Is Blogging Dead in 2021? No, Look At The Numbers
Blogging is one of the best online business to start, if you’re willing to work hard and continuously improve. If you are looking for an overnight success story, do not do blogging. In this post, I’m going to tell you the actual truth about what it takes to succeed with blogging.
It’s reported each year that over 80% of blogs fail. This may seem startling, but it’s true. What’s also so true is the majority of business (online or not) will fail within the first 5 years.
The businesses that succeed are the ones that can adapt. If you can’t adapt, you will eventually fail.
Let’s take a look at my blog for example. Below is a screenshot of my Google Analytics at the time that I’m writing this post.
As you can see, I’m starting to improve my organic traffic from Google. It’s been roughly 3 and 1/2 months since I started this blog and I’ve written over 40 posts.
It can be very unmotivating to see myself spend all those hours writing tens of blogs just to get less than 50 views total.
Am I discouraged? No, because I understand how long it takes for blogs to rank on Google. It will take nearly 9 months for this blog I write to get its maximum traffic on Google.
If a new blogger starts with the idea that they will succeed in 6 months, of course they will quit. Their blogs won’t even rank until it’s almost a year on Google.
If you don’t understand how blogging works (and most new bloggers don’t), it’s very easy to give up after a few months.
Realistic approach to blogging:
If you get anything out of this blog, let it be this section. Many bloggers often fail because they don’t have realistic standards for their business. They think it’s either all or nothing. I either make $5,000/month from my blog or it’s trash.
No, this is a terrible approach and you will never succeed blogging like that.
What you need to do is focus on the week/month at hand. Once you do that, you can always adjust and improve your blogs.
You can literally write blogs for eternity. Quitting your blog just means you’re not willing to write your next blog.
My approach:
Here’s the approach I followed for my blog so far.
- Month 1: Get site up and write 10 blogs
- Month 2: Write 15 blogs, learn more about how to do SEO for blogs.
- Month 3: Write 15 blogs, keep learning about blogging. Check out income reports from other bloggers.
- Month 4: Write 15 blogs, see what worked before with other blogs and keep improving
In addition to that, I purchased a $450 course from Income School and spent hundreds of hours learning about blogging.
I’m not saying you need to do all of that, but I’m committed to making my blog succeed within the next 2 years. I won’t even see the real benefits of the work I’m doing right now until next year.
I will update this section in about 3-4 months, so you can see the growth I’ve had.
Right now, I’m almost at my 4th month of blogging and my traffic is still very low. If I had 0 traffic, I would still continue publishing because I know blogging is a long-term business. Once I actually have an audience, I won’t need to blog nearly as much as I do now. This is because my older blog post will continue to bring in thousands of page views each month to my site organically.
Take a look at blog income reports
The one thing I love about blogging is that the industry is very transparent. There’s basically no other industry that shares their business data like bloggers do.
Go look at any blog income report and show me a blogger who succeeded in 6 months. It just doesn’t happen unless you’re bringing traffic from social media sources.
It usually takes until the end of the 2nd year or beginning of the 3rd year for the blog to produce a full-time income. Take the time to read the income reports where the income was $0 or a few dollars. The bloggers will show you how they felt in that month and what it took them to succeed.
Here’s a few blog income reports and the amount of money they make each month. I’ve linked each one’s first blog income report to their site so you can see how they progressed. This will show you nothing happens overnight.
- Ryrob.com: Over $30,000/month
- Believeinabudget: Over $20,000/month.
- Finsavvypanda: Over $20,000/month
Is blogging dead?
No, blogging is not dead because the revenue opportunities for bloggers are increasing. If blogging was dying, you would see established bloggers selling their blogs or transitioning into something else.
If I started this blog in 2015, would it be easier? Of course, but there are so many opportunities for bloggers to make money today in comparison to 2015.
The one thing that is harder is how much longer or how much more effort it takes to establish your blog. Once you have an audience, you don’t nearly have to work as hard as when you were starting out.
If you really want to know if blogging is dead, follow the numbers. Check how bloggers make money and see if those sources are getting smaller or bigger.
When an industry is dying, the demand for it is what’s dying. In contrast, blogging as a skill is only becoming more lucrative. Many bloggers are making a full-time income off of one revenue source alone. Let’s explore the ways bloggers make money, you can decide for yourself if blogging is dead or not.
How do bloggers make money?
Below are the primary ways most bloggers make money. Each one alone can be enough for a full-time income with enough traffic.
