Is it possible to make money by writing a blog?

“What exactly do you do?” is one of the most frequently asked questions in the events I attend, live broadcasts, and Q&A on social media. Since this question stems from the fact that blogging is not perceived as a job, when you say "I am a blogger", the second question comes right after it: "Is it possible to make money by writing a blog?“. As someone who has been blogging for 12 years and spent the last 2.5 years as a full-time blogger, I decided to write a long and detailed answer to this question on my blog and send the link to this article to those who asked, and this article came out. I hope you find the answers to your questions, if you can't find it, please write your question in the comments section and I will answer it.

What is a Blog, What Does a Blogger Do?

First of all, if you came to this article by typing “make money by blogging” or “how to make money by blogging” on google, then “Do I regret leaving my 19-year corporate life?” I suggest you watch my video. So you can get some idea of ​​who these bloggers are and how they got to this point.

Now, let's start with the dust and gas find. Someone who wants to be a blogger what is a blog, what does a blogger do It would be helpful to know the full answers to your questions. We can't be that without knowing what we're going to be, can we?

What is a Blog?

BlogIn its simplest definition, it is a kind of website that allows anyone to write their personal information and experiences in the way they want, without the need for technical knowledge. It is an environment that allows you to easily keep records on any subject you want individually, and can be used instead of a diary.

This is how my blogging story began 12 years ago. Since I have a bad memory, I started to write a blog in order to take notes of the places I wanted to remember in the countries and cities I visited and to share them easily with my friends who would go after me. Years later, I never thought that it would be my job, 12 years ago, blogging was not considered a job in our country. Maybe this natural attitude has prepared the environment for my blog to come to these days.

What Does a Blogger Do?

bloggerare people who write to inform, entertain, or share their own ideas on the subject of which they are experts and/or know. They reach their readers by sharing their own experiences, inferences from their experiences, and what they know and/or newly learned in the form of articles.

With the developing technology and social media tools, if you are doing this job to make money, the blogger needs to solve the technical needs of the blog and carry out promotional activities, apart from writing articles for his blog. We will go into the details of this section in the next section.

If you ask if blogging is a job, I think it is a job because it is an activity where you spend your time and earn money in return. Of course, you can also do blogging as a hobby, I took it with my corporate job for years, it was a hobby for me at that time. But when it comes to making money, or rather making enough money to survive, it becomes a job, not a hobby anymore.

If you have questions about working from home, Subtleties of Working from Home The article may interest you.

Unfortunately, we still have difficulties in seeing blogging as a job. Since many people in our country do not see work done by working from home as a job and do not see blogging as a job anyway, there are still many people asking me "what do you have to do". However, if you want to make money by blogging, you need to deal with your blog more than a full-time job. Especially if you are doing this job individually, you are the designer, software developer, marketer, editor, social media player of the blog. Therefore, you will need to spend at least 5 people effort. As in any business, the harder you work for your blog, the faster you will reach your destination.

By the way, when you start blogging as a business, you can start working regardless of location and find yourself living the dream of many people. For this reason "life is beautiful to youGetting used to sayings like ” is also part of blogging. Because many people will think that they are living their dream life without doing almost anything, get ready for these comments!

What You Need To Do To Make Money By Blogging

Let's come to the benefits of beans!

If you want to make money and make a living by blogging, I will give you the secret recipe that everyone knows but does not like to hear. I love writing, should I start a blog? I've traveled a lot like you, should I start a blog? So many questions come to me. Of course, in the continuation of these questions, how long after "Does this business make money?” he continues. I said it in the introduction, and I will repeat it here, being a blogger and turning this job into money is not as easy as it seems from the outside. If you are not ready for blood, sweat and tears, keep doing this as a hobby. But if you say you want more, keep reading!

Set Your Own Area

"I want to blog, where do I start?", even now young people ask "I want to be a youtuber, where should I start", but that should be the subject of another article. First of all, choose a topic that you love enough to write about, that interests you, that you enjoy researching.

Let me explain myself with examples. I love to travel, I like to travel without being tied to a tour, and I do quite detailed research before going somewhere. When a spouse or friend who is going somewhere started to call and ask "what to do, what to eat, where to go", I started to write the blog, thinking that it would be best to write them regularly so that everyone can benefit. So my category is; travel blog of someone who travels with their own research without tour it happened. Besides my travel experiences, the books I researcheda, my inspired travelersI also tried to fully own this area by including it on my blog.

