Nigel McFarlane

Why Your Blog is Not Making Money

Written by admin on June 28, 2009

One of the biggest misconceptions about blogging today is that anyone with half a brain can earn big bucks from it, just by posting every so often and tacking up a few boxes of Google Adsense on your site.  Only when one actually starts a blog does reality sink in:  it’s not easy to make money blogging, and just because someone managed to make thousands of dollars within his first six months doesn’t mean that you will, too.

If you’re part of the latter group and would like to know what you might be doing wrong, then this article is for you.  Below is a list of the most common reasons why your blog isn’t performing, despite your best efforts:

1.  You’re jumping the gun:

Blogs take a long time before they can get recognition and be established as a credible source of information for a particular niche.  Because of this, it’s probably going to take a while before you see any rewards from your efforts.  Competition is stiff in the blogosphere, and much of the first months (or the first year!) of your blog will be spent in establishing why you’re different from the rest.  Until you’ve actually made a name for yourself (and your blog), revenue will be hard to come by. 

For some people, it takes only three months before the cash starts rolling in.  For others, however, it can take longer than a year before any rewards seem apparent.  Be patient, work hard at your blog, and your efforts will pay off sooner or later – exactly when that will happen is still a mystery.

2.  You’ve come to rely too much on advertising:

A common mistake among newbie bloggers is to become overeager with advertising in the hopes of earning as much as money in as little amount of time as possible.  The problem here is that excessive advertising is often enough to drive people away from your blog.  Remember that your visitors aren’t dropping by your site to appreciate your current advertising strategy – instead, they’re there under the assumption that you can offer them something new and interesting to read about.

3.  You don’t update enough:

Regular and frequent updating is crucial in making your blog retain a high place in search engine rankings.  If you think you’re doing a good job by updating around three or four times a week, you’re in for quite a surprise.  If you’re just new to the blogging game, you’re expected to update your blog as frequently as possible.  If you can make at least one blog post for each day of the working week, great!  If you can blog even on weekends, even better!  Constant updating pushes search engines to index your site just as frequently, eventually bumping your site up to a higher spot in search engine rankings.

4.  Money is your only purpose:
Bloggers who blog only for the money it promises often don’t meet with a lot of success.  This is usually because bloggers like these won’t think twice about resorting to shortcuts that won’t help their blogging strategy, such as putting up too many AdSense boxes or talking about a popular topic of which they have no substantial knowledge or insights.  It’s okay to want to make money blogging, but you should be passionate about your chosen niche and about maintaining and keeping your blog.

If your blog hasn’t yielded any rewards yet, don’t take it as a sign that your blog won’t go places.  Just stick to the job at hand, fine-tune your strategy, create high quality blog posts, and cultivate both the patience and passion necessary for maintaining your blog.