At the start of a new year we’re often full of optimism. We’re charged with the idea of the growth mindset we’ve decided we’re going to adopt. Things can always change for the better right? You may have decided to convert your hobby into something more legit and try to start blogging as a career.
Good for you!
Perhaps you enjoy cooking, photography, travel or needlecraft. Whatever it is that floats your boat, you can use it to help turn you over a few extra dollars each month and at best land you a career you might never have imagined.
So in this post, I’m going to answer the following questions:
- What might you earn if you choose blogging as a career?
- Why is starting a blog a great option for anyone looking to improve their prospects?
- How might blogging itself become your main source of income?
I’ll finish up with a few other ideas based upon my own experiences of blogging to set your expectations. This is useful if you’re planning to go all out and make blogging a means of income.
But for now, let’s kick off by looking at what blogging might earn you!
What Might You Earn as a Blogging Employee?
Have you wondered what you might earn blogging as an employee? Or perhaps asked yourself is blogging profitable in any way?
Payscale, the US compensation software and data company, suggests the average hourly pay for a blogger is $15.00 (around $40,173 annually). Of course this varies according to experience:
- An entry level blogger with less than 1 year of experience, might earn $12.50 per hour ($36,106 annually).
- Bloggers with 1 to 4 years experience might expect an hourly rate of $15.42 ($38,381 annually).
- Bloggers with over 4 years experience might receive an hourly rate in the region of $20.00 per hour ($49,579 annually).
Of course, there will be movement within this depending upon employee benefits, additional responsibilities and regional variances. But this is at least a yardstick for you.
What Might You Earn as a Blogging Freelancer?
If you’re considering a career as a freelance blogger, what you earn varies enormously. There is no real fixed view of salary I can quote.
You can bid for freelance gigs at sites such as Fiverr and Upwork and be paid anything from $15 upwards for an article (or even less!), out of which these sites will take a cut.
More financially rewarding for freelance bloggers are corporate gigs where there’s a need for high-quality case studies or reports to help them generate sales.
Your writing skills, experience and expertise all play a part in what you might earn as a freelance blogger, as do your people skills and how well you’re able promote yourself.
How Can Blogging Benefit Your Career?
1. Writing
First and foremost you’ll develop skills you already have and learn many new ones to boot!
We learn to write as children. Some have developed this skill in a more sophisticated way than others of course but most of us can write. Writing is one of those skills that improves with practise… but it also improves the more you read.
When you start a blog, you’ll find yourself reading way more than you ever used to! It’s just the nature of the medium. You’ll probably interact with other blogs in your niche, read what people are blogging and try to understand what other bloggers do.
By committing to a blog you’ll begin working on your writing skills out of the gate. While you might think your blog posts are not very good when you start blogging, your voice, style, subject choices and overall writing quality will look very different after 25, 50 or 100 posts. Just imagine where you’ll be after 150 posts!
When you’ve been blogging consistently for a while, you’ll start to have a bona fide portfolio of writing examples to show to prospective employers. Moreover, you’ll be able to show the commitment and discipline it’s taken for you too maintain your blog. Career limiting it ain’t!
2. New Career Skills
You’ll also pick up new skills alongside improved writing skills:
- There’s the research that goes into producing original and appealing articles.
- Writing about your niche will show you understand your market.
- Blogs posts often require you to look at problems and offer solutions, which shows how your mind works.
You’ll gain a better appreciation of (or even become expert) in SEO, social media marketing, content management systems. You might even become more technical than you ever thought possible by learning elements of HTML, CSS or PHP!
An appreciation of all these things will happen as a natural occurrence when you’ve been blogging for a while.
3. Networking
It’s pretty clear that networking is hugely important in career terms. Blogging provides a natural platform for extending your network. It offers the potential to meet people who might have a positive bearing on your career plans.
As time passes you’ll develop a network of peers and followers. Some of this will occur naturally through people visiting your blog. However much of this requires effort on your part to promote your blog.
This might include promoting yourself and the work you’re doing in social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook. You might also dedicate some of your efforts in building up your profile in a professional channel such as LinkedIn.
However you choose to promote yourself, the beauty of social media is you never know who might end up discovering you! Opportunities can come to you in the most unexpected ways and it might only take one influential follower to kickstart a blogging career for you.
4. A Profitable Side Hustle?
Even if blogging doesn’t become your main career it can certainly add to what you do as a day job by supplementing your earnings as a side hustle.
When you’ve been blogging for a while you’ll build up a resume of posts. This might lead to you picking up freelance work that you can manage alongside your career work. If you’re lucky it will help increase your overall earnings.
If you begin to enjoy lots of visits, your blog itself might be a means of generating a side income through affiliate marketing, advertisements of sponsorship. Many people generate a substantial side income in this way to boost the money they make in their day jobs.
Some people earn more money through their blogs than they do from their employed work. At this point they can continue their blogging career as employed or self-employed: they have choice.
My Blogging Career… So Far!
I started blogging around 2005 when I saw people were able to make money through advertising (Adsense) and affiliate marketing. Over the years I’ve had many failures and also a good share of successes.
I’ve created several blogs of that have made money over the years: some of them still turn over a little side money. Here are some examples:
- A blog about loans and mortgages: approx. $90,000 over 4 years.
- Personal finance: approx. $12,500 over 2 years.
- Banking: approx. $10,000 over 3 years.
- Language learning: approx $32,000 over 10 years.
My latest project is SideGains and it’s perhaps my most ambitious and most long-term project yet. My aim is to make a living from it before branching into new blogging niches. You can find out all about how it is progressing and what to expect if you decide upon blogging as a self-employed career here: SideGains Monthly Reports.
Summary
- Choosing blogging as a career can be a great way to get paid for doing what your enjoy.
- As an employee, roles where blogging is your major responsibility are not necessarily the most lucrative.
- Freelancing might be an option for you but, earnings can vary enormously.
- Starting a blog is a great way to develop existing skills and learn new ones if you want a career as a blogger.
- If you don’t presently have experience to show potential employers, your own blog might help kickstart a move into blogging full-time.
- Blogging will grow your network, which increases your chances of meeting people that can help you in your career choice.
- With hard work, patience and a little luck, you might be able to make money from your own blog!
Thanks for reading… and good luck!
Paul
Over to you! Are you considering blogging as a career or have you already done so? Let me know about your thoughts and experiences by dropping a comment below.
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