When I was exploring getting back into the blogging game I googled about five hundred times along the lines of: “Is it still possible to make a full-time income blogging in [the current year]?”
And Google AI was like: “Yes! Blogs like HuffPost, NerdWallet, and the New York Times make well over 7-Figures per year! Consistent posting, strong social media branding, and sponsorships will help build a loyal and diverse readership to meet your financial goals! I hope this helps!”
I’d sigh and then scroll down to the SERPS and see “How I Make Six-Figures Per Year With This Blog!”
Okay, click.
Then the first thing I notice: Publishing Date: 01/22/2012 Updated: 01/14/2026.
Again, I sigh. Hardly relevant.
I couldn’t seem to get real answers…or at least the answers I was looking for.
The real questions I was trying to get answered was this:
Can a solo blogger still make a full-time income blogging? Without needing a full-time staff or a team of freelancers? Without being an already established blog that got big 15+ years ago?
The real answer I was looking for was:
Yes, a solo blogger can launch a blog today and, with hard work, make a full-time income of at least $10,000 per month.
But I wasn’t seeing that answer anywhere.
I was seeing a lot of people crying on Reddit about how their blogs were decimated by Google’s “Helpful Content Update” and that blogging was a waste of time for money-getting and some, of course, declared “BLOGGING IS DEAD.”
So, being a good blogger, I decided to go down the rabbit hole and find the answers and then write the article(s) I wished existed, not just for me, but for other people too who are asking the same questions and who want real answers.
Question 1: Is Blogging Dead?
Undoubtedly, you have heard “blogging is dead.” Or the close cousin: “Blogging isn’t dead but it’s near impossible to break through.”
Okay, let’s tackle “Is blogging dead?” by looking at numbers.*
2006 – 50 millions blogs
2010 – 152 million blogs
2015 – 227 million blogs
2017 – 300 million blogs
2022 – 572 million blogs
2023 – 600 million blogs
2024 – 700 million blogs
Obviously, the exponential growth shows blogs are not dead. There are ~700 million of them.
So, Question #1: Is Blogging Dead? No. Blogging is growing.
But what about that close cousin question? That it’s near impossible to break through?
Question 2: Is It Possible To Break Through In Blogging?
AKA–”Is it possible to launch a new blog in today’s environment and grow it to a full-time income?
A quick look at Reddit will show a bunch of crybabies in the blogging threads.
Why?
Because their AI slop blogs were deindexed. Their crappy blogs that relied on SEO trickery have been smashed. When these losers cry about blogging, they really mean: “I can’t manipulate Google and their customers anymore with slop to make money and that’s not FAIR! WAAAAAAAAAH!”
Even old established bloggers are crying. Their old strategies don’t work, and they would rather cry than try to figure out new strategies that do work.
This is all a very normal human reaction to when landscapes change.
It’s true many honest bloggers saw their traffic plummet. But my question is: What are you going to do about it?!
Border’s Books was in a 100% better position to sell books online when Amazon came on the scene, but they didn’t want to update their strategy and they got crushed by a company selling books out of a garage.
Don’t believe me? Just walk to your local Border’s and ask them!
Is it possible to break through in blogging in today’s environment?
Yes.
Absolutely.
Not only is it possible to break through in blogging, more people than ever will be making a full-time income from blogging and will be making more money than ever.
I’ve quietly watched dozens of diligent bloggers breakthrough over the last couple years.
But this is only true for bloggers who realize: The game has changed.
Old strategies of SEO manipulation are out. Articles titled “7 Best Hotels In Thailand” that are 300 words long, half the words being keyword stuffing, are out.
New strategies are in, such as the radical new strategy of trying to be useful to readers!
Like it or not, the only question Google is concerned about is: “Is the customer obtaining the information they are seeking?”
The game has changed.
Are you going to be the blogging equivalent to the slow, stuck-in-their-ways Borders or the fast, innovative, try-new-things Amazon?
