Monetising my blog, thinking out loud.
Good morning lovely people.
How many of you here have ever thought to start monetising your blog? And how many have already done so?
I will tell you a bit more about my own experience with this. Back in January 2016 I started this blog as soon as I learnt from a colleague that his girlfriend had one. I have always loved to travel and thought of a blog like something so unreachable for me, in fact I didn’t know anyone that had one and had no idea about this world.
That week though, I started my blog on Bluehost, then switched to WordPress although I don’t remember very well the reasons, etc.
When I started it, I think a part of me wanted to become a full time travel blogger. I met up with a blogger and she shared with me a few tips like the ‘like for like’ page on Facebook, etc, in order to get followers and attract traffic. I started a Facebook page and shared pictures, videos, blogs. I didn’t enjoy it though. I am still so very jealous of my own life and it made me uncomfortable to put my life out there.
Many of my friends still do not know about my blog. With the years I have realised that this blog is my way of escaping bad days. I am not a good writer even, but I really enjoy creating posts, it unlocks my creativity. And I have come to appreciate so much the WordPress community. I don’t have Instagram (I am 32 but have enough with Facebook and WhatsApp) and have not understood how Pinterest works yet.
But I do love reading comments of the few (30 or so) followers I have (yes, you). It feels so genuine and a bit more intimate than having my face all over Facebook.
I think all this monologue comes down to the fact that I do love blogging and last week, after accepting I will be unemployed in a month, I have thought I should give it a real go and try to make some money with it. So I upgraded to the WordPress Business Plan and enjoyed the fantastic plugins available. I also signed up to the Amazon Affiliates Programs, Word Ads, created a Facebook page again, logged into Pinterest, changed my picture. To realise once again I may not pursue this path. Not this way.
You may be right if you think I am also chickening out. I do admire full time bloggers, the amount of work put in is incredible and the mental strength to help you keeping sane and inspired must be also great.
If you are thinking of going full-time blogger, then I would advise these fantastic pages where you can find high quality and super clear information about blogging stuff:
Thank you to all of you that are part of this fantastic WordPress community. I love reading your posts and I follow you because I genuinely like what you write about, all of you.
I would love to hear about your experience with this too.
xxx
Sara
Tales from a Red Suitcase 
I also have my blog on the side and very very few friends know about it. I did this because of the fear of judgement and I think it’s better this way without having any pressure- I can just write!
I’ve also been looking into monetising but so far have only done wordpress ads. It seems like there needs to be ALOT of traffic for it to be sustainable enough to go full-time. Still working on trying out twitter and instagram which is so much work for someone who also works a full-time job.
All the best!
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Hello! Thank you for stopping by and commenting 🙂
I agree with the fact that without the pressure I can also just write.
Going full time seems to mean spending lots of time doing SEO, Amazon advertising, and all those stuff, which are interesting but take away time for writing. I just started WordPress Ads too!
Have a lovely day,
Sara
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Hello!
Was reading your post and the comment above and i felt exactly how you guys felt. I enjoy creating posts but am not a good writer. I love to learn more about photography though. A few of my friends only know about the blog as im afraid they will criticise me for bad writing etc..
But like you i also want to monetise my blog and try to take it to the next level.. so just two weeks ago i started to write atleast one post a week..
I hope we will do well with our blogs and really earn from it sooner than later hehe
Chiara
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Hi Sara,
I started my blog in 2016 on free wordpress.com free platform and in 2018 I moved it to a self hosted domain. I moved so that I can try to monetize my blog. It hasn’t happened yet. But I love writing my weekly posts and I feel a sense of accomplishment every friday after I hit that publish button. The wordpress community is a very supportive platform and I have seen many bloggers publishing their books, launching courses etc.
I have learnt that the key is to enjoy what we do and be consistent with it.
All the best with your blog journey.
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Hi Deepa,
Thanks for your comment. I also love my blog and I find that there are really helpful resources out there for who wants to make money off it.
I think I will keep it as a hobby 🙂
Best of luck with you blogging too,
Sara
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Monetizing my blog seems like so much work. I don’t do other social media (nor do I want to), so it would probably mean making very little money every month (from the little I’ve read about it). I think that when you turn something you love (writing) into a money-making venture it can suck the fun right out of it. Still, lots of people do it. If you try it and it doesn’t work out, well, at least you’ve gained some valuable experience (and you could probably blog about that experience)!
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It does indeed look like too much work for something I love to turn into something I don’t wanna do, as I don’t like to put my stuff on social media. It’s nice to hear I’m not the only one to see it this way.
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I resonate with your post in so many ways! I go down this thought process probably once a month for at least a good few years 😂 but it’s still just a hobby for me. It’s only during these times that I’ve now started writing on a weekly basis. I’ve been enjoying it, having that “Sunday” deadline makes me actually write and whilst I can’t travel right now it’s a nice trip down memory lane looking at photos and choosing what to write about next. Keep it as a hobby and if things change, you never know what can happen.
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Thanks for stopping by! And it’s really nice to meet like-minded people that go through the same reflections. Yes, I think I will keep it as a hobby for now, then again, who knows. I guess it is always nice to know that possibility is there for us to explore and embrace if we want to. I know this will keep me sane while I look for my new job though. Take care 🙂
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Totally agree about the pressure and the multiple social media accounts that one will need to aggressively promote to monetise and make money from a blog! I signed up to insta only three weeks ago…had been avoiding it all this while. Haven’t thought about monetising my blog but in South Africa I knew a lot of bloggers that were doing it and were living off it 100%. Do able …yes. but a lot of hard work for sure.
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We have just started writing a Blog and your post made our day. Thank you for your thoughts and your useful tips.
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I’m so glad it helped 🙂
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Hello there. I think just like the majority of people here. I might “upgrade” my site in the coming years. I want to publicize a few businesses, which is not exactly “monetizing” or gaining from my blog.
I have a FB page for my blog, which is different from my “official” FB page. The reason is the my “own” FB is private, the blog FB is public in a wide sense, and it is just for the blog.
I don’t do extra work, the post go automatically to the public FB and Twitter pages.
I do Instagram, a lot! But I have Instagram since their early days, when amateur photographers started to migrate from Flickr. I love photography and that is the reason I started the blog to begin with.
So far I’m happy, in the future maybe I need to expand and/or have more pages. I don’t know yet, but I’m content, and I won’t stress out. Not yet at least.
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Thanks for stopping by. I think I will convert to Instagram soon too, I love taking pictures too and Instagram seems the place to be on now. None of my friends even looks a Facebook nowadays 😉 Anyway, all the best with your blog x
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