Self Employed or Bust

Is Blogging a Money Solution to a Layoff?

February 24, 2009 – 1:40 am

Things are downright scary out there. Some of you may have already lost your jobs. Others may be living in fear of the possibility of a layoff. Whichever case describes you best, you may well have found your way here looking for answers or hope. Can you make money online? Can you start a profitable niche blog? Can you free yourselves from the shackles of uncertainty to which you’ve become so accustomed by shifting your focus to becoming self employed? To all those things I say “yes!” But, I also say, “…but…” 

Yes, you can make money blogging. The methods I’m slowly experimenting with here do work and the brilliant internet marketing geniuses I’ve referenced in other posts will show you how to do it. Free of charge, no less. It won’t cost you a dime to learn their methods and your expenses setting up your blogs will be next to nil. Remember, I’m not one of the gurus. I’m a just a guy trying their methods and finding them sound. How sound? Well, my earnings are pathetic by the standards of anybody trying to make a living at this but I’m realizing 30%-96% (yes, 96%) growth every month. 

Do the math, folks. Actually don’t bother. I did the math in my post on the Importance of Earnings Growth in which I admonish those practicing niche blogging not to focus so much on their earnings but on their month to month growth. And I’m happy to report that my estimates are bearing fruit. I’m a living, breathing example that this stuff works and I learned it all free of charge.  Come back here in 2 years and I not only hope to be retired from my day job, I EXPECT to be retired. 

What really burns me is that there’s always some internet earnings failure out there more than anxious to tell you that there is no money to be made with blogs. While I’m equally annoyed by the unwarranted make millions blogging overnight garbage out there (and, yes, it’s prolific), at least there’s some hope in that lie. But when you read something like the recent Daniel Lyons article over at Newsweek, you’re left wholly defeated and demoralized. Heck, if this guy couldn’t do it while posting 10-20 times to his blog a day and bringing in 500,000 visitors (in a single day!) then what possible hope do I have?! 

And that’s the frustrating part because Daniel, despite his talent, potential and impressive dedication, apparently doesn’t know the first thing about making money blogging. Or at least, he doesn’t know enough to earn enough to become self-employed. He’s selling an apparently authoritative opinion on how there’s no money in blogging and deflating thousands of self-employed wanna-bes in the process. Now for the shocking reveal… for most of us, he’s right. There is no money in blogging for all but the precious few elite. What Daniel is missing is that blogging isn’t the means to financial independence. Internet marketing (with blogs as a delivery vehicle) is where the money is made. Bloggers don’t make money with blogs. Internet marketers DO make money with blogs. Guess which one Daniel is? 

I almost didn’t write this post because one of those niche blogging geniuses I was mentioning already dissected Daniel’s mistakes over at his Make Money with Adsense blog in a post titled Adsense for Beginners. I highly suggest you read what Griz has to say about where Daniel went wrong in his efforts to make money blogging and I strongly suggest you believe every word Griz has to say. The man knows his stuff inside and out. Enough about Daniel’s mistakes, though. The point is, there is money in this medium and my first objective was to try to convince you not to let the nay-sayers (be they “pros” like Daniel or your even your own family) steer you wrong. Now for the injection of reality. 

But (you knew we’d come back to the “but” word), the problem with niche blogging is that growth over time doesn’t do a damn thing for you if you’ve just lost your job and come here looking for salvation. I would love to see living proof of an overnight internet success. I would love to point you in the direction of a number of people who have found the formula to build a blog (or set of blogs) and turn them into legitimate, bill-paying income vehicles in under a month. I just don’t think they exist. Or, if they do, I think they were just so damn lucky (or experienced) that they don’t represent realistic aspirations for the novice blogger. 

