Can You Really Make Money Blogging in 2023?

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Can You Really Make Money Blogging in 2023?

Can you really make money blogging?

But is there any real money in blogging? And, can you still make money blogging?

When I started blogging I was skeptical, to say the least. I mean, who pays bloggers? And what do you write about in order to get paid? To me, a blog was something you did as a hobby – not as a career.

While it’s true there are plenty of personal blogs out there, there are also bloggers making insane amounts of money.

I was curious and went all-in as a full-time blogger. After a rough first year (didn’t make a dime!) I managed to build a six-figure blogging business from scratch.

6 perks of becoming a blogger

With blogging comes awesome perks like being your own boss and working from home. But that’s just the beginning.

Here are 6 perks of becoming a blogger you might not have thought about.

1. Work from anywhere

You can work from your smartphone, tablet, or laptop. That also means you can work from anywhere, including the comfy couch in the living room or a sandy beach if the mood strikes!

2. Set your own hours

Morning person? You can work after you drop the kids off at school. More of a night owl? You can catch a few hours when they’re catching some zzz’s. You’re the boss, after all, so you make all the rules.

3. Make passive income

When you work as a blogger, you really can make money – even when you’re not working! No longer do you trade your hours for money. With blogging, you can make money while you sleep!

4. Grow as a person

Blogging can help you in unexpected ways. For example, it teaches you a lot about personal responsibility. After all, the quality and quantity of your work determines how much money you make.

Blogging can also teach you valuable business skills as you learn how to create and grow a business.

5. Earn a living and replace your 9-to-5 job

Successful bloggers can earn a six-figure income (or at least a living) as a full-time blogger.

6. Give back to others

Being a blogger is rewarding as you get to share your story, inspire, and help others improve their lives.

How much money do pro bloggers make?

How much money you make blogging depends on how you monetize and your traffic. Master both of these and you’re going to have a money-making blog. Just how much money can you make blogging?

If you’re wondering whether you can really make money blogging, just see how these bloggers are making per month!

1. Survival Life – $500,000 per month (survival niche)

2. Pinch Of Yum – $60,000 per month (food niche)

3. Art Of Manliness – $35,000 per month (men niche)

4. Club Thrifty – $25,000 per month (personal finance niche)

5. Sewrella – $10,000 per month (sewing niche)

6. Succulents And Sunshine – $8,000 per month (plants niche)

What we can learn from this mix of bloggers is that you really can make money blogging in different niches, but only if there’s a solid monetization strategy in place.

While these bloggers are making good money blogging, how much can new bloggers expect to make?

How much money do new bloggers make?

Show me the money gif

There’s no limit to the amount of money you can make as a blogger. However, don’t think it’s a get-rich-quick scheme either.

It takes a while to make money blogging. It takes even longer to earn enough to make a living out of it.

But what I love about blogging is that hard work pays off. The amount of money you earn is a direct relation to the amount of work you put in. You can’t expect to half-ass this and make it work.

I’ve seen it time and time again, if you put in the work, you will make money blogging.

Here is an estimate on how much money a new blog can make:

End of year 1: $500 per month

Expect to be making $500 per month by the end of the year with display ads and affiliate marketing. Aim to create 2-3 articles per week so you can end your first year with 100+ blog posts.

End of year 2: $1,500 per month

Expect to be earning $1,500 per month with a mix of ads, sponsored posts, and higher-priced affiliate products. You’re going to work on building up your email list and providing massive value this year.

End of year 3: $3,000 per month

By this stage, you can earn $3,000+ per month by “cashing in” on your email list and promoting your own digital products.

Top 4 ways blogs are making money

Blogging itself doesn’t pay you a thing. Blogging is just another way of saying “content marketing.” Your blog is just the way your business will get attention online, simple as that.

Your job is to turn that attention into money. Here are the 4 main ways bloggers making money.

Display ads

Ads are a good introduction to monetizing your new blog. While you won’t break the bank with this monetization method, you will certainly make a few bucks with display ads.

To get started, you can sign up with Google Adsense.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is when you recommend products and earn a commission if your reader makes a purchase.

The most popular affiliate program (and a good one to get started with) is Amazon Associates.

Sponsored posts

This is when a company pays a blogger to review their product and share their experience. See my guide to getting sponsored posts here.

Digital products

The best way to make money blogging is to cut out the middleman and sell your own digital products.

Examples include printables, ebooks, and online courses.

How new blogs can get traffic

When I started blogging, I wrote A TON of blog posts and got ZERO traffic.

I made quite a few mistakes when I was a new blogger and as a result, my first year of blogging was a total bust.

