How I Made $4000 a Month from Blogging

How can you make $4000 a month from blogging? Sounds improbable, right? Well, it IS possible to make money blogging.

I'm sharing my story so those of you out there starting a blog or hoping to earn a decent living from your blogging pursuits can see one way to make it work. My way isn't the only way. In fact, I'll tell you as I go about how I'd prefer to make the money. But, right now, I'm earning $4000 as a direct result of my blogging efforts.

I've blogged pretty consistently since about 2005. When I started, I never thought about money. Blogging was a way to keep an online diary and to connect to other people with similar interests. I enjoyed the connections I made and still have some friends I made nearly 10 years ago when I first posted on a blog.

About two years ago, I became interested in the idea of earning some money from my blogging. I had two friends who wrote often on the same topic I write about. We all decided to combine our efforts into a specialized blog focused on our topic. After a month or two, we had decent traffic and I installed Google Adsense. That's probably the easiest ad platform to install and use.

At first, we didn't make much money. And by that I mean like three to five dollars a month. But, as we persisted, the revenue did increase. Now, two years in, I earn about $30-$50 a month from the specialized blog. Of course, that's not much. But, traffic has increased consistently and there is a strong following on Twitter. So, the revenue is growing. And now, I have coffee money.

But, how do I make $4000 a month from blogging? I first realized my blogging was helping me earn an income when I got a call just after the news blog started from a potential client. We signed a short-term contract and I earned a few thousand dollars from the work. How did this client find me? He had read a few of my articles on the blog.

Then, I got a message on Twitter. Which led to a phone call. Which led to a writing project for which I wrote about 6000 words and was paid $3000. That's 50 cents a word. Which is pretty good in the word busines. How'd this guy find me? From reading my blog.

Last week, I signed a one year contract with an organization. That contract pays me $4000 a month. And it all started because the people in the organization are regular readers of my blog.

Now, they are paying me to write articles just like the ones I write for my blog. Plus, they will be pushing my blog articles out to a larger group of people. Which means my ad revenue will increase as well. So, now I'm making $4000 a month as a direct result of my persistence in blogging. Ultimately, I'd like to see ad revenue near $4000 a month. That will take time. But this new contract will help spread the word and push my name and blog out to a larger audience.

So, here's what I've learned about blogging that has helped me get to the point where my writing is not just earning me coffee, it is paying the mortgage.

1) Treat your blog like a job. I work on my blog 6-8 hours a day. I treat it like a job. I research articles, conduct interviews, post, and interact with other bloggers and my readers. I want to earn a full-time living from blogging. That means I treate it like a full-time job.

2) Persistence pays. I could have quite when I was 3 months in and the revenue was about 4 dollars a month. But, I persisted. Continuing to provide a consistent source of news that was relevant to my audience paid off.

3) Quality counts. I got phone calls about doing freelance writing because people read and liked my work. I didn't just have one good piece, I had many pieces with my byline. The person on the other end already knew I would deliver a solid product because they had seen it consistently on my blog.

I'm hopeful that my blogging will continue to lead to new projects and new opportunities to make money. I'm also excited that new clients are emerging who are willing to give me money to write. Sure, $4000 a month is not a huge salary. But it does afford me the freedom to write for a living and focus on that as my primary source of income.