Can You REALLY Make Money Blogging (Without Blogging About Blogging?)

Q: First, tell us a little about you and your blog income journey –

when did you start, what do you blog about, how much time do you put into it etc. I understand that you’re not blogging about blogging, so talking about your income in specific numbers is something you might not do – but IF you’re willing to share how much you earn on average in a month, we’d LOVE to know.

A: Ooooof, how far back do I want to go on this one? I won’t go too far back.

My most recent journey started up in 2016 when I saw that my wife and brother were really into fitness. I figured since they loved talking about it, that it would be awesome to start a health and fitness blog.

It’s called Thrive/Strive.

Since I was starting this new blog I figured I would share my journey on how I was going to monetize it so I created Obstacle.co as well (a blogging about blogging blog).

For Thrive/Strive it was a bit of a struggle to get things going. The first 3 months we accumulated a total of about 1600 pageviews and they were getting frustrated. Then one day we got 1,000 pageviews and that really changed the path of things.

I have two other blogs in the health/fitness/wellness niche that are doing $2,000+ and $3,000+ a month. Add that to my weight loss membership site that is doing $25,000+ a month + Amazon sales and I’m over $40,000 a month helping people live a healthier life.

(Note: Paul breaks down his exact income streams in his income report here!!)

Obstacle.co was different due to my personality and design skills. Because I was approaching the “how to make money blogging” niche differently so it was easier to find an audience that paid.

From there…well from there I now have 25+ blogs. Some I talk about and others I keep under wraps for a bit since people seem to follow my every move a bit too closely.

With Thrive/Strive we used to spend every hour we could every single day working on it once we found the formula that was working for us. Now? We might spend 4 hours total on it every month as we work on our other blogs.

Pinterest (automated pinning) combined with a strong SEO game has allowed me to put my efforts into my other blogs to grow. In May the site did over 600,000 pageviews and over $8,000 in ad revenue alone.

This just makes up a limited portion of my monthly revenue since I have 8 sites that are making-money with the aim to have 20 by the end of the year.

Q: Why do you think your blog is able to make money when so many others aren’t? What have you done differently?

A: I got out of my own way and realized that when my audience first comes to my site they only care about their problems and that makes sense.

Bloggers tend to make blogging a bit too personal when starting off. I don’t mean their writing but the actual direction of the blog.

They only want to write about what they want to write about. They only want to provide just enough information on a topic that satisfies them.

However, you need to consider what people are searching for. What problems are the people in your audience having?

The only way you can get the attention of people is by helping them out. Sure over time once they have read more of your posts or signed up for your email list they will want to know more about you, but until you get to that point you need to give them what they want.

It’s the simplest business formula in the world and yet so many bloggers fail to put it together.

Q: What was your biggest hurdle to earning an income with your blog… and how did you overcome it?

A: Setting the right expectations for things and having patience. It’s very easy to get caught up in the income reports and gloating in Facebook Groups that people do. It takes you think that you should have that same success but in an even shorter amount of time.

Blogging is like growing vegetables. You know the end result that you want and you see the seeds that you’re planting, but it’s so hard to visualize everything in between.

If you check the plant every single day it looks like nothing is happening with it. You might think nothing is going to happen to it and then one day you see a tomato!

It can be difficult doing the exact same things every single day and not seeing immediate results but being able to be consistent with things and seeing it through always works out.

The only way I was able to overcome it was to set hard goals and track what was I doing to achieve them. If I needed to get 10,000 pageviews, what action was I taking to directly have an impact on that goal?

Bloggers often get caught up spending days or weeks fretting about stuff that doesn’t have an impact on their short term goals. Yes, there is a lot of moving parts when it comes to blogging but you don’t have to do that much to make the first dollar.

Q: Can you share you best advice for how to make money with a blog? 

A: You have to decide early on if freedom or passion is more important to you. What I mean is that if you’re blogging because you want more freedom in your life then the path becomes more clear about what you need to do.

You aren’t going to blog about the best paper to use for business cards, you’re going to find the topics that will make you money.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to blog about your passion but you need to make sure that passion can support your goals and I think that’s the biggest hang up for bloggers. They tend to believe blogging means they can do whatever they want, and they can, but that doesn’t mean they can do whatever they want to achieve the lifestyle they are aiming for.

(Note from Carly: Paul created The Billionaire Blog club to teach people, once and for all, how to make  money blogging. It’s absolutely AWESOME, mostly because of his no BS teaching style and very actionable advice. The BBC is one of the only blogging courses I have ever bought that I felt was UNDER-priced. Check it out here.)

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