Why Your Blog Is Not Making Money

Often when people realize how easy it is to start blogging they assume that since anyone can do it, that it must be easy to make money. The reality is earning an income from your blog, whether it’s hosted through WordPress, Blogger or some other platform, is simple but not that easy.

It takes a lot of work and the most popular and successful bloggers are posting regularly, often daily. This is where many potential bloggers fall short. There are exceptions for niche bloggers where their posts reflect how often the content changes. For instance a blog focused on holiday sales will not necessarily have posts all year round. They may start ramping up a few months before the season starts since that’s when their site visitors will be looking to see what’s new. They may also partner their blog posts with setting up a subscriber list to capture visitors’ information and keep them updated.

Many bloggers don’t have a plan for monetizing their blog. Using Google AdSense may be an option but there are also other third party promotional services that pay for clicks on ads you can post on your blog. Once your blog has a good search engine ranking and regular visitors you can also sell advertising on your own.

Not getting enough targeted traffic is a major issue that prevents bloggers from earning a real income. Without not only new visitors but also ones that repeatedly return to read your posts you’re failing to develop what will become your customer base. Once your visitors find value in your content and see that you regularly offer interesting information this will help to build an ongoing relationship.

Also not using social media to promote your blog is a big mistake. One of the advantages of blogging is that your posts get indexed quickly in search engines. So do social media posts. Having your blog posts on popular platforms like Twitter, Google +, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr and others only helps to give your blog a wider audience. Plus don’t forget the power of sharing! When readers really like your content they tend to share it with others making your site viral.

When a blogger doesn’t reach out to their readers they can alienate their audience as well. Respond to comments to help develop a connection and try to find out what they would like to see posted on your blog. Other ways to make your site interactive is to have services like games, news feeds or polls on some of the posts or on the sidebar to make your blog more interesting and give readers a reason to keep coming back.

Write in a conversational tone, as if you were talking to a friend. Some bloggers may come off as too serious or boring, simply stating facts and figures instead of injecting their personality into their writing. When this happens visitors aren’t able to identify with them. This doesn’t mean using a lot of slang or jargon, but connect with what your readers are looking for and what interests them. This also gives you plenty of ideas for future posts.

These are just some of the reasons bloggers may not be successful, but with some extra work and planning blogging can become a source of extra income.

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