I know the title of this post raises the eyebrows of some of you here but let me just get my point here. So basically here in this blog, what I have been preaching is that you can never make money blogging unless you put in enough effort. you do it wisely and execute things strategically. Heck, most successful bloggers even take like one year before they even get to where they are now. And that comes with the fact that they are consistently putting effort from day one.

In this blog, I wrote some few tips related to making money blogging although this blog is NOT about that topic. I wrote posts like how this blog makes money, how I doubled my advertising income, monetizing local traffic and stuff like that. Another popular blog posts is this post which is entitled making money isn’t hard, it just involves a lot of hardwork which has completely nothing to do with making money blogging.

If you read those posts, you can see that most of the things that I do or attain are possible because I’m workaholic. I do exert a lot of effort in this blog (although not these days though) and most bloggers that I know do the same so there’s a commonality between bloggers who are making money.

Work hard, Don’t Expect at All

Ok I know I’ve been taking both sides of the fence here which definitely will confuse you but let me explain. Some of you here know that blogging isn’t really the main way I make money ever since. Before it was affiliate marketing. I did a lot of CPA stuff, promoting offers through PayPerClick, making a lot of money back then and some of you are aware with it.

I don’t do it that much today because of all regulations and affiliate marketing is a fly-by-night thing. I can be making $100 in one day or losing more than that. There’s that much risk that convinced me to stop doing it.

I also spent some little time with freelance writing early back in my college days and was associated with some companies. This was just a part-time gig for me as I was studying so I could have some allowance on my part.

I enjoyed blogging ever since and probably had spent the most amount of time in it without really making nearly the amount that I make with other things.

Having a Day Job

So late last June, I took a job at a certain software development company as their online marketing guy and with that I applied all the knowledge that I have to that company.

Obviously its nice for me because it was my first ever job and it allowed me to kind of like have an income source outside the internet which I also considered consistent (at least for the first 6 months) because you’re getting paid monthly.

Consulting & Client Work

The demands of having a day job is tough but that didn’t prevent me from pursuing this consulting & client work business. Very few know that I manage a startup company at Round Table Networks and that I did some consulting way back last year. It was good and the money was enough but back then I didn’t find it that fulfilling so I stopped doing it and instead focused on my sites.

Late September I started doing it again to just try to see what would happen. Luckily I got some clients that I have been working until now and that has brought both good things and bad things to me. The good is obviously the compensation and the bad is that I have lesser and lesser time to spend for my web properties which includes this blog and some other stuff.

Making Money Blogging & Not Expecting at All

I don’t know. I, myself is confused on what the topic of this blog post really is but I guess its just about accepting the fact that living off with the sole money that you make from blogging is almost not possible these days. I mean I still make a decent (not phenomenal) monthly passive income from this blog and some of my other sites but they just take a backseat with what I do primarily.

The main point here is that if you’re trying to make money from your blog but you have a job that you make consistent amount of money with, then just don’t expect too much from your blog. Sometimes its better to just work without expecting something because in that way, you don’t get depressed or frustrated when you don’t make that much money.

Looking back now, I realized that blogging was NEVER the main thing for me. Sure, this blog is one of main prized assets that I have online but it just acts as a second fiddle to the things that I really do. It was affiliate marketing before, having a day job and consulting work for now.

I think it’s equally important to have this mindset that sometimes enjoying something is enough and may alone justify the effort that you put into it. I know that statement is debatable.

I try to make money blogging, but I don’t expect that much. And that helped me a lot in focusing on more important things that I need to prioritize without getting frustrated. How about you?

The hype with making tons of cash from blogging has considerably gone down for the past few years as probably a lot of people have realized that the hype surrounding blogging is all but hype. In fact I’ve seen a lot of people quit blogging to focus on doing more “secure” stuffs like a day job or a real offline business.

I remember when the make money blogging hype is on its peak, people have the mentality of like “I need to put this ad to make some serious cash”. Of course I was one of those people. I had my little basketball blog back then plastered with all sort kinds of banners, CPM, CPC, CPA, you name it. Of course it all backfired for me. The only positive thing then was that I am enjoying running a basketball site. It’s my passion, my hobby.

Eventually and fortunately I said to myself, “bug this! I’m not gonna do any money-related strategy, Im just gonna do what I enjoy, I’d write posts after posts and just do my thing. A kid like me should be enjoying life anyway!” And it was a crucial turning point for me.

After almost a year, the blog started gaining traffic and then money afterwards. The blog was doing good in page impressions that the CPM banners that I used to hate before started giving me respectable daily earnings. Then I started getting private ads from big sports-related companies and it really blew off for me. For some people the money I made back then may not probably be that big, but for an enthusiastic kid like me, it’s an unforgettable experience.

