When I decided to change my blog plan from free to Personal and then at one point, I upgraded to Premium. When I saw that the two weren’t very different regarding what plug-ins you can use, I downgraded back to Personal. I don’t know a ton about ads and how they work. I need a lesson in that department, so if you have any tips that you can share, please do.
From what I heard, systems like Buy Me a Coffee and Patron work much better than Word ads. However, here is the issue the Personal and Premium plans don’t allow such plug-ins; they are permitted in the Business plan. Being that I haven’t made a cent since I started paying for my blog in 2019. I don’t feel it’s worth it for me to change plans for now.
I find it discouraging that you need to make $100 for ads to get paid. From the start and even now, I believe in the power of a community. The views and likes make way for an income but speak for myself; I get a boost when people enjoy what I write. I always believed that if we help each other as bloggers, we will have success and put blogging back on the map. Now, it’s time for you to enjoy what other people create and some them some love.
Alex
Mybookworld24 
Useful information Alex, thanks. I’ve often wondered if it’s worth upgrading and from what you say it definitely isn’t
LikeLiked by 1 person
I fully believe in blogger and helping bloggers
LikeLike
interesting indeed.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s way cheaper to just host your own wordpress blog if you want to monetize. Most host services have a “one-click” install option, and within 5-15 minutes, the WordPress program is up and running. WordPress makes it easy to transfer everything, but I had a hiccup with Jetpack and lost all my followers so I’m slowly building that up again 😂
I host my own blog because it was cheaper per month to host myself to avoid having ads on my blog (came out to US$2.70/month to host myself, not the US$4/month [paid yearly, or US$7 if paid monthly] to avoid WP ads), but that’s because I blog as a hobby, and I didn’t want WP making money off my content, and because it gives me more power and flexibility to do whatever I want with my blog. But I am bit more curious and tech-savvy than many, so I can handle it; not sure what your web skills are?
However, if you still want to remain on WP.com, you got two options to remain on a budget. WP.com allows you to accept payments even on the Personal plan, or you can create an HTML widget and link to your Patreon/Ko-Fi/Buy Me a Coffee Link. Hope those tips help!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m bad at monetizing no matter how much I read about it, I don’t seem to understand it, which makes me feel dumb
LikeLike
If it was easy to monetize, we’d all be blogging from home, instead of doing the jobs that we do. Everybody seems to have an answer (remember Tai Lopez?), but those people make more money from telling others how to monetize, rather than from doing their own hard work. From the little bit I know from the video-bloggers and streamers I know (all small-timers, the money they make is little so they still have to pull side jobs), it’s like running your own business. You have to network with other bloggers, engage with commenters, there’s the hassles and legalities dealing with sponsorships, have to deal with how much space on your blog you want to dedicate to ad space vs your own content, there’s the social media connection, you have to decide if you want to use Adsense or use a more specialized ad company (like Q Digitial who specializes in LGBTQ-focused sites), and being that we’re queer we have to deal with trolls and transphobes. Don’t engage with anyone who promises big follows; don’t pray for that one-hit wonder post that brings in lots of readers one day, only to see slowly drop off a cliff a few days later.
In the early days of the Internet it was far easier to dedicate your time and chances of success were far greater. I follow a vlogger who was popular in the early days of YouTube, but after his company collapsed his numbers went sorely down, and now he needs to spend more time doing guaranteed jobs to pay off his debts, instead of focusing on his love of video-making for his fans. He can’t follow a set schedule to stream on Twitch. The pandemic has slowed down his ability to travel and show such footage. Debt ruined his credit score so it’s not like he can easily start another business and blog about that. He’s slowly getting things back together, it will take time. He may never see his former glory days, especially as months go by between YouTube videos, when before he was a (near-)daily vlogger. (He’s got like 25k followers, but he was like 4-5 times that at one point if I’m correct.)
Blog as a hobby that pays for itself; continue to keep it small and consistent for now. Do some research and engage with targeted ad companies who specialize in niches or small productions, to keep better quality. Reach out with other bloggers and collaborate; reach out to see if a company is willing to do a small sponsorship. Read up on SEO, tag and categorize appropriately, maybe get a domain that doesn’t have a number in it, and host your own email as the domain associated with it is in itself a form of advertising your domain. Once the blogging starts to pay for itself, then think bigger and reach out more.
It’s not a 9-to-5 job; like any business owner, this is going to take up a huge chunk of your waking hours. You will have to skip out on family events, you’ll be socializing far less, there might be more carry-out and less time with family dinners. And like many businesses (depending on what the law is like where you’re at), the chances of your blog succeeding are more against you than in your favor, especially with so many others trying to turn their blogs into money-makers.
This is a blogger helping a blogger, he’s telling you it won’t be easy. Maybe taking a basic marketing or business-management course at the local community center or city college if self-learning leaves you nowhere.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Useful thoughts Charles. Thanks for sharing.
LikeLike
That’s what I’ve experienced before. But passive income takes time. It’s not easy. Keep it up!
It would be grateful if you could visit my blog as well.
https://mystorytellings.com
Thanks a lot.
LikeLiked by 2 people
The only big thing, though, is if you do a collaborative on another blog that’s a money-earner, don’t take it if they don’t want to pay you and insist on “exposure” instead. If they’re making money from the blog, they have every duty to pay third-party writers.
Maybe as an alternative, if you are friends with a bunch of small-time bloggers, maybe have a collaborative blog and sharing the earnings might be a better start. Everybody pools their resources together, everybody helps in networking (especially if circles are diverse), maybe you have a friend who isn’t a blogger but wants to be more on the technical side of running the website to pad their resume they can join in as well. As the blog grows, exposure increases; once one of y’all feels like they can make it on their own, then you can go and start your own blog. In the technophile sphere, lots of creators like Rene Ritchie, Joshua Vergera, Michael Fisher (aka Mr. Mobile) all started on collaborative blogs, and within the last few years went out on their own to do their own projects. Michael Fisher works mainly with a videography company over here in NYC, and his blogging and YouTubing are more of a side hustle, while Rene Ritchie makes most of his income collaborating with other bloggers, podcasts, videos, as a “tech expert” on Canadian television around Montreal. SciShow executive Hank Green has his hands in a bunch of e-commerce ventures, most of them fail; as “rich” as he might be from his earnings, he still looks like he buys his clothes from Target because he invests so much time running his businesses and websites. The streamer DKlarations is an actor but has to do side gigs between his streams, video and voice acting, to make ends meet.
Basically everything I read in the last few hours say start with Adsense, and once your numbers are steady, talk to an ad agency that fits within you views range. Some specialize in start-ups, some with like 20k-50k views a month, and others only deal with large or particularly niche brands. Write reviews or other blog posts, and link to them in Reddits or other forums for others to see.
I know Zoho still hosts email addresses at your own domain for free; make sure when you’re communicating with others to use that email based on your domain as a form of advertising your blog (as while you do get free email forwarding with WordPress, if you continue to email from a Gmail or other free email account, it looks bad in terms of business).
LikeLiked by 2 people
Beautiful thoughts expressed in here. All the best to all writers, readers, friends.
LikeLike