Money Online

Last week I have written an article about how many bloggers are failing. Initially I wanted this follow-up to be named “why you should NOT consider blogging if you want to make money online” but I realized that it wasn’t entirely correct, and a better way of putting it would be “why bloggers that do it for the money will never make it”

As I said in the article that I was talking about, it seems like more and more people are tempted to think that “this blogging stuff” must be a really easy thing to do, and they can get rich because of it.

A bad start
Usually this type of “bloggers” chose their niche depending either on how profitable it is in terms of high paying keywords, or on how low the level of competition is in that specific area. If someone dares to make this decision without even analyzing his strengths and weaknesses (remember Swot analysis of a blogger?) it is most likely that he will quit a lot sooner than he would have originally expected.

Here are the most common reasons why people that venture into blogging driven only by the hope of finding a treasure along the way, will eventually fail:

1) They don’t have any kind of expertise in that domain
Without knowing that niche inside-out, they will find themself in a position where either they have nothing to talk about, blog about things that don’t interest anybody, or even worse, say stupid things that make them look like fools in front of their audience (if there will be any). Needless to say that they will not last long, and they will not be making any money.

2) They lack passion
I am not talking only about passion for that specific subject that they have chosen. I am talking about passion for sharing the knowledge with everybody else. One has to feel the “vibe” when he sees the traffic going larger and larger everyday and number of rss subscribers increasing. The motivation must come from there and not from the number of contextual clicked. If money is the first motivational factor, nobody will stick around too long in this “business”.

3) They are not prepared for the hard work
In order to become a successful blogger a lot of sacrifices must be made, especially at the beginning. People must put a lot of time and effort into it, and forget about lots of other social activities. Again, if they do it for the money, they will realize that it’s not worthy.

4) They have unrealistic expectations
When people see John Chow’s monthly income or heard about how much Darren Rose is making, it’s pretty hard not to get the wrong idea. There are actually very few bloggers that got rich because of this (compared to the total number of blogs out there). When these people realize that a job at McDonald’s is payed 6-7 dollars per hour, while it would take months or even years to make that amount of money from a blog, they will quit…

5) They don’t realize soon enough that blogging is not for them
Once the enthusiasm is over, most of them find themselfs starring at the computer not knowing how to start a post and realizing they don’t have the abilities to do it, and that no money will fall from the sky.

But have no fear, several others will come to take their place.

The stats
During the last couple of years, the number of blogs through out the blogosphere has been increasing exponentially (up to jully 2006, technorati was reporting 50 million of them) and this trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

Furthermore, it appears that the main purpose of a large portion of these blogs is to generate income, especially those hosted on free hosting platforms that let you run adsense ads, like “blogger”. This resulted in lots of poor quality content, filled up with tons of ads that probably don’t generate enough money to buy a hamburger.

The cause
I do believe (and this is strictly my opinion) that one of factors that made blogs appear like mushrooms after the rain, is the widely advertised success of bloggers like Darren Rose (there are many others but I think he is the most representative figure for the “money making blogger” type).

It is a well known fact that since he has started the Problogger project, he has made a lot of effort to help bloggers make money online, by giving straight-forward advices and a lot of valuable information. What some may not have realized before actually starting to blog, is that due to his writing skills he makes things seem a little too easy to achieve, when actually it’s pretty darn hard. Although that particular blog is by far not his biggest earner, the word about it has spreaded like fire; seeing how much money he is making, and the fact that he is also revealing the methods to do it, in some people’s minds it triggered the idea that blogging is some kind of easy “recipe” of getting rich quick.

Nobody can deny that through his work, Darren has been an inspiration to many bloggers that actually made it. The thing is, that those people had the qualities to do it in the first place, and the advices given by people like him only helped them find their way to success. I am not going to talk about what are the qualities that bloggers need to have, since it has been discussed a lot lately and there is not much that I could add at this moment (you can read more about it on Dailly blog tips).

The failure
However, given the numbers provided by technorati regarding the total number of blogs, I can’t help but wonder how many “failures” are there. How many have you seen? Probably not many, simply because they lack exposure, and if you accidently stumble upon one, you don’t spend more that 5 seconds there. It would be interesting to have some statistics regarding the number of inactive blogs, to see how big the cemetery really is. If we substract the A-list, B-list, C-list and even D-list bloggers from the total number, there will still be enough “bloggers” to conquer a small country.

Conclusion
Keep in mind that no matter how easy it may seem, making money (online or offline) is never that simple.
Above all, blogging is about commitment, passion, knowledge, creativity, originality, skills, etc., so if you do it only for the money be prepared for a few weeks (or months - depending on how stubborn you are) of frustration and lack of social life.

I am in such a mood that I am even considering writing an article about “top reasons why you shouldn’t consider blogging if you want to make money online”… In fact, I may even do it, unless somebody else picks up the idea and does it first (should have kept my big mouth shut ).