The Truth About Cats And Blogs

If you want to make money blogging you will have to work hard! And that is the truth.

Blogging was once a leisure activity, but the likes of John Chow, Darren Rowse, and Yaro Starak have truly made blogging into a career choice for many. Their inspiration and the dreams of big dollar paychecks from blogging are driving people into the market like wild fire spreads, but people don’t often see the truth. Making money blogging isn’t easy or guaranteed.

In my experience, which by all accounts is limited, I have found out that it is hard, very hard in fact. September marked a turning point for me as a blogger because it was the month in which I started treating blogging for what it was: a business. In September I netted -$1.00 for 120 hours worth of work. That is right I lost money, my hosting expenses equaled $10.00 and my revenues where $9.00.

As I mentioned before my experience is limited, so I thought it would be more affective to prove my point by sharing with you the experiences of other bloggers. Since I was trying to prove a point I went and asked bloggers that you probably know ( Tom, Ben, Joe ) this question. How much money did you make and how many hours of work did you put in in your first month of blogging?

Tom of StandOutBlogger is what the name of his site implies, a stand out blogger, but things at the beginning weren’t exactly lucrative.

Tom responded to my question with:

I made $30.00 in the first month from 3 125×125 ad sales! In regards to how many hours I invested I am no totally sure but I would estimate 4-6 hours a day for the first month.

Now don’t get me wrong $30.00 is quite a bi more than what I made, and quite impressive for 1 month of blogging, but when it comes down to paying the bills $30.00 just won’t pan out when you are putting in 100-150 hours worth of work.

Ben from BenjaminPatton.com is a rising star in the market as his feed count is quickly growing and is now over 240 subscribers. But Ben wasn’t always sitting so pretty. I seem to have lost my quote for Ben so I will just have to paraphrase. Ben said the he made over $100 dollars in his first month, but much of that money came from other online markets, but when it came down to blogging he had revenues of $25 from roughly 100 hours worth of work.

Normal Joe from ImWithJoe.com is anything but normal as I am sure you know. But his site is growing fast because he puts in more work than anybody around. But like the rest of us that wasn’t always the case. Like most of Joe’s world famous comments he provide a great quote for us.

Normal Joe said:

Dude, my first month lol hahahaha. I put in maybe 20 to 30 hours and made NOTHING from my blog! Sure I made money from other things outside my blog, but nothing, and I mean nothing from my blog.

You’re right man, it takes time, persistence, and hard work.”

Time, Persistence, and Hard Work!

This post was not written to discourage anyone from getting into blogging, but it is meant to be a reality check. You are not going to make 1,000 , 10,000, or even 1 dollar from blogging unless you put in the effort.

Let Me Know:
What has blogging for money been like for you? I would especially like to hear from those who have started to make money, or those who made money right away. How hard did you work? How much time did you spend? Was it luck?

What Is A Super Affiliate?

Shoemoney recently addressed this question by asking readers of his site to let him know what they thought a super affiliate was (read shoe’s post here).

Many opinions were based around the idea that a super affiliate was somebody that had made $xxx,xxx amount of dollars in the affiliate market place, but I have a different take on the title.

When you think of a superhero generally you think superman, batman, spiderman etcetera. When you think of what makes them a superhero you think about their super powers. What you don’t think about are their statistics.

Have you ever seen a save count in a comic book or movie? Probably not. What makes a superhero a superhero is their ability to take what they were given and apply it to saving lives, not how many lives they have saved.

The same should be true for a super affiliate. A super affiliate is not someone who has made a certain amount of money or demands a certain commission percentage. A super affiliate like a superhero should be judged on what they are able to accomplish in their market or area of expertise.

I have come up with 3 criteria for the label of super affiliate so without further ado here they are.

If you want the title super affiliate you have to be able to…

• Influence trends in your market.
  
  An affiliate marketer is someone that can sell affiliate products, a super affiliate is someone that can affect the total sales of an affiliate product. If you are a super affiliate you do more than just sell products you affect buyers trends. You can influence a products demand and affect buyers spending habits.
• Sell products across many platforms.
  
  If you want to be known as a super affiliate you must be able to make affiliate sales across the board and not just on one medium. If you are only making affiliate sales through a blog you have just reached the tip of the ice berg and have a lot of sales areas that need to be met before you can take on the title. Super affiliates will make sales on blogs, portal sites, informational sites, forums, via email, and many many other ways including some offline mediums.
• Generate sales outside of your primary market.
  
  Not only do super affiliates sell products in their primary niches but they have the ability to make sales in secondary markets. Super affiliates don’t just sell one type of product on one topic, they can sell anything to anyone anywhere.

Super affiliates aren’t just affiliates that make a lot of money, they are affiliates that affect the market. Please let me know if you can think of any other criteria that it takes to become a super affiliate that doesn’t directly relate to how much they make.

Getting into the skunk selling business might make a lot of scents.

Getting into the skunk selling business might make a lot of scents, but getting out of the MMO Business seems to be the current trend.

The make money online niche of blogging has a lot of turnover; people get discouraged easily as they see that money doesn’t just start rolling in the day you start up your blog. But recent auction blocks are showing me that more of the relatively established MMO crowd is also starting to get out of the niche which is an unusual trend.

What might be causing this?

Some people believe that the MMO niche is a sinking ship. Many believe the market has become so flooded with scammers, amateurs, and wannabes that actually generating and maintaining profits are going to be nearly impossible in the future because people won’t trust the marketplace.

This is a Valid Fear,

The MMO niche is crowded and always will be. The market is full of spammers, scanners, amateurs and garbage bloggers that do fill the market with untrustworthy information.

But The Wrong People Scare You.

Rather than being scared that people won’t trust the marketplace be scared that the demand for the product will still be there as the number of good bloggers enter the market and competition increases.

Why?

One of the basic theories to competition in economics is related to barriers to entry.

Barriers to entry are hindrances or obstacles that stand in the way of a person or persons who are trying to enter a market place.

When it comes to starting a blog there are literally no barriers to entry meaning that anyone can start a blog at anytime for any reason at no cost.

When a market has very low or few barriers to entry the competition is high and the chances of earning long term profits are low.

Don’t be scared of scammers, they will generally get out of the market as they are ousted by others or their profits start falling. They are not to be thought of as serious long-term competition.

But honest trustworthy bloggers are, and they are also flooding the market quickly and they will continue to come until something stops them.

Profit margins in a competitive market are low because demand is spread over many sources or suppliers and generally you will see that it is difficult to keep customers coming back to you when they can find it somewhere else just as easily for cheaper, or in a nicer package, or just more to their liking.

Don’t Worry Yet

Blogging in the MMO market isn’t saturated yet and the few blogs that have gotten out probably did it for personal reasons although the aforementioned fear does exist.

Although competition is high and increasing daily the MMO market is still relatively new with a lot of room for growth and there are still many ways for you to generate income from your blog. But do realize that as the market continues to grow that blogging for money about money may get to be extremely difficult in the future.

Rajaie From Rajaie Talks posted a few days ago about his friend Mark’s blog going up for sale and brought up the observation that many MMO blogs have been going to the auction block as of late. (Read Rajaie’s Post Here) Which is why I decided to write this post. I wanted to look into some reasons bloggers may be jumping ship on the MMO marketplace.