Full Time Income from Part Time Blogging?

I was inspired to write this post, by reading Probloggers entry (full time income, part time Blogging). Problogger is one of the few blogs on blogging that I read.

My Situation

I’m supposed to work as a teacher, teaching economics 30 hours a week. Sometimes, I work less because my students don’t turn up. If they don’t turn up, I used to waste my time wandering around Oxford. But, a couple of years ago I discovered blogging and realised I could be actually earning money from blogging, rather than just sitting around aimlessly. More about myself on the about page

How I got Interested in Blogging.

I became interested in building websites in 2003. I had no idea of making money from websites; in fact I probably disliked and looked down on the idea. My first website was Poetseers.org – a non profit making site on poetry. It gets upto 16,000 unique visitors a day. It was here that I learnt how to gain traffic to a site. Then I thought, if I can get traffic to a poetry website, why not get traffic to a site on Mortgages and make loads of money?

To be honest, I didn’t expect much. I thought, there are already lots of sites on Mortgages and I’m probably too late. (It’s really funny that at the birth of the internet, people somehow think they are too late to start a blog! – What about the people who will be starting sites in 50 years time?)

Early Encouragement.

After about 6 months of blogging for income, I finally made the first $100 from Google adsense. (Notice how long it took to get my first $100 – that’s a really poor hourly return.) But, I wasn’t thinking of the hourly rate. I was just enjoying blogging. Then after a few more months, things started to take off – I was earning $300 a month. Then I had this thought. If 2,000 visitors a day brings me $3 a day. Then all I need to do is to get 20,000 visitors and then I should get $30 a day. All I needed to do was to create more pages and more blogs!

Multiple Blogging

Without really thinking of a long term strategy I began to start new blogs on: economics (I’m an economics teacher, and I actually had lots of revision notes I could put straight onto a site), cycling, Gardening, Blogging, House prices, Housing Market, How To grow potatoes (yes, I really have a blog on how to grow potatoes), Biographies of people, Remortgage quotes. Somehow I ended up with 15 blogs. See my other blogs.

To be honest, there are only 5-6 which make any significant money. Quite a few I have allowed to quietly die. But, I do enjoy having multiple blogs. When I get tired of writing about mortgages and finance (which is quite quickly) I will write some posts about cycling (which I enjoy much more because it’s my hobby). My gardening blog makes a bit of money, but, I mainly do it because it’s an outlet for my amateur photography.

Two Blogs on One Site.

For quite a few sites, I have two blogs per site. And often a third section of static pages. This is because I use one blog for building RSS subscribers and another blog for meeting other targets like posting a lot.

Mistakes along the Way

1. Not starting a product blog (- cycling) earlier. This will be my best blog because.

• I enjoy the niche the most
• It is profitable because you can blog about products and make affiliate sales.

2. Over reliance on Google adsense for earning.

3. Using Blogger blogs. Wordpress is much better than blogger, especially if you use FTP publishing on your own server.

Myths of Blogging

1. You need a huge RSS subscriber base to make money online. I am trying to increase my RSS subscribers because it is definitely a good thing. But, you can make money online even with a modest number of subscribers. e.g. my finance blog has 79 subscribers but, makes a very good return (1,000% more than Netwriting which has more subscribers)
2. Static Sites are no Good. About 30% of my pages are static. Static pages can have some advantages over blog entries. I continue to create static pages in addition to blog entries.

Is it Good To Blog About Blogging?

No.

If you want to make money from blogging, don’t start another ‘ blog about blogging’. This blog Netwriting has a reasonable number of subscribers, but, a very low income compared to my other blogs. It makes perhaps 0.5% of my total income. But, I keep posting, mainly because I enjoy it and perhaps is useful to some. At least, I am blogging from my personal experience of what has worked for me. In many ways, this is different to some of the A List Bloggers. Hopefully, people will appreciate there are more than one way to make money online.

Do You Enjoy Blogging?

Yes, More accurately I enjoy writing and taking photos. I don’t particularly enjoy networking, which is why I don’t really do very much. My most successful blogs like Economics and Cycling have practically not networking involved. I just post and totally forget about things like social networking sites – they are just a waste of time and unnecessary for these blogs.

So How Much do you earn?

I have to admit to being rather reluctant to disclose figures – its some kind of British reserve or something. It is not quite true to say I make a full time income from blogging. My monthly income is just under $2,000 a month. But, the important thing is the growth over the past 12 months. If this growth continues, I will be retiring from teaching in 1 to 2 years. I will then spend more time cycling and blogging. It’s hard work having 15 blogs and a full time job; but, at the same time it’s the best financial investment I’ve ever made.

• Basics of Affiliate blogging
• Making Money Online
• My blogs