Why your blog isn’t making any money
Wondering why your blog isn’t making any money?
Whether you started a blog as a side hustle to make you a little extra cash a month or you want it to be your full-time job, it can be disheartening to see limited return for all of your efforts.
Let’s face it, blogging is a HUGE time drain with so much to learn, admin to keep on top of and the actual creative process of making content. If you’re not seeing a return for that, it can make your motivation plummet pretty fast.
If your blog is not making the cash you wanted it to, then read on for the reasons why and what you can do about them!
This post contains affiliate links.
How my blog makes money
First of all let’s have a quick look at how my blog makes money. I make a full-time income from my blog. I’m not one of the six-figure bloggers – I definitely hope to be one day – but I am thrilled with what my blog has become.
It’s taken me over three years and a lot of false steps to get to this stage but what’s amazing about where I am now is that even on the days when I have zero time to blog my site still makes me money every single day.
I’ve set up a system that is not heavily reliant on social media to bring in traffic. I’ve created content that gets hits every day, even when I’m not online.
Here’s a list of where my blogging income comes from, listed from the biggest earner to the smallest earner:
- Advertising – my parenting blog is a part of MediaVine
- Affiliate income
- Product sales
- Sponsored posts
The final one used to be my biggest earner, but it’s now my smallest. However I don’t mind, because advertising brings in way more cash a month than sponsored posts ever did.
How to make money with your blog
Before we go on I just want to say that many bloggers do make a very good living from sponsored posts.
They start a blog, build a decent platform there and then offer do-follow links for brands (this is where you provide a paid link to the brand’s website from your blog). This post is not focused on this as a way to make money. This doesn’t mean it’s not a valid way of bringing in cash as a blogger, it’s just not been my primary focus.
I would also add that if you do take payment in exchange for links in your site it can (potentially) leave a red mark against your site from Google, as it’s against their terms of use.
Some bloggers also make money from sponsored posts where they do not provide follow links for the brand. They’re paid to create content that exposes the brand to the blogger’s audience. As long as you only use no-follow links this does not go against Google’s terms of use. But you’re more likely to make good cash from this type of sponsored post if you have decent traffic to back it up.
So if you are trying to figure out why your blog isn’t making money, start with asking HOW you want it to make money. If you want to earn cash from doing sponsored posts for follow links then you need to focus on building backlinks (which I discuss later in this post) to build your Domain Authority. Brands looking for paid links generally want blogs that have at least a DA of 10. Preferably 20+.
I just wanted to go over this to make it clear that bloggers make money from a variety of ways, there is no right way, but I am going to be focusing in this post on helping you grow traffic so you can monetise your blog with ads and affiliate marketing, and maybe even products of your own.
Why your blog isn’t making money
If you want to start making a full-time living, or just extra cash, with your blog, then these tips will show you the mistakes I was making in my own blog and give you ideas you can use right away.
You can find my tips for starting a blog that makes money here.
It’s still very early days
Building a profitable blog does take time. I think it takes at least six months, in general, before you can expect a site to start gaining Google traffic and potentially making money with ads and affiliate income.
My new blog only just started to get decent Google traffic in the last three months, before that I was lucky to get a couple of hits a day.
It recently went passed 10,000 page views per month, all from Google. So I know I’m on the right track, I just need to keep on going! By the way, if you want the best SEO tips for your blog then check out my SEO checklist and my important SEO tips for beginner bloggers.
If your blog is just a few months old you really need to just keep plugging away at it. Google likes to wait a few months before it starts to rank a new blog.
This is partly because a brand new blog has not had time to establish itself as an authority yet – both via backlinks from other sites and the amount of content on the site.
The solution:
Keep on blogging! Create new content and be patient.
You’re not focused on the reader
Blogging began as a way for writers to share an online diary through which they could pour out their thoughts on life.
But when we talk about blogging for money today you need to have the audience, your readers, at the very heart of every single thing that you do.
Because without the audience, you cannot make money from your blog.
Your content should speak to your audience, help them with problems and provide them with solutions. That solution could be to entertain, inform or inspire them, but their experience should be at the front of your mind in everything you write.
The solution:
Think about who your ideal reader is. What are the problems they face and how can you help them with your content? What is that reader searching for on Google or Pinterest?
You haven’t found your niche
This is tightly linked to the point above.
You may love to write about absolutely anything and everything, however your blog is far more likely to pull in decent Google traffic if you are narrowed down to one niche.
Your niche is your area of speciality. It is something you can demonstrate expertise and authority in.
When you niche down your blog becomes an authority on that subject, becoming the place Google wants to send people to answer their queries on that topic.
When you’re starting out you may have selected lifestyle as the topic for your blog, which is an extremely common place to begin. Many people begin with categories on their blog for make-up, travel, parenting and baking. Basically everything they are interested in.
But you’re going to struggle to rank for large numbers of keywords if your focus is so wide.
As soon as I narrowed down my focus on my parenting blog, providing meaningful and helpful content to my audience – new mums, I started making more money.
There are certain niches you will find it much easier to grow with. Food is an extremely crowded niche, but there may be some long tail keywords (longer search queries), that you could target.
