Can You Make Money Online? You Can! I'm a Two Figure Blogger!

It just hit me – like a truck – that I’ve just become two figure blogger. I have to confess that I stole the previous sentence, except for the two figure bit. A couple of years ago, I decided to try my hand at blogging to see if I could make a bit of cash on the side as I was about to start grad school full-time.

When googling the topic of "blogging for money," "make money blogging," or some other such get-rich-quick search term, one of the first hits that Google provided was this gem from the ProBlogger site. The site's creator, Darren Rowse, is well-known as a heavyweight in the blogging industry and his title was "I'm a Six Figure Blogger."

I must admit that I was feeling pretty pumped to find out that there was some money to be made. I figured $100,000 from blogging was not terribly likely, but if I could make a few hundred bucks here and there, I figured it'd be all good. So, right after reading Mr. Rowse's article, I decided to start a Blogger blog for free with Google's blogging software. I typed out my first post, hit publish, and then shared it with all 200 or so of my Facebook friends.

I got double digits in hits for the first couple of posts. Then, only three days after hitting "publish post" for the first time, it happened. I checked the monetization tab on my brand new blog and found that someone, somewhere had clicked one of the ads on my site. I was only about four days into this blogging thingy and I had already earned a whopping $0.59.

After seeing that $0.59 in my Google account nearly two years ago made my day. From all that I'd read, it'd just be a matter of time before the search engines would pick up on my great content and send thousands, if not millions, of visitors my way--after all, I'm a great writer (at least in my own mind).

From my previous experience of getting a click after only 30-something odd visits, I thought the money would come rolling in any day. I posted about 60 posts for the rest of the year. Unfortunately, only a few controversial titles would get any hits whatsoever after Facebook shares. Search traffic was pretty much non-existent. In about nine months of this first (now aborted) blog, I got an extremely underwhelming grand total of less than 500 hits.

Reality then set in, that I was not going to be making much on this blog. One of the problems that beset my first blogging experience was the fact that it was a collection of random ramblings on any variety of subjects that hit me on a given day. Another problem was the lack of using key terms that Google liked. Over the life of this (now aborted) blog, I earned a whopping total of $0.64.

After deciding to scrap the first random blog with no theme other than the extreme randomness of my musings, I chose to start another blog that was more narrowly focused upon one of my interests. This blog, the American Church History blog, also sports the handy-dandy Blogger platform. While I hoped to eventually get a bit of money out of my hard work, I figured that it'd be about 2030 before that happened.

Nonetheless, I decided to launch the blog for fun. I started the new blog on May 5, 2011, and chose the same strategy of sharing my outstanding posts with Facebook friends. A few stopped by from time to time, but I decided to have a more narrow focus. This earned me an increasing number of Google (and other) searches popping up on my website. The results were about 4-5 times that of my previous effort. Although I didn't exactly rake in the dough with the site, it did substantially better than my previous attempt and the traffic was better. I focused on this for about six months exclusively--then something happened.

As the Fall semester ground to a close last year, I was looking at a couple of weeks with a lighter workload. Again, I scoured the interwebs for ways to make money online. My goal was to build up a bit of residual income over (probably a very long) time. One of the sites that I hit upon was Hubpages. That day changed my life, as I can now claim that I am a two figure blogger.

Of course, I had to do some checking up on this HubPages thingy. I didn't want to find my identity stolen and some teenager in Mumbai, Timbuktu, Vladivostok, or any other place very remote from me, drawing my social security decades before I can even retire. While there were a few people claiming the site was a scam, most of what I read seemed favorable. I took the chance to make the plunge. After posting a hub or two and some comments to other hubs, I got a couple of followers--the same number that I had from my first (now aborted) blog.

One of the things that has been beneficial to my massive earnings this year has been the number of Google searches that land on my Hubs. Some are now getting about 5 hits a day, and I've grown from 4 visits/day the first month to around 25 last month. A six-fold growth in traffic over just five months is pretty good progress, IMHO. With the increased earnings from my second (not aborted) blog and my Hubs, I've been able to reach the rare air of the two figure blogger in just four months--and the income is actually growing after my discovery of the HubPages Ad program. I won't divulge specifics, but at this rate, I'll have to move up my anticipated payout date from 2030 to 2013.

So, there it is--my wonderful blogging experience, now nearly two years in the making. I hope you enjoyed this walk through my blogging career. Hopefully, I'll be able to increase readers. In fact, you're reading this just helped me out. Again, I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing. Of course, you may be wondering about the moral of the whole story. It's this--making any appreciable amount of money online takes quite a bit of time for the vast majority of people, and I'm definitely among the majority.

I've updated my progress on the latest installment of my "Can You Make Money Online?" series. I've also noted the top 10 things I've learned while at HubPages. My latest update chronicles my first year on HubPages.