So you want to make money blogging?

If you are trying to make money blogging, you need to first realize that you are among millions of people doing the same thing. At last estimate, there were 45 million active websites. The average number of pages per website was around 1,500. You can do the math and realize that to get noticed on the Internet is not a small task. And that's just to get noticed. Once you have traffic, it is no guarantee that you will make money as well. Getting traffic and getting conversions from your traffic (i.e., sales) are very different things.

When blogging hit the scene, I think it was a popular belief that this fundamentally changed the rules of ecommerce. Now anyone could hang up their blog and call themselves a blogger. Once their blog was functional, the masses would flock to hear what they had to say and the money would start pouring in. Perhaps those days did exist briefly at the beginning of the blogging craze. Perhaps. But I will be the first one to tell you that they are long gone. If you are brand new to blogging, please read this again. For all of you others who are here because you have learned this the hard way, keep reading.

So what are the secrets to make money blogging online these days? I've done my best to scare you into understanding that the money will not come easy. But if you are still reading, you are probably still interested. Well the first secret to make money blogging is to understand that there really is no BIG SECRET. I see so many people running around the forums looking for the magic answer. I understand. I feel into that a bit myself when I started online. There is just so much hype out there, it's easy to think "well, I just don't know the big secret." Again: There is NO BIG SECRET.

Making money online is a long, hard struggle. It's really starting your own business. Even at a very small scale, blogging for money is a small business. You will have revenue (Adwords and other advertising opportunities) and you will have expenses (hosting, advertising, link-building). What other business in the world would someone try to start with absolutely no money? And if they did, most people would think they were crazy and doomed to failure.

So I doubt this was the kind of post you were looking for as you searched for ways to make money blogging. But it is the kind of post you needed to hear, trust me. You can get into the tactical stuff (selecting your niche, writing good quality, search engine optimization, link building, pay per click and all the rest) only after you have your head on right about what blogging is and what blogging isn't. I see this more out of alignment around the issue of making money than anywhere else.