Why Shouldn’t You Make Money With A Blog?

In the beginning…

Blogging really came to prominence in the early 1990s, mainly as a way for individuals to share their personal observations about the world, in a journal format, with the few other people on the web at the time . Similar to today, most of these blogs were read only by the writer’s family, friends, and maybe a few random web-voyeurs. However, some of these blogs slowly began doing what we call “going viral” today. As with anything on the Web, some of these bloggers began to wonder if there were any options to monetize their blogs.

Enter Google AdSense. I’m assuming that you’ve heard of Adsense, but if not, it’s a Google product that lets you sign up to have advertisements of varying size placed wherever you choose on your website or blog. Soon after, anyone who wanted to make money for their blogging efforts was throwing Adsense ads all over their blogs.

This worked for some. However, there are some big concerns that I have with using Adsense, or ads of any kind on a blog.

Denizens of the blogosphere are more savvy now than they were just a few years ago. If you can get 2% of your dedicated readers to click through, you are way ahead of the game.
You have no say over what ads are displayed. Do you really want to take a chance on having R or X-rated advertisements displayed on your portfolio website?
Ads make a blog look untrustworthy. They turn off your readers and make them question your intentions.
Every time one of your hard won subscribers does click on an ad, they are being directed away from your blog. Is sending people away really a good strategy?

There are much better ways to make money with your website.

There is the method that seems to be very popular at the moment, which involves creating high quality information products such as e-books, webinars, and web courses. It seems like everyone in the blogosphere is doing it at the moment, and newcomers are seen a little bit as “me-tooers”. It requires a lot of time commitment, and there is quite a learning curve, but the results can be quite high.

Another way is to create a subscription site. In this way, readers are actually paying YOU to come to your site every month. Again, though, there is a large investment of time required, and your readers will demand a very high level from you.

In addition, there are times where you can make cash with their blogs for a third party website. In these types of schemes, you are usually a so-called corporate blogger, blogging on behalf of a ncompany on the topics that they give you.

All of these have their pluses and minuses. However, they are all much more effective than plastering ads all over your precious blog. If you really want to become an expert in how to make money with a blog, you should investigate each of these opportunities carefully.