Imagine waking up with affiliate commissions, ad revenue, and digital product sales; all while sleeping. This isn’t a dream, but a possibility, and a reality for many.
Yet that so-called passive income doesn’t happen overnight, as you may have guessed. Few bloggers reach the “making money while you sleep” stage because to get there requires optimization and sacrifice. It’s been said 80% of blogs fail within the first 18 months. The reason many blogmasters walk away is because sustained blogging is hard when results aren’t forthcoming.
Blogging Passive Income Requires Optimization
I wish making passive income it was as easy as launching a blog and then writing a bunch of articles (even though that’s exactly what I recommend when starting from scratch). It’s obvious a blog needs content, and a lot of it. Optimization of a blog is pointless if there is no content to optimize for.
However, once the content exists, the blogmaster needs to get traffic and an audience to read those wonderfully crafted blog posts. How?
By optimizing the blog.
Niche And Keyword Selection
I know it’s boring to see yet another blogger talking about niches and keyword selection, yet the fact that every blogger who has the type of success you want talks about niches and keywords should be a clue that this is important.
You must select a blogging niche that actually has a shot at making money. While you could probably make money in almost any niche, it should be carefully considered as to whether:
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It’s a subject you know well or could at least learn well.
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It is not overly saturated (if you are gonna launch a personal financial blog you better have a very unique angle).
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There is a readily available way to monetize the blog.
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Just because there is a “gap” in the market doesn’t mean a blog should exist there (e.g. a blog selling combs to bald men).
Understandable if you don’t want to buy a keyword planner tool right off the bat. That’s okay. A lot of good information can be figured out by asking “what would people search in Google that would lead them to my article?” and also googling keywords and looking at the “people also ask” questions Google always lists. These are things people at the top of the blogging game do on a daily basis.
Content Creation Systems
You should use WordPress as your CCS (content creation system). It’s the best. It powers about 43% of all websites in the world. If it’s good enough for the New York Times it’s good enough for us.
WordPress is free and flexible. It allows you to build an infinitely complex website or a lean and mean blog like mine, which is what you need to go for as a solo-blogger–lean and mean.
A solo-blogger cannot fight and win against a big, established website like the New York Times or a finance blog like Nerdwallet. Our victories come from niche selection (as discussed above) and having a lean and mean CCS optimized for speed.
SEO Optimization
You must make your blog visible to Google and Bing via SEO (search engine optimization). The simplest starting point, and my recommended starting point, is on-page optimization.
Notice the title sections on this blog post? The title is a H1 Tag (Header 1). The “Blogging Income Requires Optimization” title is a H2. Then the smaller headings under that are H3 tags.
All blog writing must properly use header tags because it is large part of how search engines make sense of what the article is about. No header tags or improper use of header tags means your articles will not appear in SERPs (search engine results page). Header tags also help your readers navigate your articles, so it’s not just writing for machines.
There are about a hundred other SEO strategies, but start with the lowest-hanging fruit that produces the biggest results. Another easy one is ensuring your articles are interlinked with each other to other relevant pages so your blog is a web. It helps readers find related information they are interested in and it helps Google crawl your site, improving rankings.
Traffic Diversification
Respect Google, but don’t rely on them. You must have other sources to obtain traffic from. This means third party platforms. While you do want to eventually want to have a presence on all of the big platforms, start with learning how to do one well and build a real presence there.
Choose the one that seems most aligned with your blog and go. Pinterest, Linkedin, X, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok. One platform that you do not have an option to skip is YouTube. The thought of trying to be a YouTube star makes me sick and probably makes you sick too.
Luckily, that’s not what we are going for here. You need to build a simple channel there that connects to your blog posts. Every blog post needs a corresponding YouTube video that links to it in the description area underneath the video. You channel can even be faceless. But you have to be on YouTube.
Monetization Stacking
You need more than one way to make money from your blog. I’d say two ways would be the minimum.
One of the ways must be with affiliate links. This has been the number one way blogs make money for about two decades and it’s not gonna change. It’s as simple as linking to a book on Amazon (although that won’t get you rich). Ideally, you can find an affiliate program that matches with your vision for your blog that has 30%+ commission rates.
The second monetization must either be display ads, sponsorships, or your own products. Everybody hates display ads, but if you have a lot of traffic it’s usually either the top earner or second top earner. Pick a couple and go.
Optimization never stops.
Blogging Passive Income Requires Sacrifice
The blogging powers demand sacrifice. If you want to win the blogging game the only way to do so is through sacrifice.
Time Sacrifice
Yes, there is time sacrifice. Luckily, the blogging powers did not specify what type of time we have to sacrifice. I sacrifice low-value Netflix time to the blogging powers and they think that is A-O.K.
Mainly I wake up early and go to bed early, most of my wasted time happens at the end of the day when I’m tired. So I came up with a simple solution–I go to bed early. It does wonders.
Financial Sacrifice
We’re not talking BIG financial sacrifices. They are pretty small, really. A hosting plan (via my Bluehost partner referral link) is only $3.99 a month and comes with a free domain name. It’s more expensive without a partner referral.
Then there is the theme. It’s what readers actually see when they read your blog. If you need to, you can get by for a bit with a free theme. But if you are gonna go pro you need to have a pro theme. I use and recommend DIY Themes’ Focus Theme, brutally efficient and effective. It’s the absolute best theme for solo-bloggers, other big sites rely on big clunky, slow page-builders. Focus gives solo-bloggers an edge.
Lifestyle and Opportunity Cost Sacrifice
Yes, you will have to give up your hobby. I love rocking on my guitar, but learning a new Lynyrd Skynyrd song is gonna have to wait. I really want to train for an Ironman, but that is gonna have to wait too.
There are no time for hobbies if you want to go pro in blogging. Fortunately, it’s a temporary sacrifice. Once your blog slides in to replace your 9 – 5, you’ll be able to pick up your old hobbies, and more.
Emotional Sacrifice
I will tell you this from personal experience. Blogging will make you a bit emotionally distant from your loved ones. It’s not something I like, but it’s true. So much of my mental bandwidth is spent thinking on the blog. Conversations become more difficult because my mind keeps floating to the blog. Hanging out becomes a bit strained because I know time is ticking and I need to get work done on the blog.
Just be aware of this. You will have to mentally fight it. For most of us, we are building blogs to give our families a better future. Just remember to be there in the present too.
Health Sacrifice
You’ll get fatter. Yeah, I said it. You’ll be trading morning workouts for morning writing sessions. The main part of this sacrifice comes at the beginning when you are building up the blog. It takes a lot to get a blog to lift off. But once you get the blog squared away and find a reliable writing routine you’ll be able to add your workouts back in.
Obviously, There Is No Such Thing As Passive Income
There is such a thing as delayed gratification income. Income that comes long after the work is done. Imagine that you are building a money-making machine, which is essentially a blog.
The machine requires assembly, ingenuity, and hard work. But once the machine is up and running all you have to do is maintain it and it will earn you money. You can even leave the machine running for several weeks at a time without even checking on it will run fine with the money-making. You just can’t abandon it and assume it will keep on going as it is going. It requires tweaks, smart upgrades, and some strategy to keep the money machine going, but you can.
What we are really looking for is online money. Passive Income is great, the only real passive income I can think of off the top of my head is when stocks you’re invested in goes up. We are really trying to change how we make money. If we can build a blog and make money 100% from a laptop, well, then we are free. And that’s what we’re really after with this blogging stuff. Well, that and because we love writing.
Until next time, friend. Blog on, blog on.