How much can you make with a blog?

Well, that is a very subjective question.  I have been writing on this blog for 6 months now, and even though I have advertising on it, I have made $0.  Why is that?  Most likely for the following reasons:

1.  My blog posts are more informative about how to start blogging.  Therefore I usually don’t put much advertising within the posts. 

2.  My posts are usually a little longer and I usually only post once a week.  This leads to fewer overall visitors since the regular visitors have already signed up for the RSS feed and thus know that I only post once a week.  One of the other blogs I write on has much more frequent posting and also has a higher traffic rate.

3.  The subject matter is less conducive to selling a lot of products. 

Blogging is only a function of having Hosting, a Domain, and then installing WordPress (which is free).  After that, you are just looking for material so now I can throw magazines in the mix.  www.GoDaddy.com

This sort of limits my options. BlueDolphin.com, America’s Magazine Superstore

So to answer your question, how much can you make with a blog, it depends on a number of factors.  You have to be able to write great content, have a subject matter that allows you to do reviews of products which usually would lead to a sale or two, and you have to do a lot of it.  The bigger your audience, the better.  But keep in mind, volume doesn’t necessarily mean money.

The blog I mentioned earlier that had the higher traffic level, I had a spike of 162 visitors one day and did not get any sales off that.  The normal traffic level for this blog is about 2-5 a day if that.  As you can guess, 2-5 visitors just won’t cut it if you are trying to make money.  I also have less time to comment on other people’s blogs since I write on 5.  So each morning is essentially taken up coming up with new information for my readers instead of being able to promote my site elsewhere. 

How much money do you want to make is the real question.  Take that number and then start doing so math.  How many sales per month will it take to reach that number?  How many sales per day?  Is it reasonable to assume you will have that many visitors?  Do you already have that many visitors?   I would not assume more than a 1% conversion rate which means you will have to have a ton more visitors to your site than the number you are calculating will actually purchase a product.

Does this help?  How much do you want to make?

Ben
Blogmaster General