To make sure you don’t make the same mistakes I made when I was new, I’ve put together 4 tips on how new blogs can get traffic.

Solve problems people in my niche are having

Research (using Quora.com or Google) what problems people in your niche are having. Then create blog posts solving the major problems your ideal reader is struggling with.

Keyword research before you start writing

Once you have a blog post idea in mind, don’t write your article just yet. Identify one main keyword phrase you’re going to target in your article.

You can use an SEO tool like SEMRush to give you an idea on what are the most viable keywords are to target.

Write with a purpose

Don’t just write content for the sake of writing it. Have a clearly defined purpose. What is it that you want to achieve? Get a social share, an email subscriber, or an affiliate sale?

Match your intent with a call to action at the end of your blog post.

Focus on one traffic source

You can’t possibly master more than one traffic source at once. This is especially true if you’re new to blogging. Focus on just one network at a time. For many bloggers, the best traffic source will be Pinterest.

Other than Google search traffic, Pinterest is the best traffic source to get. That’s because Pinterest users are either gathering ideas to solve their problem or are already in problem-solving mode.

To start getting traffic from Pinterest, you’ll need to create “pin images” for your blog posts and submit them to Pinterest.

To create these images, use the free templates on Canva. And if you’re looking for a Pinterest scheduler, try the one I use and recommend Tailwind.

Why you need an email list for a blog

An email list is a blog’s best friend. Here are 4 reasons you need an email list for your blog.

1. You can get return visitors

Most people are just on your blog to get an answer to their question. After they get “the goods,” they leave.

That’s no way to run a business!

What if there was a way to capture that reader’s attention and get them to come back? Oh, there is! It’s called an email list.

2. You can build an audience

It’s difficult to make money directly from your blog posts. After all, a reader doesn’t yet know who you are and why they should give you money.

What you need is trust. And trust takes time to build.

With an email list, you can grow your base of followers and have a direct line of communication with them.

3. You can sell to your email list

Here’s a sample breakdown of how much money you can make by sending one email to your list.

  • Imagine you have 10,000 subscribers on your email list. (By the way, that means getting about 14 subscribers daily for 2 years. You can do this!)
  • Send an email out to your list offering a $250 product like a course or a program. (It’s way better to create your own products, so you reap 100% of the profits. Yes, you can do this too!)
  • If you wrote a good subject line, 30% of your subscribers will open the email. (That’s 3,000 eyeballs on your product.)
  • Your goal is then to get 10% of those people to actually click the link to view your product. (That’s 300 clicks to your product page.)
  • Convert just 10% of those clicks into product sales. (That’s 30 people.)
  • Well if my math is correct, that means sending one email generated you 30 sales at $250 each = $7,500! Not too shabby for one email, eh?

4. And you can sell to your list again and again

If you can successful market a product to your audience once, you can do it again.

You’ll stand to make the most amount of money from your biggest fans. These are the people who will buy everything you create – and then ask you for more.

5. Your email list will be your biggest source of income as a blogger

Now imagine if your list grows twice as big. Imagine if you improve your open rate to 40%. Imagine you increase your click rate to 12%. Imagine what would happen if your conversion rate was twice as good.

Catching my drift? We’re talking serious money here!

Want to start an email list for free? You need to use ConvertKit! Do Six Figures readers can unlock 1,000 free subscribers with ConvertKit by using this link.

4 steps to make money blogging

1. Choose a profitable niche to blog about

If you want to make money blogging, you’ll need to pick a profitable niche from the get-go. If you don’t, trying to monetize your blog will forever be an uphill journey.

2. Set up a self-hosted blog using WordPress

While you can start a blog on free blogging platforms, you’re going to want to have a self-hosted blog using WordPress. It’s the gold standard for building a powerful blogging business.

If you’re on a budget, I recommend starting with HostGator. you’ll get a free domain, hosting at less than $5 per month, and a free WordPress setup.

3. Create high-quality content that’s in demand

Not all content is created equal. You can’t expect to write subpar content and make money as a blogger. To make money blogging, you need content that’s better than your competition.

To create high-quality content, you’ll need to pick the right topic first. To help you choose what topics and keywords to write, you’ll need an SEO tool like SEMRush.

With it, you’ll get insights on a keyword phrases’ popularity and difficulty score, a metric that helps you understand how difficult it’d be to rank for that phrase on Google.

As for writing the content itself, I recommend looking at what already ranks in Google, and making it better. Of course, it helps to have a little help. For that, I recommend installing the free Grammarly browser add-on.

