SNM016: Do Blogs Even Make Any Money?

speaker 0: 0:00 to blog's even make money, find out on today's episode off Serve No master. Today's episode is brought to you by Fresh Books, the accounting software built for small businesses. When you're starting a small business, tracking your money is the most important step. Fresh books is there to help you from day one so that your business never falters. To find out how fresh books can help your business grow, go to serve.

No master dot com Backslash Fresh books Now Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host.

My online story actually begins more than 10 years ago, when I was living in the nation of Japan, working as a high school English teacher. At the time, there was a little block that was shared by all of the foreign English teachers in the prefecture, and I lived in a very small area with less than 150 foreigners, very small number of people who spoke English in the entire area every day.

One of the other teachers would write a block post arm a few days and on average, the block post. Forget about 10 reads a day. No one was interested in No one's reading was very boring. And after a year and 1/2 of people asking me and asked me to share one of my adventures, I finally did. I wrote about one of my craziest adventures.

Some weird things happen when I went out of night drinking the type of things you write about when you're a young guy in your twenties and you're having crazy ventures in another country and no one speaks your language and the really experiences. I wrote a very raw story, a very real story about my experience. Is that just a story like Japan so amazing? The teachers are so wonderful. Everyone here is so friendly.

Instead of like a fake story is who wants to hear that I wrote about my real life, my real experiences, my real friendships. I wrote something very real, and that Block Post received over 1000 views in one day. It's most popular block post ever written for the tiny, tiny little blawg, and after two days they deleted my post. They decided it was too controversial. They said. We don't want an interesting blogged.

This is not a block that was owned by the prefecture was owned by a school. It was just something put together by a bunch of other individuals, and they decided that my posters too controversial. They decided to silence me. This is my first experience with someone wanted to delete my voice and I said, I don't understand. You told me to write a post. You asked me many, many times I wrote you something very real. That's 100% true, its most popular thing ever written.

You're actually getting traffic for the first time ever, and they explained me that none of that matters to them. This is an important experience because I learned that not everybody is interested in success. Not everybody's in business for the same reasons. Lots of people have blog's that they don't want anyone to read. Most people. Probably 90% of people have blocks that way, and that's unfortunate. We'll talk. But more and more about that in a minute about figuring out the purpose of your block determines your results.

They didn't want my voice. I immediately went out and said it my very first block under my own name on Blogger. It was a very long time ago. Long before Google bought and ruin the platform, I set up a little block and rewrote my two stories that have been deleted. I actually wrote a story and follow up story. They end up deleting a boat. I didn't really tell anyone about my blood at the time. It was called Smell my blog's.

I thought that was very funny and very witty. I wrote 45 posts while I was living in Japan, and then I got bored of it. I just wanted my story to be out there. I was very hurt that my story been deleted was very painful for me to have someone say Your voice doesn't matter to us. We don't care what you have to say. We've decided to delete it. That was my first taste of really not wanting people to have power over me or my business.

And this is why when you start out your first block, you don't want to be on someone else's platform. If you have my blog's dot wordpress dot com or block on Blogger, those platforms could decide they want to silence your voice. And this is something People are experiencing a lot on Twitter right now. People build a following on Twitter or Facebook. Discover that Facebook doesn't like what they have to say, and they delete everything.

Or Twitter doesn't like what they have to say, and they delete their entire account. When you give someone else power of your business, they could decide to eliminate you if they feel like it. That's an amazing amount of power to give someone else and something to think about as you start building your business, building your presence online. I started this blogged smile, my vlog, and then I left Japan and it moving away a few months later.

I think that's why I was so comfortable telling really on a story. I knew I was moving away. My two years there was up. I went back to America for a little while for about six weeks, and then I was living in England. I moved to London, where many of my greatest stories happen, and I started a block about my life. There. I used the same platform I was using. Smell my blogging. I started writing about my dating life.

I wrote about my struggles, meeting anyone talking, anyone connected with people, how lonely I felt, how I wanted to figure out how to actually connect with someone. And that journey is actually amazing, because that journey from that moment my block led me to. Now I'm in an amazing relationship. I have two amazing kids. Everything I could ever want is far as a long term relationship. As faras. The destiny of my life has come together.

But it all started out with me anonymously riding on the Internet about my dating experiences, and somehow that log became very popular. I didn't understand as your pay traffic or anything. I was just writing stories about what happened to me, and I made sure I never use anyone's real names. The stories weren't really about the girls, either. The stories were about me. I would write about how I feel about my experiences. I never used anyone's name.