Question 3: Should I Be A Blogger?
The obvious next question is “What new blogging strategies work?”
But I want to quickly talk about who should be a blogger because it is important.
(If you know you should be a blogger, skip down to #4.)
(Also, rest assured this isn’t some stupid test that goes “if you are still reading the ‘should I be a blogger’ section it means you SHOULDN’T be a blogger. I am actually here to provide real answers.)
The only people who should launch a blog with the goal of being a full-time blogger are people who love to read and write, or people who like reading and writing and are obsessed with a certain niche or subject. (Disney bloggers come to mind).
You need something to carry you through the long blogging grind: either love of writing or love of niche (or both, of course).
If that’s not you, cool. That’s fine. I’m glad you’re here. You are trying to improve your current situation in life by researching different ways to make online money. You are on the right path, keep going, keep looking.
Me, and others like me, cannot not write. It’s an obsession.
The only situation where I would recommend blogging for somebody that doesn’t like writing is if the plan is to add a blog to your ecommerce website to drive more sales. If that is the case, stick around, you will get a lot of value from this blog.
At the end of the day, for people who love to write, blogging is the best option for making online money.
For people who do not love to write, ecommerce is your best bet.
“How do I know if I love writing?”
There are clues. Do you journal? Do you read blogs, books, and novels frequently? Do you listen to audiobooks on your morning commute instead of podcasts or music? Are you deep in an article about writing and reading the section called “Should I Be A Blogger?” in detail? Do you daydream about that novel you are gonna write someday?
If you find yourself in the “unsure” category, I believe you do love writing but maybe you just lack some confidence, which is fixable in this line of work.
Question 4: What New Blogging Strategies Work?
Gone are the days when you could launch a paper airplane blog and make tens-of-thousands of dollars because you dominate search engines by writing the keyword “Paper Airplane” 1,000 times in a white font at the bottom of each article.
That’s how Alex Schultz, CMO of Meta, got his start. He wrote about it in his very useful book: Click Here: The Art and Science of Digital Marketing and Advertising
I read that book recently and was blown away. It’s basically 90% of my blogging playbook now and is the reason I decided to get back into blogging. I am thoroughly convinced I will reach my $10k / month blogging goal and $50k / month blogging probably isn’t out of the question. Read that book, for starters.
Truthfully, I don’t know which blogging strategies truly work, as I stated throughout the website, this blog is my laboratory. I take action, measure results, and take informed action. Repeat.
However, I do have a strong hunch as to the correct strategies to implement for the New Golden Age of Blogging:
- Obsessing over metrics and data. What is Google Analytics telling you? This has been a massive fail for me in the past. “I just wanna write, bro.”
- Implementing AI. Yup, I said it. For goodness sake, do not use it for writing. Use it to help structure/outline posts, research, analyze data. Writers have, for more than 1,000+ years all the way to today, used assistants to help. AI is now your diligent, loyal assistant. To put it another way, AI is the steroids of blogging. You don’t have to like it.**
- Devouring books on advertising, copywriting, and marketing. You need to know this stuff to go pro.
- Driving traffic from 3rd party sites, including dumb social media channels. The successful blogger will view social media as an extension of the blog.
- Have a North Star metric. Using numbers, what metric will be your focus to determine success? Email sign ups, downloads of an ebook, expansion of the blogging sphere?
- And as always, get people to sign up for your email list. (Make sure to sign up for my email list!)
Question 5: How Do I Make Money Blogging These Days?
While strategies for obtaining traffic and being successful have changed, monetization of a blog has not:
- Affiliate Marketing: Still the #1 way bloggers make money. Challenges lie ahead with the death of the cookie, but technology will find a way to ethically and legally track affiliate clicks. I’m not worried.
- Advertisement Networks: Lots of bloggers turn up their noses at ad networks like Google Adsense, but they will have to reconsider once their blog traffic ramps up and they are eligible for the lucrative Mediavine or Raptive ad networks. Don’t dismiss ad networks out-of-hand!