You can also snag my blog post template here to help you write faster blog posts.

4. Monetize your blog

At this point, you have a self-hosted blog and content. The last step is to monetize your blog.

How exactly you monetize your blog depends on your niche, but for most bloggers, a good mixture of display ads and affiliate marketing are a great way to start making money with your blog.

Wrapping it up

If you’re serious about not only starting a blog but creating a real business that makes money, I recommend you look at my blogging courses to help take your blog to the next level.

If you learned something from this article or if it has inspired you to start a blog and make money blogging, I’d love it if you saved it on Pinterest!

Until next time,
Edwin, DoSixFigures.com

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  About > me

Edwin is the professional blogger and side hustle expert behind Do Six Figures. With 20+ years of experience building profitable websites and making money online under his belt, Edwin is now obsessed with helping people find their perfect side hustle and make serious money online.

17 thoughts on “Can You Really Make Money Blogging in 2023?”

  1. Blogging can definitely generate income for bloggers in 2021.

    Many people fail to understand the time and effort required to be a successful blogger which is why so many give up.

    Those who stick with it and write content for a niche can definitely do well if they focus on their audience, keywords and promoting their site.

  2. Great insights! As a new blogger, this is truly inspiring. I have started with email marketing 3 weeks ago and don’t see any results yet, but I’m not giving up! Thanks for sharing this

  3. Hi Edwin,

    What a great post to stumble across as a newbie blogger!

    My mentors strongly advocate blogging and it’s the path I’ve chosen to go down. One point that I really liked in this post as what you said about trust. I think that due to its very nature, a blog lends itself to conversation and building relationships. And, of course, relationships are built on trust and trust stems from relationships. So I think that blogging most certainly has a place in 2020.

    Thanks for the awesome post! 🙂

    Ash

  4. So much inspiration and motivation in this article.To make money with a blog is not that hard these days, especially when many young people abandoned their blogs for social media, is pretty easy to become an influencer blogger and rank high on search engine, that being said, the faster people will discover your blog, the more income you can make with a blog.

  5. Interesting article! I started my blog 30-35 days ago, and already got my first client.

    He paid me $55 to do some design changes on his WordPress website, but I hope I could make some affiliate earnings soon when I have more traffic 🙂

  6. Wow, never realized such specific niches such as sewing or succulents were so popular but that’s great to hear! My biggest issue is finding a niche that is interesting to me and profitable at the same time. Also, thanks for all the convenient hyperlinks, they’re going to be super useful!

  7. It is as was and probably always will be , we uneducated older people with no ability in the internet age , will never be able to profit from that which seems to be so easy to those with the know how , like the invention of many things which made things enter a new age we will have to take a back seat , however I thank you for allowing my rant ..

    1. Nobody ever knows how to do anything before they do it.

      The process is try and fail, try and fail, try and fail until it becomes try and succeed.

      Negative thinking is the real problem. If you don’t think you can do it – you can’t.

  8. You make some interesting points. About having an email list! I feel encouraged about blogging after reading your articles. To me, blogging is a long term goal. And you need a lot of patience to get ranked on google. You make some valid points: Creating your own products, allowing display advertising on your blog, creating a niche, selling affiliate products. etc My site is a review site! I find that there is a lot of competition to get ranked. But I am happy you are prospering Thanks for the great articles.

    1. Thanks for the comment!

      It does take a long time to get a good Google ranking, depending on the keyword.

      My strategy is targeting keyword phrases that have high volume and less competition.

  9. I’ve been reading various blogs lately and it seems like there are a lot of clickbait titles with content that doesn’t really go anywhere. Many of them do not even accept comments anymore which is a headshaker.

    With an increase in mobile device web surfing over the last decade, it’s not as surprising to think that apps and social media get more use these days than blogs. How many people are going to read and comment on articles from their phones?

    I would agree that blogging is not dead. If anything were dead I would say it’s content. High quality content seems much harder to find nowadays.

    I’m familiar with email marketing, but have never been a big fan. I don’t have anything to sell or give away. Generally I would use it to send out the latest content from a blog.

    Any ideas where I might come up with something to sell or give away in regards to my niche?

    1. Hey David, thanks for your comment. For a dog blog, I’d look into creating dog training courses / ebooks.

      Example: https://thedogtrainingsecret.com

      I’d supplement your income by placing amazon links in articles. I’d write content reviewing all the popular dog products like harnesses, food, treats, beds, etc.

  10. Good one. I think I am gonna try blogging. I had one in my arsenal, but never worked on it to write the posts or any content. Guess I will give it a go

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