One of the main concerns of every online publisher is money. If you start publishing your stuff online and you get some traffic, you'd probably want to earn something from your blog as soon as possible.

Photo credit: Robin Good

But this is not going to happen very quickly, unless you focus first on two big issues: niche targeting and getting REAL traffic.

In this short video tutorial, Robin Good shares some basic advice about how to make money with your blog or web site.

Immediately plastering your site with ads, just won't do. Your first concern should be questioning again the content niche you have selected and see whether you can improve and define better its specific traits and characteristics. The more you define it and identify your niche profile the easier it becomes to serve your audience with content and advertising offers that can match your readers expectations.

Next step up is traffic. Once you have clearly identified your niche it's time to focus on getting qualified traffic to your site. The more relevant and interested in your topics, the more your web readers are likely to enjoy your content, click on some ads and bookmark your site to come back for more.

According to Robin though, if you cannot make at least 500 or more visitors per day, you should not start planning to send your present boss a resignation letter any time soon. Yes, even with a small, but highly targeted traffic stream, you could start seeing an interesting revenue stream coming your way, but you need to make sure that your ads and sponsor are highly relevant to your readers interests and that they do not alienate or distract them from what they are really interested into.

Here his short video and tips on how you too, can start looking at your site as a potential source of additional income:

How Much Money Can You Earn With Your Blog

Duration: 5'

Full English Text Transcription

Hi guys this is Robin Good for MasterNewMedia, and I have more and more questions coming in from you at my email inbox at Robin.Good(at)masternewmedia.org

Let's see what I've selected today to answer. You write: "Let's talk about money! How much am I supposed to earn with my own blog, and how much will it cost me to keep it fully functional?"

That's a good question, and not an easy one to answer!

"How much are you supposed to earn with your blog?" As much possible I would say!

There isn't really an official figure for how much you're supposed to earn, but let me give you some indications of what may be useful for you.

What To Do Before Thinking of Money

You should consider monetizing your blog only after you've established your blog in some way.

If you've just opened your blog and your plastering it with ads from Google or from affiliate products, or other things, I think you're just wasting your time. I think you shouldn't do that.

1. I think you should first, find out for yourself:
   • if you like what you're doing,
   • if you can do it well if you get few comments from people, or from your friends after they read what you got out there,
   • if you become visible inside major search engines, especially Google.

   That is: "if you write the topic of your latest article, can you find yourself in Google in one of the first few pages?", and so on.





2. Once that happens, and once therefore you start having real traffic, you can then think about advertising.





3. And then, if you have, at least, I would say a 500 to 1000 visitors per day, and you talk about a very specific topic, for which there is a number of products and services, and companies that want to advertise out there and you can find out these much earlier before you even start publishing your blog site, you should see some revenue coming in the amount of...

   ...if you are on a specific niche that has a good value you could be making a few tens of dollars per day. 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 dollars per day, or more.

Choose a Good Market Niche

It depends very much on the topic that you're focusing on.

Some topics are worth much more than others because the products and the services that are sold after the people click on your ads are worth much more money and revenue to those companies than other products.

A Coca-Cola bottle has only little revenue margin. A mortgage on a house has a huge margin for a very long time for whoever sells it, just to give you a general idea.

Money = Effort

The reason, the specific amount.

I would say that a properly prepared blog that works on a specific niche, and builds some authority before plastering ads in the correct and best positions out there, should be making at least 500 to a 1000 dollars per month to justify spending on it the three-four hours per day that it may require.

Maybe a lot less in some cases, maybe a bit more in some others. But that's the type of number that would indicate me if it's worth spending more time on it or not.

If you don't make that 500-1000 either you're doing something wrong in the way you're publishing your site, or your niche is not worth enough, or you need to understand better how to work your content, then titles, and the general look of the site so that your Google search bots will come and index you better, and you can be found by people who search that topic.

That's what can I say. There isn't a specific set of rules and figures, but I would say that the threshold to make some money is above 500 visitors on a specific niche. There you should start making some (money), and you should be making a few hundred to a thousand or more if you're doing your things well.

Hope that helps.

Ciao from Robin, talk to you soon!

Do you have more questions you want Robin Good to answer? Post them here below inside the comments area.

Do you want to learn more about other key strategies in professional web publishing? Check out POP, a new video blog site where Robin Good shares his expertise with "in-depth" video tutorials to help professional online publishers to monetize their sites.

Originally shot and recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on December 18th 2008 as "Blog Earnings: How Much Money Can You Earn With Your Blog - Robin Good Video"