Anything like I was very much what it felt like to walk up to a girl in a bar, trying to talk to and have her reject me. That's about 90% of the stories that were on that block. Eventually, that Blawg became something Maury became popular. I don't how people were finding it, but it started getting one view a day.

I go, Wow, 30 people are month of reading What I have to say That's amazing and then went up to 100 then it became one of those popular dating blog's in the World for a little while was number one on Google for Get a Girlfriend. People were interested in my story and my journey and my efforts to find a girlfriend to find you. Love became very popular, and that turned into the opportunity for me to write my first book for women.

My book Girl Gets Ring, which is still my most popular book to date, sold almost 100,000 copies. Let's help. It sold almost 100,000 copies, and it's helped tens of thousands of women move their relationships forward, find amazing boyfriends, turn the boyfriend's in the fiances and get married. It's a project I'm very proud of, and I tell that story extensively in my book. But the beginning is something I haven't shared before. The start in Japan, I started a blogged because I wanted my voice to be heard.

My first experience of working with someone else would have them silence me, and it really hurt my feelings. I wanted a chance to express myself. My desire was to share my voice with the world. Most blog's don't actually make any money. Most blog's Make a Dollar Mama $2 a month. And if you talk to people who are bloggers and talk about themselves as a blogger rather than a business, that mindset means they're more interested in telling stories and maybe even getting followers.

But they are interested in monetization. If you go to a blogger conference and hang out people that call themselves bloggers, you go into a coffee shop in this field of bloggers, most of them, they've almost become pretentious about not making money. If you say that you started a blogged to support your family or kind of generates or generate income. They won't like that. Look down on you and those are the people that I have no interest in your acting with.

For me, the Internet is a business. I don't like the inner on a personal level. I don't enjoy being a line. I would much rather be surfing in the ocean, playing with my kids, doing other things. I don't spend all day sitting on Facebook. If I don't have work for me that you know it is my job. So it's no longer a place of leisure now. Before I started making my line, I used to enjoy it as a hobby.

But you transition to a space where it's your business. If you talk to most people who are bloggers and have a block out there and find out what they're doing, most of them they're making massive mistakes, not making any money, and I never will. I meet a lot of people all the time was a check out my new block, and I look at their blawg. It's not on their own domain. They don't own it, which means they don't know the content. It's someone else's.

It's not their voice, which means they could never run ads and they could never build anything from it. A lot of people decide to start their first blawg without spending any money, so they set up a WordPress block or they set up a blogger dot com block. But it's not their own domain. They have their name dot wordpress dot com or their name dot blogger dot com their name dot typepad. There's a lot of platform where you could do this.

Those platforms allow people to bloggin them because they make all the money. If you're on that platform and your blood becomes popular, you don't get any of the money. Same thing with tumbler. If you want to be successful, the block. If you want to be part of a block to makes money, you have to start out treating it seriously, treating it like a business endeavor. If you set up a block on someone else's platform, you're saying, Hey, I don't believe in myself.

I don't think I'll be financially successful. And I don't care about this block making anybody those air, the messages you sent to the world into yourself. When you make that decision, it's important to make decisions from the beginning about your destination. If you don't have a destination in mind, your actions can lead you to places you never expected. If you start off with this is the topic I want to talk about. This is what I want a block about.

You may find it's very difficult to make any money. There's many topics that people blogged about that no one cares about. People show me their blog's all the time and probably 90% of the time they're terrible. And what makes them terrible is that their topics. No one cares about many, many people who they're like halfway authors. They want to be an author, but they don't believe in themselves enough to simply upload their book to kindle.

So they start a blogger online, where they write one chapter two time and post it on the block, and you can read the book inside of a block. It's in between being a book in a blogged, but it demonstrates a lack of faith in themselves. These types of logs, almost always on someone else's platform.

I rarely see someone doing the book chapter blogged on their own website If you want to write a book and want to share with the world, and I'm a big fan of that, I'm a big believer in that. I think you should do it 100% believe that you know everything on my block on my website. My books is about publisher of book publishing a book. Go for it, Go for a girlfriend. I believe in you. Just do it. Don't half way it.

If you start with your idea and then try to find the audience, you'll struggle with the block. And this is why most blog's fail. The blog's that succeed start off looking for their audience. They start off looking for an audience, and they look at what that audience is interested in. They study the audience. They study their desires to figure out what those people want to hear about. I'm always looking for blocks to read. I currently only read one or two blog's.

It's very hard for me to find blog's that right about topics I'm interested in right about them well, and have enough content to keep me interested. I'm not gonna follow. A blogger Will has a post once a week I want to find a blogger meets my need. I'm very interested in video games. I don't get to play very much as someone with a new baby up two kids now on the scene.