- Digital Products: Write and promote your own eBook, courses, newsletters, etc. Managing a course sounds like a nightmare to me. Most of us will probably write an eBook.
- Sponsored Content: When your blog starts to roll, brands will approach you for one-off sponsored posts, starting around $500 per post, but $1,000 per post isn’t out of the question. One a week at $500 for a year = $26,000. Obviously, the sponsorship has to fit.
- Services and Coaching: An option, but not a great option for the 98% of us who are extremely introverted.
- Sell Your Blog: Obviously, I will never sell this blog because it has my name on it and I’m emotionally attached to it. But my strategy of creating a bunch of niche, non-local blogs will create plenty of opportunities to sell. A blog reliably generating just $1,000 per month is worth about $24,000. (Make sure to thoroughly document the finances for each blog! You will need this when selling!)
Question 6: How Do I Get Started Building My Blogging Empire?
Yes, you can still make a lot of money blogging.
The game has changed, and that’s a good thing because people who learn the new game (you and me, baby!) are going to do very well.
But you have to start.
Click on my link for bluehost hosting to create your own blog. Once you create an account, let me know via the “contact page” and I’ll send you a Blogging PDF I’m building (not yet ready for release, I will put your name on the list and send when it’s done).
Using just cheapest tier of bluehost hosting gets you:
1 Free Domain
Free SSL
Free CDN Enabled
Account that can host 10 websites (great for the non-local blogging that I teach)
24/7 customer service support
A lot of bang for buck and it’s what I personally use to run all of my sites.
Why Write And Share This?
“If you found positive results and strategies, why share this information with other potential bloggers, who would potentially be competition?”
Good question, and I know you were thinking it throughout this whole article.
A strange source of inspiration for me is Mr. Beast, YouTube sensation. I don’t watch his videos, I didn’t care for the ones I did see. HOWEVER, his strategy to massive success should be emulated among us bloggers.
When he was a nobody, he gathered a group of other nobody vloggers, and together they obsessed over YouTube, sharing information, sharing strategies, holding nothing back. And, of course, Mr. Beast is the #1 YouTuber in the world. But also, the group he came up with was met with success too, amassing millions of subscribers.
You see this in the sports world too. A group of kids come up together and somehow they all go pro.
This is what I envision with blogging.
I want to build a group of bloggers that are dedicated to the craft and who want to go pro. Totally find if, like me, you have a fulltime job and kids. We’ll figure it out.
And no, it’s not gonna be “sign up for my blogging forum for $37 / month!” It’s gonna be free. I don’t know what it will look like yet, but it’s a project that’s in the back of my mind. When I have it more fleshed out I’ll probably write an entire article on what I envision and we’ll go from there.
Also, I don’t believe sharing information with potential competition will hold me back from my goals in the slightest.
- Unlikely we will be writing in the same niche.
- Even if in the same niche, writing styles and personalities will attract different audiences.
- There are about 10,000 successful finance blogs alone, it’s near impossible to saturate a niche in blogging. You don’t need as big an audience as you may think.
- More quality blogs will create a bigger pie.
- I am a missionary for the written word, not a mercenary.
“Missionaries build better products and services—they always win. Mercenaries are just trying to make money, and paradoxically the missionaries always end up making more money.” Jeff Bezos***
Sharing information and best current strategies, in my opinion, is the best path to take forward for all of us to go pro in the blogosphere–I am here to help you, and I hope you help me.
*Source: https://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/is-blogging-dead
**Just to be clear, every single word in all of the articles on this blog have come from my own brain, not AI. Also, authors that use assistants: Stephen King, Tom Clancy (RIP), Brandon Sanderson; James Patterson has a team of writers in which he provides them an outline and then rewrites their final manuscripts and slaps his name on it.
***From the excellent book Jeff Bezos wrote. I found lots of valuable lessons to apply to my blogging, even though it is not directly talking about blogging.