When choosing the subject you want to write; Try to choose an area where you enjoy writing and where you have more information than anyone else on the street. Otherwise, you will be lost in piles of similar blogs.

After determining your domain, you need to specify a domain name, that is, the name of your blog. For me, my domain name, the name of my blog, and my brand became “The Many Readers, Many Travelers”, which I think explains the features I have described above well. If I was starting a blog now, I might not have this name. I would choose a name that is shorter, does not contain Turkish characters, and contains one of the words such as travel, travel, road, more like a pill. When you start blogging as a hobby, people don't think much about them.

It's Hard To Be A Blogger Without Solving The Technique Of The Job

You have determined the topic you want to write about, you have the domain name, so what will happen now? You need a medium to publish your blog. There are platforms in the internet world that offer many blog infrastructures, with the simplest version being blogspot, the more professional version being WordPress. When I first opened the blog, it was on blogspot, after a few months I thought it was too simple and moved to WordPress and I've been keeping my blog there for years.

In order to open a blog, you will first need to find a domain name, then an infrastructure provider, then a hosting company and make them talk to each other. Then, you will need to learn SEO in order for your articles to be liked by search engines, that is, to appear at the top of the search results. I would say don't start blogging without researching these issues and improving yourself, or complete these deficiencies quickly after you start. At first, if I didn't say that the sound of the drum from afar is pleasant, let me say it now. If you are not a technical person, it will take time to learn all these subjects and apply them correctly. What I'm missing best wordpress school in turkey I get support from Wpokulu.co, you can check out their training and WP Club membership.

At this point "I love writing, should I start a blog??” Let me answer your question again. If you intend to improve yourself on technical issues, consider starting a blog if you are interested in these topics. Even though I love technical subjects, I still wish I could only write articles and never deal with these technical things.

To be a good writer, you have to be a good reader.

Blogging is not just about transferring your knowledge. You need to prepare quality and original content, write well, understand what you write and have a regular readership. For all of these, you need to have a good expression language, and that expression language must be original. Entertaining, informative or engaging… Making these choices and being able to write regularly for years by maintaining and improving the same language is one of the important conditions for becoming a blogger.

So how will you improve this writing language? By reading a lot of course! You cannot be a good writer without a good reader. But do not think that you will be a good reader by reading travel books, because most of those travel books are not written in a literary language. In order to improve your writing language, you must first discover authors close to your own style, that is, you should read books written in different styles. Then, you can read the authors written in the style you feel close to and that you think will inspire you in terms of writing language. Of course, you are not expected to be a writer on the first day, you can write in a natural language. However, the absence of expression disorder, compliance with grammar and spelling rules are the features expected from a blogger. It is essential that you use de-da suffixes properly!

If you want to write in plain and colloquial language and describe nature and people in a magnificent language while doing this, read Yaşar Kemal's books, for example. Absorb how Çukurova is told in the İnce Memed series. If you want to include stories from history, read Amin Maalouf's books, Samarkand, and Ports of the East. If you want to go back and forth in time, to make a simple story intriguing, read Gabriel Garcia Marquez, for example. Read One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera. If you want a gripping slice to be read in one breath, read Ahmet Ümit. Of course, it is possible to increase these examples with hundreds of them, I wrote down the ones that came to my mind right now. Reading good books by good authors and being inspired by them will be the best investment you can make in yourself.

Improve Yourself on Subjects such as Photography, Video

If I haven't said it by now, being a good blogger takes versatility. You have to be one of the people who are called “multi-task” in corporate life, which we call 10 ingenuity on 10 fingers in Turkish. Blogging is not just a job you do by writing. You have to realize that you are starting out to be a content producer. What does this mean; You will definitely need to support the articles you write on the blog with visual elements. The mind of the Turkish people is in their eyes, they will be more interested in the visuals you add to the article than what you write. For this reason, the visual materials you add to the article will need to be of high quality. If you are going to add photos, make sure to learn a photo editing program for the quality of your photos and their proper arrangement for the blog. Photoshop or Lightroom will do the trick.