I probably play video games in our two hours a week if I'm not you very rarely. But I still want to read videogame reviews, video game stories and what things I find interesting is that most videogame blog's air very terrible. The reviews are unreliable. A lot of the stories are about things other than video games that I don't care about. They don't write about video games. That's all I care about is someone who, once you're the story, I want to know what video games are coming.

New. Other price deals coming up. Give me a review of this game. Unfortunately, as has come to light recently, most for your game blog's take a lot of money from video game companies for fake reviews. So they're unreliable. People have tried to jump into that market recently and start new video game blog's, but they don't pay attention to what anyone wants.

They start these blog's one into right to the video game audience, but they start writing about what they care about rather what people want to hear about. They're focused on the wrong message, and that's why I don't read into those blocks. I don't care about someone else's experience. I don't care about a lot of different video game block post types. I only care about one type of content and no sites right now. Provide that for me.

Unfortunately, the site I used to like I discovered they were writing fake reviews. They were given 10 star reviews. Two games that came out were broken. They broke. Trust me, it's the same reason, actually that I don't read Rolling Stone. About 10 years ago, I had an issue of Rolling Stone. I was reading it and they gave this new album a really high review, and everyone knew the album was terrible, and I realized, Oh my gosh, they're giving it a really good review because they're dishonest.

It broke my trust with have a broke my relationship with that magazine, and most magazines do this. Most places do this date. I don't want to upset a sponsor. If you're the right person, you could manipulate reviews, and this is why more and more people now turn to Metacritic and aggregators that take all of the reviews on the Internet, collect them together to show you what people think is a hole. It's very interesting on Metacritic. You can look video games is where it's the most clear.

The most audacious you'll see. A video game has an average review from all commercial reviewers of nine out of 10 and then all reviews combined. Of everyone who plays the game of I have six or seven out of 10. There's often a 10 20 or 30% disparity between where reviewers say and what gamers say, and that's very telling. And it shows me. Most of the people who write broken reviews are lying there, not in touch with their audience. There's opportunity in that market.

People keep trying to jump in, but they don't understand that nothing is more important to me than honest videogame reviews, and they're very hard to find. Unfortunately, when you're looking for your market, you have to find the audience first, and you want to find an audience that can sustain you. I was just talking to a new intern this morning about the difference between doing blog's on the left of logs on the right.

Politically, most people who read left wing Blogger they don't spend very much money, whereas people on the right who are into prepping or into survivalism. They spend huge amounts of money online. They have a lot more money to spend financially. They're more stable. Most people that are on the laptop being left wing blog's are living in San Francisco or there in college. There younger, they don't have as much free cash.

So if you're choosing which market to choose, if you were on the left again, I want appeal toe people in my audience. You'll make a certain amount of money. But if you you know what, I'm gonna focus on the audience where the most money is, and you focused on meeting the need of people on the right and connecting with them, finding out what they want to hear and Jared content makes him happy. You'll make 10 times more money.

Now I'm not asking you to sell your political beliefs. I'm just giving a simple example. If you don't find your audience first. If you start writing about whatever you want, to write about and then look for your audience, you will probably fail. This is why 90% of bloggers fail in this fine dining set of bloggers. Make no money, even if they do everything else right, that massive amounts of content have great pictures. They do all of those other technical elements, right with no audience.

It doesn't matter if you have an amazing store but no customers, you'll make no money. You have to have customers and the amazing store combined. Most bloggers started with the mindset of I just want to talk about whatever I want to talk about. That's their first mindset. Mistake. They aren't interested in correctional ization. It's very hard to start a project that has no financial goals and then turn it into a financial project. That's a hard transition. Most people fail at it.

It's very, very difficult to dio much easier to start off focusing on the financial goal from the beginning. The second problem is that most people simply give up too fast. They don't put in enough effort because they don't think it's a business, which means they don't write very many block post. They don't post very frequently, and then they give up too soon. A lot of log post. Same thing with podcasts as well.

People put up episodes or podcasts or block post for six months, three months a year, and then they just stop. They don't have what it takes to go the distance. Quitting early is the number one cause of financial ruin. He will give up way too soon, especially was writing a block doesn't cost any money. It's not a financially painful proposition. Now. If you're writing a block that no one cares about and you've chosen about topic, maybe need to start over, move in another direction.

That's true, but often times it's the giving up too early that destroys people. Seth Godin calls it The dip. Your It's an amazing book about how you should figure out if you should quit or not. Quit out. Most people quit when they're 10% of the way from the gold, you get 90 yards across the football field, you get 10 yards to go, and that's when you quit. That happens to so many people. That's unfortunate.

