{"id":3364,"date":"2015-02-11T09:00:34","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T14:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/?p=3364"},"modified":"2015-02-11T09:53:11","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T14:53:11","slug":"can-make-living-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/can-make-living-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"Can I Make a Living From My Blog?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/money.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-3387\" src=\"http:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/money-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Money\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/money-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/money.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/money-400x300.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Short answer?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Very few bloggers actually make a living from their blogs anymore.\u00a0 Did it happen in the past?\u00a0 Sure, around 2009 or so, blogs were big business.\u00a0 Advertisers were paying a ton of money.\u00a0 But with the advent of ad blocking software (which I don&#8217;t use because they keep websites free) and other forms of advertising, the money just isn&#8217;t there anymore.<\/p>\n<p>Can you make money blogging?\u00a0 Sure.\u00a0 But it&#8217;s not going to be a ton.\u00a0 My goal is always to bring in enough income to keep my blog free.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, that&#8217;s right.\u00a0 My blog is not free for me to write.\u00a0 What do I pay for?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>webhosting<\/li>\n<li>domain name<\/li>\n<li>various plugin services<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It&#8217;s not expensive. It probably comes to about $15 a month or so, but that adds up over the year.\u00a0 Could I blog for free?\u00a0 Absolutely.\u00a0 There are some great blogging sites out there (Blogger, WordPress, even Tumblr) that let you blog for free.\u00a0 But when you pay for your site, you get a lot more control.<\/p>\n<p>How do I make money from my blog?\u00a0 Well, there&#8217;s a banner ad off to the side, but that brings in pennies a day.\u00a0 Most of the money comes from sponsored posts and product reviews.\u00a0 You can tell those from the disclosure.\u00a0 Sometimes I just do reviews of products I like, in which case I let you know.<\/p>\n<p>But I&#8217;m picky about my paid posts.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t want to be one of those bloggers who just shills for anything.\u00a0 So I really try to only support products and companies that I like and use and would use regardless of my affiliation with them.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve used <a href=\"http:\/\/diettogo.evyy.net\/c\/130342\/175357\/3159\" target=\"_blank\">Diet-to-Go meals<\/a> on and off for years when my life gets crazy and I find myself eating frozen meals for every meal, for example.<\/p>\n<p>Did I cover my costs for this blog last year?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Not by a huge margin, but I did.\u00a0 And the extra money I earned?\u00a0 Went straight to my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.z2systems.com\/np\/clients\/ulman\/campaign.jsp?campaign=572&amp;fundraiser=767280&amp;team=646&amp;\" target=\"_blank\">Team Fight fundraising<\/a>.\u00a0 I&#8217;m not in this for the money.\u00a0 I write a blog because I want to.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a great way for me to track my training and my life, and it&#8217;s fun.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve met a lot of cool people through blogging and I&#8217;ve made a number of new friends.\u00a0 It still shocks me when people recognize me through my blog, but I guess my hair does make me stand out a bit.<\/p>\n<p>Either way, blogging is awesome.\u00a0 Don&#8217;t get into it just because you want to make money.\u00a0 Blog because you want to write.\u00a0 I see so many new bloggers saying &#8220;Okay, how do I make money from this?&#8221;\u00a0 That&#8217;s not the point.\u00a0 And I think you will notice when a blogger tries to make a good chunk of money from their blog, one of two things happen.\u00a0 The quality of their writing suffers and you stop reading or the blogger gets burned out and quits.\u00a0 Neither of those is a path I want to follow.<\/p>\n<p>photo by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/68751915@N05\/\" target=\"_blank\">401(K) 2012<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Short answer?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Very few bloggers actually make a living from their blogs anymore.\u00a0 Did it happen in the past?\u00a0 Sure, around 2009 or so, blogs were big business.\u00a0 Advertisers were paying a ton of money.\u00a0 But with the advent of ad blocking software (which I don&#8217;t use because they keep websites free) and other [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Can I Make a Living From My Blog? - Elbowglitter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Can I make money blogging? 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