Question: Do you hope to make money from your blog?
This can be the most important question for many bloggers. Whether you are a personal blogger or a non-personal blogger, do you hope to make money from your blog?
For many people, blogs cost money. Domain names, hosting, buying layouts or logos, buying software to make layouts or logos, and a myriad of other things result in us spending money and time on our sites. Many bloggers can try different sources of income in order to cover up any expenses for their blogs. Usually, there are two ways to make money from those sources through a blog: earning money directly and indirectly.
Earning money directly vs. earning money indirectly from your blog
You can put ads on your site, referral links, or even write paid posts for companies, among many other things. Such actions result in you doing something on yoru blog and earning money directly through those actions.
Earning money indirectly:
Your blog can be a way to seduce people who pay you indirectly. You can blog in order to advertise your offline business, or you could blog to showcase your offline skills and have employers people contact you for your résumé in order to hire you for offline work. Such actions on your blog result in other people contacting you to pay you for doing certain things for them outside of your blog.
Are you hoping to make money from your blog?
What is your opinion on this? Do you plan on making money through your blog? If you already make money through your blog, do you hope that you keep on making money through your blog?
Thank you for reading, I really appreciate it. 
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( June 3rd, 2007 at 8:39 pm )
I hope that you make money from blogging, and then you give me it. That’s my hope. So in a way, I’m earning money indirectly from your blog.
( June 3rd, 2007 at 10:00 pm )
Ronalfy, thanks! Yes, that is a good example of indirectly earning money from my blog.
I will mail you some scanned images of the money, and you can print them. Does that sound good? That can then be a good example of I-was-arrested-for-using-printed-money-from-my-home-printer, no?
( June 4th, 2007 at 12:38 am )
Great post! Well I do actually make money with my blog, not yet a full-time income, but it’s getting there. Services like adsense, affiliate programs, and text-link-ads are what earns me money “directly”. Then there’s the “blogging gigs”, like getting paid to design or customize a wordpress theme, move a blog to a new host, guest blogging, and others. I can say I make equal amount of money directly and indirectly, around 50/50, depends on the month, more or less
For as long as I enjoy, I’ll keep doing it! blogging that is, money comes second hehe
( June 4th, 2007 at 3:36 am )
Jonathan, thanks for commenting. I am glad you like this post. Thank you also for sharing the different way you make money through your blog; it should surely help someone out there. Did you plan on dividing the two sources [direction and indirect] in half [50/50], or did it end up being like that on its own?
I like that: enjoying blogging and then focusing on making money through it.
( June 4th, 2007 at 10:48 am )
I decided not to make money from my blog. More than that I tend to give away the things I code for free as well. It’s all for fun really.
( June 4th, 2007 at 1:09 pm )
Andrew, thanks for sharing that information. That should be a good question and a good topic to analyze also; whether or not one wants to make money from their blog. Once a person is sure whether or not that person wants to make money from blogging, that person should be highly focused on what they want to do with their blog. So, in my view, congratulations, since many people simply keep struggling everyday, wondering whether or not they should blog because they like it or if they should blog to make money. Theoretically, blogging should be the same either way, but in reality, many bloggers blog differently when they blog for anything other than pleasure or the feeling of fun.
What is your view on blogs or bloggers who probably do not earn much income, or any, in the offline world and depend solely on their blogs to make money, like blogs revolving around selling snippets of code or even blogs that talk about coding and related topics?
( June 4th, 2007 at 3:32 pm )
“Do you plan on making money through your blog?”
Yes, in fact I already make a small amount from my blog. I did not create it to be my full income, but I do have bills to pay and every little bit helps. I don’t plan on plastering my blog with nothing but ads, but I see no problem with the occasional AdSense unit, Text Link Ads and perhaps the odd affiliate link. I am undecided about the whole paid review topic yet, but I am leaning towards not doing paid reviews, mainly because I like to review the services, websites and products I like.
( June 4th, 2007 at 3:56 pm )
Bes, I think that once you start blogging for money you need to start adding value. Bloggers that do that and earn from it I respect; they are in effect the new media. I suspect however that most people capable of doing that are also capable of earning as much offline.
The problem is that there are far too many who aren’t and think they can make money easily by doing nothing new or original, or by offering little more than any other blog out there. I understand where they may be coming from, and many I think are simply inexperienced or naive, the others though I have no time for.
In between the two there is a very important line: the line between aiming to create a good blog and aiming to earn money. I blogged for money once, and wasn’t happy about turning to the dark side of that line. My thoughts about topics started to be driven by popularity, not by engagement, or my own interest. I started to consider what would draw in the Googlers, and what would generate higher paying adverts, and that is when I knew it was time to stop.
So basically I think if you have a product worth paying for then why not get paid for it. If you don’t, if you offer nothing I can’t find in 30 seconds with a second Google search, then why should you?
( June 4th, 2007 at 5:19 pm )
LGR, thanks for answering the question, and for sharing that detail about your blog. It seems revolving occasional or small number of ads around useful content may be a good thing for many, as readers may be able to get what they want and the bloggers will get paid along the way too.
What do you think of doing paid reviews and being straight forward on all ends, like also mentioning in detail in your paid post the negative aspects of a product or a service you are reviewing? That way maybe all aspects of a product can be covered or focused on, and readers can get more balanced reviews.
Andrew, thanks for the explanation. I agree; so many bloggers out there simply want to make money, that even many prominent bloggers have very little or no useful stuff to show or share, and yet they still keep focusing more on how to make money instead of actually coming up with something useful for the readers.
I think many people think about Google and earning money, and maybe majority of such people start to write about things that will bring in money, and not things they are passionate about. It is very easy to say “I’m passionate about blogging“, but blogging includes being useful to readers, providing fair and equal value back to readers, and focusing on the task instead of outcomes like money, among many other things.
An excellent point about the “30 seconds….Google search.” Many people, however, try to simply get higher ranking without providing much useful information. I am surprised that people are focusing more on improving their content based on site traffic and search engine traffic, and not on whether or not the content itself is good enough or not using other measuring tools such as relevancy and passion for a certain topic or message.
Thanks again Andrew. This should help me write a bit better posts in the future, knowing what others thing and how others actually put theories like yours into practice, like on your blog.