Your blog will be your main channel, but you will also need support channels. In other words, like instagram, youtube, tiktok when necessary... You will need information and equipment in both photography and video in order to produce content for these channels. When you say equipment, sometimes even a phone that takes good photos and videos can do the job, but if you are going to focus on visually intensive categories such as travel, food, health, beauty, photography, you will also need to get a better camera, buy a microphone, tripod, buy a drone. .

Order and Stability Should Be Your Middle Name

You opened the blog, you wrote an article with beautiful visuals in accordance with the rules of spelling, but what about next?

If you want your blog to have a high readership in a short time, you will have to produce content consistently and without getting tired. Moreover, not only for your blog, but also for the social media channels I mentioned in the previous article. If you can set up an order to write at least 2-3 articles a week, you can start to create an infrastructure to make money from your blog, if you can do more, you will get it, but when it comes to quality content, more may not be realistic. If you try to produce shorter content by sacrificing quality, your blog's content quality will drop this time, don't do it.

You need to produce a completely original and quality content that has been pre-researched, technically optimized and completely original, because it's your job now! Remember, if you are reading this article, we are no longer doing this as a hobby!

When I decided to leave corporate life and continue blogging as a business, I updated my previous articles for months. I completely deleted the ones I didn't like, I updated the potential ones, I developed them. I rewrote almost all of the content that no one reads or will be of interest to, and that I wrote as if I was keeping a diary, I changed the photos and tried to make it an original and quality content. This meant that 1000-odd manuscripts were handed over one by one. It is not possible to finish this without regular practice. As a blogger, you need to establish a planned working order, just as you make business plans and to-do lists in business life.

Know Your Potential Readers, Your Target Audience

While preparing your content, you should produce content by considering not only what you want to write, but also the people who will read your article. If you have decided on the main topic before writing an article, there are many tools and many ways you can do this, such as looking at what people are researching on Google about it, collecting information from your followers on social media, "Ask what you are wondering about XYZ". If I try to write all of them in this article, the article will not end, so I say that you should know your target audience, readers and followers and produce content that will attract their attention.

After I started blogging, I organized many meetings and created a face-to-face meeting with my readers. In fact, many of the first to come to those meetings are now my close friends.

A sub-item of this article is to follow the agenda. For example, I am writing a travel blog. During the pandemic period, the HES code was required to be able to travel, that is, people who want to travel "How to get the HES code, where to get it?' he began to investigate. Then wouldn't it be a right step to write an article on this subject on the blog?

Or, electric scooter use If it is increasing day by day and electric scooters have started to be used for city trips, it is not a bad idea to prepare a detailed research article on this subject!

Patience Patience or Patience

We said stability and order, but there is one more essential thing: Patience! Writing a blog, ensuring that the blog reaches a certain audience, and starting to make money from the blog are both time-consuming tasks. You will sometimes spend days on a blog post, you will think that you are writing the best quality article in the world, but only 3 people will read that article; you, your fiancee and your mother. This will happen, you have to be prepared.

Just like any business idea or startup needs 2-3 years to start making money, it will take time for you to start making money from your blog. You have to be patient, continue to produce regularly and make your content interesting. Remember, the end of patience is peace.

Shoot First, Aim Later

This is a phrase I say a lot when working with entrepreneurs: “shoot first, aim later”. Usually this word is interpreted negatively. While the digital world is changing every day, if you have a project or an idea, bring it to life as soon as possible. When you make all your plans and take action, someone who has a similar or even the same idea as yours may have already started work.

Do you want to write a blog, get yourself a domain name as soon as possible. Because according to Google, the older the domain name, the more valuable it is. Other than that, someone may have already taken the name you think. Find your name without wasting time, get your domain name.

Don't wait for me to perfect my writing. Publish your article, you can improve that article according to the comments, criticisms and suggestions, or you can write another article on that subject if people's interest is in another direction. Were all my writings so good? No, of course. But the more I wrote, the better I learned to write. Every article you write leaves a mark on the digital world, the earlier you start, the more chances you will have to leave a mark. Perhaps one of my biggest advantages is that I have been blogging for 12 years.