The majority of the repeating successes out there (folks who do this for a steady living and can repeat their successes on demand) grew into this. Their success is measured, at the very least, in terms of months or even years, not days or weeks. Why? Earning steady internet income through most mediums (blogs, niche blogs, websites, reseller stores, etc) takes work and time and requires the following: 

• Profitable product - either your keyword has to attract paying advertisers or you have to be selling a product that is in demand. 
• Traffic - If people aren’t coming to your blog or website to click on or see your ads or purchase your product, you might as well not be selling anything at all. The more traffic the better. Getting that traffic requires both an interested audience (customers) and - 
• High placement in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page). This is where your page shows up when somebody searches for the terms your blog targets. If you’re selling gizmos and so are hundreds of competing websites, the only way you win is if somebody searching for gizmos finds your page first and that means you need to rank high in the SERPs. Anything beyond page 3 might as well not exist. Anything on page 2 may get some love. How often have you dug deeper in Google than page 3 for something? Page one is the place to be and, ideally, you want to be number 1 on page 1. Getting there requires several things including… 
• Age - An aged site is going to carry more authority than a brand new site and is more likely to rank higher. You can beat older sites easily enough but, all else being equal, two sites with everything identical but one being older, the aged site has the advantage. 
• Targeted keywords - Somebody hunting for yellow gizmos is more likely to find a website which is dedicated specifically to yellow gizmos on page one of their search. If you’re targeting all the gizmos in the rainbow on your blog or website then it’s likely your yellow-gizmo-focused competitor has more keyword density dedicated specifically to yellow gizmos than you do and, therefore, it is more likely he’s on page one for the search term yellow gizmos. 
• Backlinks!!!! - Nothing matters more. I link to Griz’s websites because I consider him to be simply one of the best resources out there for how to make money blogging. I’m hardly the only one doing this. There’s a virtual army of us out there who so respect his approach and so value his information that we routinely link to one of his blogs. Google sees this as a vote of confidence that Griz is an authority on the keyword terms we use to link back to him. More accurately, back links represent his site’s authority. The more targeted keyword links you have coming into your site, the higher your site climbs in the SERPs. It’s the single most important element to growing a blog into something with the potential to make money. 

There are other important elements such as search engine optimization and networks which further contribute to your blog’s potential but I don’t want to focus on the details in this post. What I want you to gather from all of this is the simple reality check that making money blogging isn’t something you do overnight. You build your blogs, your network, your backlinks, your authority, your page rank, your traffic, your paying advertisers and any number of required elements over time. Some manage it faster than others. The experienced gurus can pull off many of the listed items in a shockingly short amount of time (with the exception of age). But even they require time before their creation reaches its full earnings potential and even they will acknowledge that sometimes, what seemed like a winner idea, turns out to be a dud. The good news is that a select few of them are out there giving away this information and that means you can speed up your own success without going through all the trial and error they had to endure. But even so, it won’t happen for you overnight. 

So I’m sorry to say that if you’ve been the victim of downsizing, cost cutting, reduction in force, layoffs, bankruptcy, any of the painful and tragic realities so many of us are facing these days, I’m not here to tell you that blogging is the solution to your money woes. In the short term, it isn’t, and you’re better off focusing on hitting the streets and trying to find a regular “legitimate” job for now. 

But, (there’s that word again) when you’ve wrapped up your search for the day, circled all the places you’re going to send your resume to tomorrow and had your last interview of the afternoon, instead of wallowing in your misery, why not get started with internet marketing? Why wait? If you’re here reading this, you clearly have an internet connection and that’s all you need to get started. Get your first freebie blog going on Blogger or Wordpress (after reading about keyword research over at Griz’s sites). Hell, get a couple blogs going. With a little luck, in a year or two, the economy will have stabilized. And while everybody else is still a little gun shy about the next big collapse and just happy to be slaving under some ungrateful CEO, you’ll be well entrenched in the internet marketing process with a healthy internet empire and well on your way to early retirement, self employment and the freedom of knowing that nobody can ever cut your job again. It isn’t hope for today, but it is certainly something nice to dream about for tomorrow, right? 

And know that, though I may never meet you, you and your family are in my prayers. Being jobless is a tough spot to be in. Hang in there and keep at it. A new beginning may be just around the corner at your next interview.

Stumble it!