Why some blogs never make money

Earning a living from your blog isn’t as easy as everyone makes out, in fact I would say the vast majority of blogs on the net only just about cover their hosting costs (if that). However there are a few key reasons why some blogs make money and others don’t so I decided to list them below.

General blogs are all the rage these days because people like talking about whatever they feel like that day. The problem these bloggers face though is finding advertisers because it’s a well known fact that general un-targeted traffic doesn’t convert into sales.

Even if you are getting targeted traffic to a specific niche it still needs to be traffic with a buying purpose in mind. For example if you have a funny videos site there’s really no way to make money from it because nobody visiting is expecting to make a purchase at any point, either for you or your advertisers.

It’s important to create content that sells, and this goes for blogs as well as ecommerce sites. E.g. if your promoting an affiliate product in a post you really have to drive home why it’s so good and why you endorse it in order for people to “believe”. You can’t just drop a link at the end and hope people click it out of curiosity.

I like flashy designs as much as the next person but your design should never get in the way of your sites usability. If people can’t find the content they want fast then they’ll be hitting the back button very soon. Use colors in the navigation that are easy to read and make sure you have a search that’s easy to use. You have to push people to the pages that make you money and site design is a big part of this.

Implementing the wrong type of advertising is another common mistake. I can’t remember the last time I bought something from a pop-up window so why do webmasters insist on using this type of intrusive advertising? Any ads need to complement and match your content in order to be effective.

It’s not easy converting blog readers into money as I hope I have shown, but at the same time it is possible if you use a little common sense and also plenty of testing to see what works.

For more ways to earn money online check out my new blog