Make Money From Your Blog

Have you ever wondered how much the top blogs make per month?

Here are a couple of the most lucrative personal blogs I've come across:

Dooce.com
I'm sure some of you have heard of the famous Dooce.com, which was featured on Oprah earlier this year. In the show, she mentioned that she now makes $40,000 per month. Both her husband and her can now stay at home full-time to work on this endeavor. I'm sure they've garnered more traffic after the Oprah show aired with all those curious people who wanted to know what types of things she writes about to be able to make so much money. It was the first time that I had heard of her blog, but then again, I'm not her target market (yet). Her blog is all about parenting and child-rearing.

Here's an article that was written in 2005 before her big money making days: Heather Armstrong, Bloggers on Blogging

Here's another article about her with some video interviews of her: Website Chat with Heather Armstrong, Dooce.com

StevePavlina.com
I came across this website about a year ago that is all about personal development. I'm not sure how I got there, but I remember that I was searching for something that was very unrelated to the topics that are discussed on his website. His articles were interesting, though, so I decided to stay and poke around. Some of the more interesting ones that initially made me stay were:

• How to Become an Early Riser (I was never a morning person, but aspired to become one)
• How to Discover Your Life Purpose in 20 Minutes or Less
• 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job

After reading enough articles, I also stumbled upon articles about how to create a blog:

• How to Make Money From Your Blog
• How to Build a High-Traffic Web Site (or Blog)

I considered creating a blog a year ago, but as you can see it's taken me a year to get it up and running. According to his second article, apparently I've already broken his rule #2: Create original content.

Instead of creating all original content, I have taken a hybrid approach by creating some original content as well as linking to other sites that I have found useful. Although Steve might disagree with me, I think I'll continue to share the resources that have helped me along the way. I can't claim that I'm an expert to be writing all my own content yet, so where I can provide valuable resources, I will, even it it means people may leave my site to visit another site. Hopefully they'll come back here for more. I've definitely been known to gather a lot of resources and blast them out to my family, so I'm hopefully assembling it all here in one place will be useful for you (and to my family). It's also helpful for me to keep my resources organized so that I don't have to dig through all of my emails to find that one link that I wanted to visit again.

I have found StevePavlina.com very valuable, and I've continuted to visit and read it periodically over the past year. I was even able to attend a workshop of his as part of the I Can Do It 2008 Conference in Tampa, FL last fall. If you like his work, you can also take a look at a book that he's recently published called: Personal Development for Smart People


I haven't read it yet, but if it's anything like his website, I'm sure it has good quality content. I'm not sure what qualifies as a "smart person" though. Don't all people need personal development?

Top Earning Blogs
Here's an article written a couple of months ago that lists all the top blogs with estimated figures on how much ad revenue they generate each month: Top Earning Blogs - Make Money Online Blogging


Ok, bear with me as I fantasize here for a little bit. It would be great to make so much money blogging that I could devote all my time to everything that I'm passionate about, which will probably also include blogging, but I would also have time to read, write, design, enjoy my crafts and hobbies, exercise, do yoga, cook organic gourmet meals, volunteer, and blog all about it. It would probably be a nice way to raise a family while enjoying the perks of having income streaming in while being able to work from home. And it could happen, who knows. I'll let you know when it does. :)

The reality is that I know that it takes time to build an audience. Dooce started in 2001 to get to where she is now (it's been 7-8 years in the making). Here's her first post about carnation milk. Steve Pavlina started in 2004--you can see his first post here: First Post. Well, here's to my first post that started less than a month ago: The Start of a New Adventure. Wishing you much success if you have a blog or are considering creating one for yourself.