I Say Network, You Too Relationships or Environment

If you want to make money by writing a blog, you need to be familiar with people or institutions that you can earn money with. They will know about you, add you to their list of bloggers, post jobs so you can earn money. This issue is critical if you want to make money from businesses such as brand collaborations and sponsorships.

But what if you don't have any acquaintances in the category you want to write in? Of course, I won't say "Drink a glass of water on top of it". You will have to spend some time and effort to acquire the environment in the category you are in.

You can participate in events such as fairs and conferences related to the subject you are blogging. You can follow the opinion leaders on these issues and make an effort to meet them. On a social media site that was popular at the time, I wanted to meet a teacher about CRM that I liked very much in my youth.Ugur Hodja follow me” campaign. My campaign reached him and then a nice friendship formed between us. As you can see it's not that hard.

You can invite a representative of the person or institution you want to reach to interview on your blog. You can ask your mutual acquaintances to introduce you. You can introduce yourself by following other bloggers and reaching the representatives of the brands and companies they collaborate with. Many brands now work with agencies instead of working directly with content producers. It is now very easy to find these agencies by searching. You can reach these agencies and try to get into their blogger lists.

Meeting organizations that I mentioned in the article "Know your target audience" can also be a way to gain a circle. In other words, you can plan the event yourself instead of waiting for others to organize it.

There are many ways to get a circle, but I told you that you have to put in serious effort in this regard. Not only the people you don't know at all, sometimes even those you know very closely, may not answer you for days or weeks. In such cases, you should not lose your motivation and continue to work with determination.

After a point, when the number of readers of your blog or the number of followers on social media reaches certain levels, brands or agencies will begin to reach you. But I recommend that you take the first step yourself without waiting for it. What we said, we shoot first and then aim.

You Can't Make Money Without Spending Money!

As we get started with making money by blogging, let's start by laying out some facts. If you want to make money, you will need to invest some money first. Let me repeat your first expense items:

• Domain Name (Domain): The domain name you buy has an annual fee, usually in USD.
• Hosting: Hosting, that is, you need to rent a place to host your blog, you can get it annually.
• Blog Theme: You can use free themes from WordPress, but you can get a paid theme for a more original design and technical support. A one-time payment will suffice.
• Required Programs: If you want to license photo editing programs such as Photoshop and lightroom, you will need to allocate a budget for them. Starting with the free trial packages of these programs will allow you to reduce your cost.
• Required Equipment: If you do not have equipment such as a camera, microphone, tripod, you will need to allocate a budget for them.
• Tanıtım: Apart from these, if you plan to advertise for the promotion of your blog or social media accounts, you will need to allocate a budget for it.

I am Turkey's leader for hosting services for many years. hosting I work with Natro Hosting, the platform. What you need for your blog via Natro Hosting; You can get many services such as domain purchase, setting up a ready website, hosting, e-mail service, SSL from a single point.

These were the first items that came to my mind. You will have to spend all these investments for nothing until you start making meaningful money from the blog, that is, enough to sustain your life. Most likely, you need to create an income source that will both fund these investments and make a living for you for 2 years.

While working in your corporate business like me, you can shape your blog and spend the first 2 years while getting a salary from another place. In this case, you should also be willing to work double shifts. You will work on your blog at night in your salaried job during the day.

How To Make Money By Blogging?

Dear reader, who came to this article with the hope of making money by writing a blog, here we come to the part that you are very curious about. I hope you've read the first chapter because I'll tell you up front that you can't make money without that part, you still have time, you can go back and read it.

I know you're saying "OK, he hasn't started making money yet". We're starting now.

There are many different ways to make money by blogging. I will list you the methods of monetizing the blog that I know and implement:

• Google Adsense Ads: As a publisher, the type of ad you will run with the least effort is Google Adsense ads. It's also the way you'll probably make the least money. In order to earn meaningful money from Adsense ads, your monthly blog traffic should be above 100.000. If you are writing in a very rare (niche) category, this number may drop to 50.000. For example, there is no Adsense advertisement on my blog, I prefer my blog to be clean instead of money coming from there.
• Display Ads: Apart from Adsense, you can work directly with brands and publish their display ads on your blog, and work with different models such as monthly, annually, per impression, per click.
• Affiliate Programs (Affiliate): Although these affiliate programs are one of the areas where foreign bloggers earn the most money, they are not yet appreciated in our country. If a frenzy started with Trendyol links recently, there would be no users. What is affiliate program If you say, you promote a brand or product as a publisher, you earn money from different actions such as the traffic you send to the relevant brand or product, sales from that traffic, downloading applications. The world's leading digital brands such as Booking.com, Carrentals.com, Amazon.com have been using this method for years, and you can join these systems as a publisher.
• Sponsored Content: After your blog reaches a certain number of readers, brands will want to promote their products or services through your blog or social media channels, or you will present them with such project ideas. In such cases, you can earn money with different models such as per post, per share, per link you refer.
• Product and Service Reviews / IntroductionI: By trying a product or service and sharing your experience on your blog and social media channels, you can have that product or service for free or get paid for it. Although this is completely dependent on your agreement, you can start earning money as your readership increases, while your blog readership is low and you are content with only the free product.
• Link Forwarding: This is one of the most popular ways to monetize a blog. If your blog has a certain quality and traffic, companies that want to rank higher in search engines ask you to direct them to their sites from certain words and / or phrases, and they pay a fee per link. I said link redirect because I wanted to write in Turkish, but its known name Backlink sales.
• Product or Service Sale: You can earn money from your blog by selling products such as your own private label products (such as t-shirts, mugs), products compatible with the category you have written, and original products that you produce through your blog. For example, he creates income for himself by organizing tours in the travel category, in which many blogger readers/followers participate.
• Content: After your blog and your own brand reach a certain level of awareness, you can start to produce content for other companies' websites, magazines or newspapers. You can earn money with a fee per content you produce here.

Apart from the above; It is possible to make money from the blog with different models such as raffles, growing and selling the blog, premium content, that is, selling some content for a fee.

my methods advertising & sponsorship It is on my page, you can see examples of the brands I work there.

How Much Money Can Be Made By Blogging?

We opened the blog, we also started to make money. Well, How much money can you make by blogging? Can you get rich by blogging? When to start making meaningful money? Is it possible to make more money working in a corporate place?

The above questions are some of the questions that came to me at different times.

Let me start with the easiest one first, if you have a dream to become rich by blogging, it is very difficult to become rich by blogging. Some blogs with very high traffic, after a point, are no longer blogging and turning that business into other business models. You can examine examples such as Webrazzi and Gezimanya.

"When will I start making meaningful money by blogging??” Let me give a somewhat general answer to the question. As I mentioned in the article above, if you can reach a certain audience with 2-3 rich blog content and active social media posts per week, you will start to earn meaningful money in the worst 2 years, although the content varies according to the category you produce. There are those who start to make money in 1 year in the market, and those who have not made money for 4 years.

Do you earn more than your job in corporate life? Let me be frank, I do not earn as much as corporate. 19 years of corporate life, I was working in a good position of a good brand, naturally I was earning a lot. In any case, my purpose of changing my life was not to earn a lot of money, but to live the life I dreamed of, and I came very close to it. In other words, it is useful to determine your goals and what you want when you start blogging.

Is It Too Late to Start Blogging? Are Blogs Dead? Should We Be Youtubers?

Some of those reading this articleIt says blogging is outdated, now there is Youtube" it could be. I have been saying the same thing for years, and I will continue to say it: The blog is my main broadcast channel, my main channel. Yesterday Facebook, today Instagram, Youtube, tomorrow another channel. These places will always change. For example, what would you do if Youtube said one day I'm removing all the videos, closing the shop? These platforms allow you to publish within their own systems, and the blog is entirely yours. When you want to update a video you have added to Youtube, you cannot update it, but you can update your blog post whenever you want. You can continue to broadcast as long as you want, you are not tied to any other platform. Blogging is not a fashion, it will not pass, it will continue to be read for many years to come. Audiences change, the shape of the content changes, but the blog remains.

Shall we be youtubers Unfortunately, I am not the interlocutor of the question, it would be better if someone who has a claim on the subject could answer this question.

It's still not too late to start blogging today. An original and quality blog always has a chance in my opinion. What are you waiting for, let's get started, let me know when you open your blog, add your blog under this article!