I’ve been a full-time blogger for 3 years and my blogs generate up to $20,000 per month.
In this post, I walk you through my experiences, key learnings, and thoughts about blogging as a career.
But I hate to just talk about myself, so my main goal is to help you set realistic expectations!
1. My Journey
I started blogging because I wanted to accomplish financial freedom and be my own boss.
Even though I loved my previous job, I always knew I wanted to work for myself rather than make someone else rich.
With some Google searching, I quickly learned that blogging/affiliate marketing would be among the least stressful options.
Furthermore, those would be easy and practically free to start.
I started on Medium.com.
It’s a great platform where you can start in minutes for free.
I had no idea how blogging works so I wanted to give it a shot.
I wrote full-time and quickly got hundreds of thousands of visitors in just 3-4 months.
Then I realized that I don’t want to blog on a platform because it’s essentially the same as working as a freelancer for another company.
Thus, I decided to launch my own WordPress blog.
I wanted to be the captain of the ship!
These days, I operate 4 different WordPress blogs and earn between $4,000-$20,000 per month.
2. The Daily Life of a Full-time Blogger
Routine
Here’s where it gets interesting.
I actually work super hard—up to 60 hours a week!
But the schedule is simple.
I come to my office space in the morning, then I write about 8-10 hours, and then I leave.
(These days, I also do YouTube, so it diversifies the tasks a bit.)
But why work so hard?
Blogging is nothing like it used to be.
Many people still seem to believe that it’s just about writing a couple of hours a week and getting passive income.
But the problem is that these days, anyone can have a blog.
Thus, there’s a ton of competition.
Those random blogs with topics are no longer a thing. People read posts that solve problems and that rank high on Google for popular topics.
For example, topics like “Best Tennis Shoes for Kids” or “How to Start Tennis” are something that can do well.
But topics like “My Dog Likes Red Pillows” are deemed to fail…
To put it short, blogging is more like a business, not a hobby.
Of course, if you just want to blog as a hobby, then go for it! But you won’t get any reads to your blog posts or make any money that way!
Obstacles
Blogging itself isn’t that hard.
I use Google suggestions to come up with blog post topics. Thus, I never run out of ideas!
Then I do research and write the most detailed and informative piece of content about that topic.
But the biggest roadblock in my opinion is the time it takes to get visitors.
If I started a new blog today, I’d need to work 6-12 months full-time on it to make any income or get a decent number of visitors to it!
Look at the growth of this site. It has 350 blog posts, about 800 hours of total time spent, and only recently got first 1,000 clicks per day…
This site earns about $1,500 per month at the moment.
But it’s in a highly lucrative niche. Typically a site with 10k-20k monthly visitors earn much, much less!
Anyways, no matter how good or bad a blogger you are, it takes a heck of a lot of time to rank on Google!
3. Content Creation Process
Idea Generation
All blog post topics come from Google.
Out of the 1,000+ blogs I’ve written, I’d say I’ve only come up with the topic less than 20 times.
The way I use Google to generate blog post topics is simple.
Just open up Google, type in something related to my niche, and use those suggestions as topics.
But why on earth do I do it this way?
To build a successful blog, you need to meet the demand and solve problems for people!
If you write about random topics like “I had a dream last night”, no one will read those.
You need to answer questions and solve problems that people type in search engines!
Writing Process
Writing a blog post is simple but takes work!
After you’ve published 50-100 posts, you won’t even think about the process.
Anyways, the way blogging works is you want to save your reader’s time.
When I write, my idea is to spend 2-3 hours doing research and putting together a post that solves a problem so that my readers don’t have to.
For example, the other day I wrote a post that lists all the rental cottages in Finland that are close to the sea.
Without my post, it will probably take 60 minutes to find those and most would give up. But thanks to my post, one can find those in seconds!
I’ve made a separate tutorial on how to actually write a post.
But to give you an overall idea, it’s just about saving your visitors’ time!
Collaboration
I work alone.
I don’t write guest posts.
I don’t appear on podcasts.
I don’t promote on social media.
I just want to focus on writing and growing my audience.
And in my opinion, the above strategies can be good alternatives, but the best way to blog is by writing blog posts.
💡 My journey as a blogger is very simple. Write every day about topics that people search for on Google.
Nothing more, nothing less!
4. Blog Growth Experiences
My blogs have been read by 6,000,000+ people in the past 2 years.
That’s all thanks to just writing a ton of posts that solve problems.
One thing I’ve noticed is that Google loves quality content. No longer do you need SEO strategies or other tricks to get to the top of Google?
Those strategies can actually just hurt your site.
Today, it’s all about quality.
Your post needs to be the best post on the entire internet if you want to have any chance to rank high.
Also, to grow a blog, you need to write a ton of content for it. This is because Google wants to show results only from credible sites that they can trust.
Usually, this means writing hundreds of blog posts!
But that makes sense. Why would Google recommend the 10th best post about the topic?
5. Expanding Business
And as I mentioned before, I operate 4 blogs.
In this game, it’s very common to run 5-10 different sites. This is to balance the risks and diversify the portfolio.
Of course, one should focus on getting one site to do good and then expand.
If Google, for some reason or another, exploded one of my sites overnight, I’d still have 80% of my business up and running.
These days, I also do YouTube where I teach blogging to people that are new to the business.
There’s so much misinformation about blogging online that I just felt like I have to jump in.
Also, there I can reach an entirely different audience.
But Youtube doesn’t grow my blogs. And my blogs don’t grow my Youtube.
It’s hard to move people between platforms.
Even though I have a link to my videos on my blog, basically nobody clicks those.
I thought maybe 1 in 10 would check my videos. But it’s more like 1 in 1,000…
6. Blog Monetization Experiences
Most of my blog revenue comes from affiliate marketing.
I did ads initially, but those performed so bad and almost crashed my site so I decided to focus on better strategies.
Read also: Why You Should Not Show Ads on Your Site
After all, ads aren’t effective anymore (unless all your traffic comes from the US).
Ads are easy to set up. But most of the time, they just break your site.
You might earn $1-$20 per 1,000 visitors. But it’s usually not worth it!
You can earn so much more with affiliate marketing and product sales.
Affiliate marketing is harder than just showing ads, for sure. But it’s still a relatively easy and effective strategy that many blogs use.
Anyone can apply to lucrative affiliate programs and start writing affiliate posts. This way, you could in theory start making money right away.
But of course, because it takes time to rank on Google, a new affiliate post/site won’t earn for months!
7. Personal Growth and Development
As a blogger, I’ve learned how running a successful online business works. This has built a ton of confidence!
I now understand how the content found online is actually created.
I also know how the SEO space is full of useless information, expensive tools, and toxic “growth hackers”!
It’s actually funny to read blog posts and reviews these days.
It’s so evident that 99% of the blog posts are just meant to rank high but not to provide actual value!
Most of them are put together by big companies that pay $50 for a 23-year-old freelancer to write a post in 2 hours about a topic they have no idea about.
Wrapping Up
And that’s a wrap for my journey!
I hope I was able to give you an idea of how blogging really works and what are my experiences as a full-time blogger.
If you want to start your blogging journey, make sure to check out my free blogging masterclass!
Thanks for reading. Happy writing!