I always reflect back to it and I love telling this story to my friends over and over again. And I’m always amaze when my friends respond to me and say “wow that’s a ton of work. I can’t imagine myself putting that much hard work!”

Looking back, I didn’t really realize that what I did was “a ton” of hard work. All i knew was I was putting up some posts on how this New York Knicks suck, on how LeBron James is the best player ever and stuffs. Heck, I enjoy it so it must not be really hard work.

And oh, what you read above is the elongated version of my about page. 😉

Disparity between Hard and hard work

I used to do lots of programming back in college and so if you know everything about it, you’ll know it’s really hard to be one. As a programmer/coder you need to know a lot of things, you need to have a broad perspective, you need to have superb logic to make things work and you need an immense patience testing and trying different lines of codes. In short, its hard.

Blogging (or making money from blogging) isn’t. Hell, just as long as you know how to read, write, type, copy, paste, act as human, interact, you’re qualified. Everyone does qualify for it but why is it that very few succeed? Yes, lack of hard work. Blogging isn’t hard, its just a lot of hard work. It’s so true. It’s easy to write an article but you need to work hard to come up with 50 high quality ones. It’s nuts to interact but its a challenge to do it with over a hundred of people. It’s tough.

I don’t consider myself a guru and no one of my readers do but I can share here some insights that I feel can be helpful to you:

1. Just do it, stop strategizing!

I usually get a lot of flak when I tell people about this but just from experience (and from observing how big bloggers like Jeremy did), I can tell that this is one key aspect why I’m somehow more successful than some people.

I just do it, if it doesn’t work then I gotta move on! The problem with strategizing too much is that people keep on speculating, lurking, observing that nobody does anything! The biggest problem has and always been getting off your ass. I don’t know about you but I certainly wouldn’t refrain from doing things unless experience tells me that ‘hey this isn’t working’.

The statement “Experience is your best teacher” is corny but its still powerful and proven. You just don’t let people dictate you things, do it yourself. After all you really don’t have anything to lose. Every of our failure racks up to our own education and this is one good thing you will always have.

2. If you enjoy it, just go on! (Passion)

That’s why passion is a key element in blogging. I mean why write about something you don’t enjoy in the first place? That’s probably the biggest reason why most bloggers fail, its because they really don’t feel passionate about what they’re blogging. How can you enjoy talking about making money online if you don’t know it?

It’s always been the same parallels over and over again with all of these successful bloggers. They enjoy just blogging on something that they don’t really expect anything. Why don’t you go on Darren Rowse blog’s archive and look for some of his oldest posts. Its amazing how this guy churned out almost over a hundred of blog articles with over 1000+ words each that never even got any comment/traction? Of course these days Darren can write an article w/any length and still get a heap of comments but the lesson here is that you’re not going to get noticed overnight and if you don’t have passion, I doubt you can last too long in the blogosphere.

3. Stop chasing for shiny golden “secrets” because there’s none.

Ok again I used to be like this one when I was on my early stage of blogging. The scenario is usually like this: A blogger reads a post on some blog that making money is hard. You have to do this, do that, implement this, test, blah blah. So what happens is that this blogger says to himself “No, there must be something better than this, I need to keep looking for one”. And of course the cycle never ends. That blogger would never ever get to work because all he does is chase for secrets.

There’s a big misconception about “premium info stuffs” and secrets. Most people think that these are just the same. The truth is its not. Most info products whether its $9.95 or $999.5 is all about educating people. I’ve consumed a lot of them and I hate eBooks actually all I can say is that the main goal of most of them, if not all is just to organize infos around the web, compile them and present them well. You’re paying them not really because of the “premium stuffs” but only because they’re saving you from getting overloaded. In short, they are giving you blueprints so you never have to find them yourself.

Why not take time to look Technorati’s top 100 blogs? Do you think these guys have secrets? All you can notice is that these bloggers provide massive value to their readers and that alone sums up why they’re popular.

Wrapping it up

As I end this I’ll repeat. Blogging and making money isn’t hard, it’s just a lot of hard work. “Hardwork” is an overly used term but surprisingly not a lot of people value it. From my experience, and from other people’s experience, there’s really no need to reinvent the wheel and chase for something more. Besides if you’re exerting hard work on your passion, then it’s really not hard after all.

I haven’t written a long post like this for a while and I got carried a bit while writing this, lols. But as always, I’d like to hear back from you.

Making Money Blogging by Not Trying at All