I was chatting to a soon-to-be-blogger this morning about ProBlogging and he asked me how long he’d have to blog before he could earn a reasonable amount from it.
It’s a common question that is usually on the lips of new bloggers exploring the world of ProBlogging.
Of course there is no real answer to the question as there are just so many factors including:
– traffic levels (which rely upon many other factors)
– value of ads for the topic you’ve chosen
– revenue streams chosen
Another factor I talked with him about was his level of posting.
Obviously the larger a blog is the increased chance of earning income it has. Whilst it’s not impossible for a small website or blog to be a good earner – in most cases the number of posts on a blog is a major contributing factor.
This flies a little in the face of the constant catch cry I hear from many bloggers about quality content being the key to successful blogging’ – I agree with this – but want to argue that it’s not just the quality that counts – ProBloggers also need to consider quantity. For me it’s not an either or’ question – it’s about both.
As I often say – the more pages in your blog the more potential entry points you have to it via search engine referrals. Of course it’s not just a matter of creating thousands of useless pages (although some try this) – each page should be a useful page with high quality content – but in general the more pages you’ve got the better.
Out of interest this afternoon I decided it was time to add up how many pages of content I’ve generated since I started blogging in November of 2002.
The grand total of posts (including this one) is 11908.make that 12236 (I forgot a blog) across my numerous blogs.
I’ve been blogging for 1053 days so that’s an average of 11.2 11.6 posts per day. When I started out (for the first year) my posting rate was much lower than this – the past 12 months have been something of a posting frenzy.
I will say at this point – that apart from a few reposted articles and duplicate postings (plus of course my guest bloggers work last month) these have all been hand written posts. I don’t use any automated posting system (I’m pretty anti them).
Ok – so this proves a couple of things:
1. I’m completely obsessed and addicted to blogging (I’m just waiting for the get a life’ comments).
2. If you want to earn a full time living blogging you probably need a fair bit of content. Quantity is NOT everything (I’m a big believer in quality content) but I think it’s worth saying that blogging is partly a numbers game also.
If you’re feeling a bit depressed now and are wondering how to up your posting rate – you might find a mini series I wrote on the topic of how to increase the quantity of content on your blog last year. Check it out at:
Feel free to add your own tips of how you generate larger quantities of quality content on your blog.
Darren Rowse is the founder of ProBlogger.net, a blog about the many ways of adding an income stream to blogs.
Darren owns and writes a variety of blogs including Digital Photography Blog and Camera Phone
Zone. He is also a co-founder of the Breaking News Blog Collective.
