For many webmasters the dream is to turn their hobby of blogging into a full time living. However even if you do manage to build up a successful readership it's not always possible to turn those readers into a real income. Here are a few of the main reasons many bloggers can't make money from their hobby.
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.
Using the wrong type of advertising is something I see again and again, even on really successful blogs. For a start advertising should always be related to the content and the sites theme. It amazes me when I see banner ads for carpet cleaner on tech news blogs, how's that ever going to convert?
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.
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.
Using the wrong type of advertising is something I see again and again, even on really successful blogs. For a start advertising should always be related to the content and the sites theme. It amazes me when I see banner ads for carpet cleaner on tech news blogs, how's that ever going to convert?
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.
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