough).
In general, it just comes down to finding something you really love, and writing about it, a LOT. Don’t skip out on the details either, make sure to really put in the effort and write the best article you possibly can. After all, you’re competing with thousands of other people who’ve already written articles they think are the best.
It’s tough to enter the market especially with so many other websites talking about almost anything you can imagine, but if you do it right, if you do something you love and keep doing it, the law of averages swings in your favour. You can’t buy or fake passion, and that will really show if you just keep putting yourself out there.
But that also goes the other way, you can’t fake passion. If you’re starting a website with the sole intention of making money, you’ll ALWAYS lose out to the other guy who really cares about what he writes about, and has a passion for the subject. They’ll just be more convincing and fun to follow! Here are some really useful articles about this sort of thing
- Starting a website form scratch (how to start a website in a few minutes)
- Making money doing what you love (Important!)
- Ideas for passive income (Important to build up passive income and active income!)
- Guide to becoming a digital nomad (This is for those who are aiming to be able to work REMOTELY form anywhere, while traveling around)
After all, what would you life to do if money were no object? This is a short video I made to show a few of the places I’ve seen and to inspire people to focus not on money, but on experiences and memories.