Niches that relate to health and financial advice are much tougher to rank for, because Google wants to send people to large, authoritative sites on topics that are so important.
The solution:
Write down the topics you write about on your blog. Which one gets you the most traffic? You may need to delve into Google Analytics to figure this out.
You write about what you want
Trying to write about something that you’re passionate about IS way easier. However for your blog there are often posts that you need to write, not because you want to, but because they will help your blog to grow.
Some days I have a blog post idea that just leaves me totally cold. I know I can rank for it, but the topic is not something that I find inspiring. This is where I need to remind myself that my blog is not a hobby any more, it is a business.
This all feeds back to the above two points about finding a niche and writing for the audience.
It really helps to choose a niche that you’re interested in and is relevant to you – for example my two blogs are about parenting and working from home, both things I have huge personal interest in.
The personal experience also helps to build your authority in the eyes of Google.
The solution:
Do your keyword research. If you’re early in your blogging journey you do not need to fork out for a keyword research tool, although you may find this useful later in your blogging career.
In the first instance think about the different topics of your niche that your reader needs help with. What blog posts can you write about those? For example if your blog is about breastfeeding then you may have topics on breastfeeding clothes, breastfeeding kit, breastfeeding schedules and breastfeeding problems.
Think about what blog posts you can write that fit into those topics. For example “10 breastfeeding tops that make nursing your baby easy”.
Research those keywords on Google too by typing them into the search bar. It’s a great way to get new inspiration and look at the competition.
Not creating enough fresh content
If you blog three times for a week for a month and then leave your blog untouched for six weeks it is going to be tricky for you to grow your traffic rapidly.
When you have other commitments it can be tough to find the time to blog when it’s making you no money, but by putting the effort in now you can reap the benefits later.
I dread to think how many hours I have spent working on my blog for absolutely zero return. However it’s all paying off now, because it brings in money seven days a week even when I have no time to work on my blog.
That’s because I focused on writing evergreen content that helps the reader. This is content that people are searching for all year round – although I do have some seasonal content too – that will continue bringing me traffic for years to come, I hope!
The solution:
Write at least one new blog post per week when you’re starting out. Focus on writing evergreen content that will still be relevant in a year or two years’ time.
You can always update posts if anything changes, but try to keep dates or years out of your URL.
For example I wrote a post last week titled “can you still make money blogging in 2020”. I realised recently I had forgotten to change the year to 2021 in the title! I went in and made the quick edit, then checked over the content to make sure I didn’t have anything else to add. The URL already didn’t include the year, so that stays evergreen.
You haven’t found relevant affiliates
It is never too early to start adding affiliate links to your content.
Doing it before your blog starts to get decent traffic will save you so much hassle in the long run. So consider what relevant affiliate products you can link in your content as you are writing.
If you are writing product reviews always find an affiliate link for that product.
I love Carly’s Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers course.
It is a fantastic course for both beginners and intermediates with really amazing tips for how to add affiliate links that actually get clicks. She helps you find affiliate programmes that will actually work for your blog and exactly how to share the links.
The solution:
Join affiliate programmes and add relevant links to your content.
You’re relying too much on Amazon’s affiliate programme
I have nothing against the Amazon affiliate programme, because it brings me in a couple of hundred quid a month and that is great!
But I have to shift thousands of pounds worth of products to make that. The percentage cut you get from Amazon is seriously low.
In order to make decent cash, like for example blogger Debbie Gartner does from Amazon, you need to have huge amounts of traffic.
The solution:
Look for new affiliate programmes that have a better rate of return. Join more affiliate networks such as Awin and ShareASale.
Think about some products that are relevant to your niche, stuff that you already use and can recommend, and research whether they have an affiliate programme. Type the brand name and then “affiliate” into Google and it should tell you the details.
Your strategy isn’t clear
What are your blog goals and what is your strategy to get there? If you’re not sure on that then this could be holding you back.
Without a strategy you could be spending hours doing tasks that ultimately are not going to get your blog to a point where it’s making you money.
The biggest time wasting task I did in the early days of blogging was joining blog linkys. If you’ve not heard of these they are normally hosted by a few bloggers and involve sharing your latest blog post then commenting in several other people’s blog posts.
Those linkys were a great way of connecting with other bloggers but it took a lot of time out of my day every week and ultimately there are other things you can do that have greater value for your blog.
When I decided I wanted to get my blog onto MediaVine so that I could get money from advertising on my blog I looked at the requirements and assessed what I needed to do to get to 25,000 monthly sessions (the requirement at the time).
I decided Pinterest and Google were going to be my main areas of focus as I already, at the time, got most traffic from Pinterest (now it’s more Google traffic).
What did I need to do to get more traffic? Create more new, optimised content and keep pinning at optimal times. This pushed me over the line in just three months after deciding to go for it.
The solution:
Figure out what your blog goals are. Do you want to optimise with ads? In which case you need to grow your blog traffic.
Figure out what the steps are to getting you there, which may be:
- Create one to two new blog posts per week.
- Pin new pins to Pinterest daily.
- Build more backlinks (more on that shortly).
