Owners of profitable blogs. Would you start from zero today?

Yeah, I would start a blog today. I do it quite often as I have multiple blogs in a couple of niches. In fact, I'm going to start at least one next month. First of all, you have to realize that there is going to be competition whenever there is an opportunity to generate a profit. Don't let this scare you. It just means there are more products to promote within a niche and that they will be coming out on a regular basis.

Every time a new product comes out, it's a chance for you to get your foot in the door and make money. I personally have always written my own stuff. Even though I wouldn't consider myself a writer, I've always been good at it and prefer for things to come out in my own "voice," so to speak. Also, there are plenty of people that still read. In fact, they prefer it. However, we as marketers, use a variety of promotional techniques, including social media.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the amount of money an affiliate program pays out really depends on the price of the product and the kind of product you are promoting (and whether or not it has up-sells). For instance, physical products tend to pay less than digital products because it not only cost more for the product to be made and what not, but the affiliate is one of the last people to get paid. However, you can make up for this by promoting higher-priced items and cross promoting items. Digital products can make up to $100 USD and beyond per sale. It just depends.

Joey

What if you made a column and syndicated it to other websites instead?

I've been hearing from bloggers that today is better than ever to start a blog. There are more people online, social media is strong, mobile has revolutionized the web in how people now essentially have a mini computer on them at all times to consume content.

While the space is competitive, it's all about finding your niche, giving them value/solving problems, and creating a community.

Since it's more competitive, I've noticed a lot of bloggers utilizing additional forms of media to capture as much of their audience as possible. So in additional to just blogging, you have to be using social media, video, and even podcastingto grab people from different platforms and offer multiple types of format, because some people like to read, others like to watch video, and some just like to listen to audio.

Hope that helps!

Yes I would.

But I started 10 years ago, without a goal, just loved to write something down.
Not knowing if it would make money or not.

If I would start now again, I would think really hard. Still it should be a subject that is about one of my passions. But i would do a bit deeper research before I would really start.

Just starting for starting I can't do any more.

I'll get hung for saying this - but my new blogs turn a profit in the first 24 hours. It really isn't rocket science, though.

Tom

Sounds like you just talked to someone really negative, someone who doesn't actually own a blog, or someone who was trying to get you to buy a product that doesn't deal with blogging.

Now is the best time to start.

I think websites are like shops and retail stores. Every one knows that there are tons of stores already, but they open their new stores because it is the way of selling goods. Similarly blogging is one of the best ways to make money online no matter how many blogs are already there. We just need to learn how to stand out from the crowd.

If you are just managing only one blog, have enough time, writing skills and knowledge then you should write content yourself. Otherwise outsource your work and focus on marketing your website. Outsourcing your content work really saves your time, but it costs you extra money of course.

I definitely have blogs I developed over 7 years ago. But Iam really focusing a lot of my energy on some of the social media networks like Facebook.

It is much less time consuming ( the way I do it at least) and this is where the crowds are going.

Blogs will always have relevance , it's just they have to share more and more virtual real estate with places like FB and Twitter


- Robert Andrew

I would still start a blog but with one major difference (in fact we have transitioned to this approach over the last year) --

In the past, we blogged pretty much daily with the combined objective of attracting traffic (mainly through SEO), hosting our content and as a mechanism to drive traffic into our various sales funnels

What has changed is that your traffic today will come from other locations (Instagram, Pintrest, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc...) because that is where people ARE these days

So, what that means is that my blog posts are now not designed to get traffic, they are designed to host valuable content and convert traffic into leads.

They become my "hub" pages if you will while the other vehicles are the "Spokes"

So, I may produce a video on YouTube and then host it on my blog, then pull out a few clips of that video and host it on Facebook and Instagram and then produce a catchy value statement and post that to my Twitter followers (who follow because of the other 5-10 non sales posts each day). In some cases, I'll even convert a summary of the video into an article and post it to Medium and then link back to the video on my blog. It all comes back to my blog so that I capture leads and pull leads into my sales funnel

Hope that helps,

Jeff

I start new blogs like that all the time -- but I'm trying to start less of them these days to focus on taking the ones I already own to a whole new level of success. Personally, I would try to start a blog in a niche other than technology. You will probably have trouble competing in that niche.

But I would definitely start and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Just make a very detailed plan on how you'll grow the blog's content and backlinks and execute. It's really that simple. The hardest part of the process is sticking to your plan even when it seems things are not working out.

Having a blog is a great way to get your message out and a great way to build a long term successful business. If you are actively creating blog post on a regular basis and posting your content from your post onto social media sites people in your target audience will begin to recognize you also in time google will begin recognizing your blog and you will see it beginning to rank for various keywords you might of not even think of.

The previous posters have been very kind.

I would question why on earth should someone prove that you're wrong, and create additional potential competition?

Hi Tom Addams, just wondering if you are still posting the results of this challenge? Thanks

J

I start new websites EVERYDAY....so... would I start from ZERO? sure, why not? Anyone else with me there?

I think that it would be a little easier after already knowing what you need to do in order to start making a profit in the 1st place. The learning curve and having a good website design is probably what took me the longest to learn tho

Outside of Reddit (where this question was posted and even there it isn't as true as it used to be) you really don't see people that know of Adblocks existence in a lot of niches. At least in my personal experience.

Shout out to /r/animalsbeingjerks