To succeed with blogging, you have to start off by developing a financial strategy with any idea. Question number one. Is there an audience? Question number two is how are you gonna make money? The easiest way to make money is to have ads on your block. You haven't entertainment blogger, Videogame blood, maybe have a fill.

It links, which is a link where you send someone to a video game you recommend and you get a commission from the store or tell them to buy from their store, not somewhere else. You could have Google AdWords, which automatically generate ads all over your website, and people click on him and you get a few pennies here and there. You could also sell your own products. Most of what I sell in my blog's products. I created myself.

Advanced training was built on top of what we talked about on these special podcast episodes. When I talked about on the block where I talk about in my book, I'm always trying to create a much content as possible for you. If you look at my monetization strategy, it's mostly built around a little bit of affiliate stuff, but mostly about sharing my own products and share my advanced courses to really help you develop your business without a monetization strategy.

You won't make any money If you don't have an idea for how you want to make money. Never gonna make any which completely makes sense. You also need a have a strategy for your audience. How would the audience actually find you? You know who you want to reach. You know the type of people you want to connect with. How are they gonna find you? They're gonna find you through Google searches. They're gonna find you threw paint traffic. Are they gonna find you through social media?

Are they gonna find you? Because you're right. Guest post are there blog's You do guest appearances. Another podcast. If you have the first few steps dialed in, you have amazing content that your audience would actually love. But you don't make any effort to find your audience. You're depending on luck. You're really struggle. I was talking to a friend last night, was very, very successful in direct marketing. We do a lot of projects together. And he said he wanted to release a new book about his story.

Very similar to my book. Actually saw my book he was reading last night. Got inspired and said, I want to write something similar. Put out a story about how to become so just fall in line like I did. And I said That sounds amazing. He started asking me about the process of becoming successful. Amazon. How I launch a Bug, My strategy. And he was so surprised at how technical it ISS. Most people approach books the same way they approach blocks.

They write a book, it put it recover. That's unreadable. Throw it on Amazon and they're shocked when no one can find it. You have to proactively find your audience. I put a lot of effort into finding my audience. Finding you getting you on this podcast list of my voice was not easy.

I put a lot of effort into getting my voice out there involving guest posts on their blog's building, trapped in my own blawg, launching my book, buying a lot of traffic, running a contest with lots of amazing prizes. All of those elements were designed to help me find my audience and my audience. Reach me. If you don't implement a traffic strategy, you're depending on luck and you know how I feel about depending on luck as a factor in your business.

You have to make the decision right now. Do you want to start a blawg to make money or you want to start a blogger's a hobby? Do you want to write about how much you enjoy paper airplanes? Or do you want to get paid to write about how much you enjoy paper airplanes? That decision will determine the course of your business if you start off in the hobby mindset very, very, very difficult to transition to a business mindset. Almost nobody does it.

If you start off with a financial plan, you can still write about the things you love to write about. You can still tell your stories. You can still connect with your audience an amazing way. But you also can support your family if I don't make money online. If I don't write blood post that people want to read. If I don't write books that people read.

If I don't create products that people will pay for, my Children don't eat as much as it's fun to be pretentious about having a blogged. People who are pretentious like that, or people who are about being a blogger and having audience and never making any money. They have another job. They have to support themselves some of the way I have a family to support. You probably do, too. You need to take care of yourself and you take care of your kids.

Your listen to this podcast because you want financial success. That's the path that I'm sharing with you. If you just want to write on lamb herb log or blogged for vanity, all about how wonderful you are, don't follow me because you're wasting your time. I will not teach you how to do things that don't make money. I don't know how to do that. I have no interest in that. I don't have time for that. This podcast, my blogged, my book, my courses.

They're designed to get you from talking to me to making money as quickly as possible so that you can quit your job, sell familiar income, take care of your family. This is a business for me. I wanted to be a business for you. I'm heavily invested in your financial success. That's what matters to me, and that's my approach to blogged your approach to be the exact same thing. This is a business. I'm gonna treat it like a business, and I have a goal financially to achieve.

And this is one of the tools I'm going to use to get there when you have that mindset, you could have one of the blog's that actually makes money to celebrate the launch of the serve. No master podcast. I'm giving away some at big prizes. You could win an Amazon tap and have me personally turned you into a best selling author toe win. You're part of over $20,000 in prizes.

Go to serve no master dot com backslash contest Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master. Make sure you subscribe so you never miss. Another episode will be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race Hit over to serve no master dot com forward slash podcasts. Now for your chance to win a free coffee of Jonathan's best seller, serve no master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast.

See you tomorrow