You aren’t focused on good SEO practices
I did not do any SEO work on my blog for about two years. This was a huge mistake as I missed out on years of potential traffic.
Taking time to understand SEO and then using good SEO strategies on your blog is effort well spent.
Unlike social media which requires constant feeding to get a return, once you have good posts ranking on Google you can sit back and watch the traffic roll in.
I highly recommend Angela from Stray Curls’ SEO book to give you a good SEO strategy to take your blog forward.
The solution:
Some key things to focus on to help your blog rank on Google are:
Your site organisation. Keep category numbers low – to just three to six different categories. You may have a few sub categories within those but keep it simple so your site structure is neat.
Your about me page. This is where you can explain why you are an authority on your chosen niche.
Targeting keywords you can rank for. My parenting blog will never rank for terms such as “how to breastfeed”. There are other, bigger authority sites on this topic that will always beat me. But it can rank for longer tail, low volume keywords. Those are keywords that are much wordier and may have less search volume (fewer people searching for it), but when I write lots of these types of posts I can start to see a real difference in my traffic.
Your site speed. This is becoming more and more important when it comes to Google traffic and also just general user experience. No one wants to wait 20 seconds for a web page to load up. They give up and click to the next result. You can increase your site speed by getting a decent host, I use Lyrical Host, a fast theme and by deleting unnecessary plugins. Lyrical Host has a fantastic course with pointers on how to improve site speed.
You aren’t building decent backlinks
This is often a much neglected area of blogging but it is one that can make all of the difference to your success when it comes to pulling in Google traffic.
You blog’s Domain Authority (DA) will grow as you get more higher DA sites linking to you. This can happen naturally, as by creating useful content other websites will hopefully link to you as a resource.
However there’s also a bit of work involved too.
You can build backlinks by offering to do guest articles on websites that are relevant to your niche or by networking with other bloggers to swap links.
The solution:
Join blogging Facebook groups where you can contribute to roundup posts or swap links. There are various Facebook groups that offer this opportunity. These are some I use:
Getting sucked down the numbers rabbit hole
Do you constantly compare your blog to other people’s sites? Or are you spending all of your time looking at how many likes your last Instagram post got?
There are many numbers that can distract us when blogging. The worst one can be on social media, as that is built almost like a casino slot machine that wants you to keep feeding it so that it can maybe reward you every now and then.
Getting more likes on Instagram or more followers on Instagram is not necessarily going to help your blog to grow. I have 30,000 followers on Instagram and it gets me pretty much zero traffic.
That’s not to say Instagram is not valuable to a blogger when it comes to income, as you can get good money from sponsored posts.
But if you are spending all of your time on social media chasing numbers, then you’re wasting time.
Similarly if you are constantly comparing your blog to other, bigger blogs in your sphere then you’ll probably lose all motivation.
The solution:
Create a schedule that allows time for this part of your blogging work, but remember to focus on the other stuff too. The content and the creativity that will help your blog to grow.
Stop comparing your blog to other people’s sites. Particularly where they are five years ahead of you. A LOT can happen to your blog in five years.
Not diversifying your income
Where is most of your blog income coming from? If it’s all from sponsored posts, for example, then you are missing out on some other potential income streams.
Making money from your blog in one area is great, but why ignore all of the other areas where it could be generating an income?
By not diversifying your income you become overly reliant on one area, and if that suddenly goes quiet for whatever reason then your earnings will suffer.
Solution:
If you want to become a full-time blogger then you need to consider all of the ways your blog can make money for you.
There are affiliates out there for every niche, plus why not consider making your own products? It’s easy to make printable products in Canva, for example planners or checklists that could be useful to your audience.
Research relevant affiliates in your niche and brainstorm products you could create to sell from your blog.
I use Sendowl for my sales from my blog. It costs around £8 a month and is so easy to use!
Worrying that nothing you do is working
There is just one thing that makes money-making bloggers a success. They didn’t give up.
If you chat to any successful bloggers they will all have had at least one occasion where they thought about giving it all up.
Their blog wasn’t getting clicks, they suddenly lost a ton of Pinterest traffic, they weren’t getting the same brand deals other people were getting. The list goes on.
I could have thrown in the towel so many times but I kept plugging away at it and now I am so so glad that I did. My blog has given me flexible work that fits around my family life. I get to spend more time with my kids, and earn money even when I don’t have time to work!
The solution:
Do not give up. If you are having a week where you feel like nothing is working, take a break, step back and return to your blog in a few days.
Create a list of simple steps you can take right now that can help your blog. This could include:
- Write one new blog post.
- Add new affiliate links.
- Share new pins to Pinterest.
- Send an email to your mailing list.
Action plan for when your blog is not making any money
These are all mistakes that I have made in my blogging journey. I hope this post helps you avoid them and find a new route to making your blog profitable!
To recap, if your blog is not making money do these things:
- Focus on your niche
- Write new content
- Find keywords
- Build backlinks
- Improve your site speed
- Diversify your income
- Add affiliate links to your site
- Quit comparing your blog to bigger blogs
- Take a day off when it becomes too much and focus on little steps
