So you have built yourself an awesome-looking blog, you have flooded it with fantastic and informative content and you have told all of your friends and family members about it. But you are still not making a single penny from it, as The Hurricane from WWE might say “What’s up with that?”
There are a number of potential reasons as to why you are not making any money from blogging and to be honest the majority of these reasons boil down to lack of effort on your part.
You can not simply put up a blog, write a few posts, throw a couple of advertisement banners & affiliate links around and expect the money to come rolling in, because it just does not work like that. It requires a ton of effort.
You might think that what I have just said is such a simple statement and that I am treating you like an idiot for saying it, but you would be surprised at just how many people think that making money online is just what I have described above.
Let us go over a few things to see what we can do to get those pennies streaming in.
1 Not Enough Traffic
People who have been in the affiliate marketing business for years will tell you how content is king, but I actually think that traffic is even more important. After all what use is all that awesome content if you have no traffic to see it? I’ve seen plenty of sites with great content but little traffic, so it can happen.
Traffic will not just help you shift your product(s) but it will also help you sell advertising space on your blog, advertisers won’t want to buy advertising space on a blog with low or no traffic now will they?
If you sign up to my free newsletter today then one of the free e-books you will receive will detail seven methods of generating more traffic for your blog.
2 You Have Gone Overboard With Adverts
We have all done it at some point. You join a ton of pay-per-click advertising networks and you stuff as many ad units as you possibly can into each page. Sadly doing this has two major drawbacks.
a) It slows down the loading time of the page.
b) It makes your site look incredibly ugly.
This is something that will take time for you to sort out. You will have to add/remove ad units and edit the code to find the correct formula that is right for you. Every theme has a different formula.
3 Your Theme Does Not Look Professional
If you have an eye-catching theme then this will help you encourage readers to return to your blog. Don’t put in as many banner adverts and flashy images as humanly possible. I have found that a minimalist approach is often the best.
4 What You Write Does Not Inspire Confidence
This is something that I struggle with quite a lot.
If you are selling a product, or trying to encourage your readers to join a network, then you must give the reader the impression that you have belief in the product in question. If they sense that you are not confident about it then they will not take a chance on it.
For a perfect example go and read one of the many product reviews from John Chow’s blog, look at how he oozes confidence when talking about a product. That is why he makes $40,000+ a month from his blog.
5 Are You Promoting The Right Products?
That might sound like a newbie thing to write but a lot of people make that mistake. If you are running a blog about MMO then you should be promoting products designed to help people make money, not products about acne or fat burner pills.
6 You Are Not Reviewing Enough
If you are promoting a product then you should review the hell out of it. Not just on your own blog but on articles directories and anywhere else where they will allow you to post articles for free.