Ads:
Ads will likely be one of the first revenue sources for your blog. Once you reach a certain amount of baseline traffic, you can sign up for Google AdSense or another ad company to start making money. They will often pay you a rate per 1000 views. This rate can be higher or lower based on the type of audience you have.
A blog that is mostly centered around finance will have a higher rate than a blog that is focused around music. The more lucrative your audience is, the higher your rate will be.
Until you start getting tens of thousand of views, the money from ads won’t be lifechanging by any means. Once you start hovering over the 50,000 page views or 100,000 page views per month, you can sign up for premium ad networks that can pay much better.
If you have an established blog with over 100,000 page views, you can expect to make a few thousands dollars each month just off of ads alone.
Affiliate revenue
Affiliate revenue is one of the best aspects of blogging because it has no ceiling. Affiliate revenue is basically when you promote another product and your reader purchases it from a company. That company will give you a slice of each sale and that can add up when you had a sizable audience.
You can literally sign up for hundreds of affiliate programs and get affiliate revenue each month from promoting each product. As you continue to write content that promotes these services, your affiliate income will continue to grow.
Many bloggers with established blogs make thousands of dollars per month off of affiliate revenue. Some even
Consulting/professional services:
Providing consulting and/or other professional services in your blog can be a very lucrative way to monetize your blog.
When you create your blog, you will generally focus on one or a few topics where you can show your expertise. Once you create a solid foundation for your blog with a number of topics in a niche, you can provide consulting or similar services to your audience.
Let’s use my blog as an example. I’m a freelance writer by trade, that’s what pays my bills. I write some blogs on how to do freelance writing, how to hire freelance writers, etc.
I can write a lot of content that is tailored towards companies that are looking to hire freelance writers. When the companies find my content, they can see that I can write well and write content that ranks on Google.
I’m automatically setting myself apart from other writers. Instead of going out to find clients, I can attract clients organically to find me with SEO.
When you position yourself as an expert in a niche, you can charge premium prices and work with only the best clients. It takes some time for your content to rank, but when it does you can get a steady stream of organic work. This can easily be thousands of dollars in revenue each month.
Info products
Creating your own product can be the most lucrative way to make money when blogging. Info products are products you create for your audience like courses, ebooks, etc. These kinds of products help fulfill a need for your audience.
In my case, an info product would probably be a course on how to blog or how to sell on Amazon. Since these are what I primarily cover in my blog, I can create a super helpful info product that will help bring value to my audience.
Info products are probably the best passive income streams in blogging. This is because you can create an info product once and get revenue from it for years.
If you take a look at the blog income reports for established bloggers, you will often see an info product that generates many thousands of dollars each month.
The success or failure of your info product will likely be tied to how well you served your audience. If I write poor blog posts and decide to launch an info product, I’m setting myself up for failure.
In contrast, if you write helpful content, answer your audience’s questions, build an email list, etc., the chances of your info product succeeded dramatically increases.
Sponsorships:
Bloggers can make money by doing sponsored posts for a brand or company. A company will find the content of a blogger and offer a certain amount of money in exchange for a blog post.
This can be very lucrative depending on the types of sponsorships a blogger has. Some maintain long-term relationships that can generate thousands of dollars in sponsorships.
As the owner of your blog, you can set the rate at which companies will pay for a sponsorship from you. Some bloggers had an “Advertise here” page on their blog to entice companies to become sponsors of the blog. In exchange for money, the company gets exposure on your blog.
Many experienced bloggers have sponsorships as a key revenue generator for their blog. The better the audience you have, the more lucrative the rates can be for sponsorships.
Final thoughts:
Blogging is a long-term business. The people who end up succeeding with blogging are those who have long-term visions for their blogs.
If you are expecting to succeed within 6 months of blogging, you’re setting yourself up to fail. There certainly are outliers who can succeed in a short time, but planning for short-term success will lead you to quitting.
Your goals should not be a specific revenue target. Instead having a goal like publishing 100 blog posts will give you a much higher chance of success than aiming for a random number.
Additionally, it’s important to treat your blog like a business. If you don’t have a set publishing schedule or goals to reach each month, you will likely fail.
Take my blog for example. I have a long-term vision to build this blog over the next 10 years to become a 7-figure blog.
Whether I start making money in 6 months or a year doesn’t really much in the big picture. Instead, I need to focus on building a foundation of great content for my site. These efforts will compound once my blog is established.
In order to succeed at blogging, you will need a long-term approach. If you start building your blog today, you can definitely make serious money in 2-3 years. You can follow my blog income reports to get a real expectation of how much work it takes and what results you can expect each month.