How My Big Blogging Failure Became an Accidental Success: In Three Different Ways
Back in the dim and distance past - okay, it was January 2008 - I started a blog. So did quite a lot of other folk, no doubt: January’s a popular month for new blogs.
I’d been reading ProBlogger and Steve Pavlina and a handful of other big blogs, and I was totally fired up. I was sure that, if I worked hard at my blog, I’d pretty soon be reaching thousands upon thousands of readers, and changing their lives.
In reality? By November 2008 - eleven months later - I received my first dollars from that blog, in the form of an Adsense check. I had about eight hundred readers. I was also running out of things to say in my niche, and a couple of months later, I stopped blogging there altogether.
It wasn’t exactly the great success I was hoping for. Thankfully, there were three ways in which that failed blog turned into success for me:
1. Freelance Writing
For over a year now, I’ve been paying all my rent and bills by working as a “staff blogger” on several different sites.
I got into this completely by accident: when I started that ill-fated blog back in 2008, I sent an email to a much bigger blog in the niche with a guest post attached. The blog editor liked it, the readers liked it, and I was offered a paid position writing for the blog. I had no idea that paid blogging even existed.
Fast forward a few months, I’d found a couple of other regular gigs (by emailing editors of blogs that I loved, and offering guest posts for free before asking for a job), and with more in the pipeline and some money saved up, I was able to quit my day job.
Several hundred blog posts later, I wrote a complete self-study guide to teach others what I do, the Staff Blogging Course. I was hugely excited when Freelance Folder’s Mason Hipp called it “an excellent resource that explains in detail every step necessary to start earning money as a staff blogger”.
2. Experience Gained
That blog might have been a failure - but it taught me a lot of lessons. I learnt how to use Wordpress; I made some great friends in the blogosphere, and I became a much better writer and blogger. I could’ve spent the last year reading about blogging, but nothing’s the same as hands-on experience.
With that blogging failure under my belt, I was able to launch my new blog Aliventures in July 2009 and take it to over 500 subscribers in under four months - despite posting far less often than on my previous blog.
3. Passive Advertising Income
Finally, that “failure” of a blog came up with a big surprise for me in January 2009: I got emailed by someone who wanted to pay to advertise there. All those posts I’d written - more than 230 - had gathered enough traffic that people were willing to pay to have a text link advert on the site.
It’s not paying my rent (yet!) but the advertising money from that site is definitely a nice addition to my monthly income … and it’s completely passive income that will keep going for years.
I only learnt retrospectively that it takes serious time (and patience!) before a blog starts making money. Never give up after six months or even twelve months just because you’ve not seen monetary results: if your subscribers and/or daily hits are going up, you’re doing something right and you’ll get there in the end.
Take-home lessons:
- Blogging is not a way to get rich quick. For every A-lister, there are literally thousands of other bloggers working hard and not making very much money at all.
- Don’t get too fixed on one way of getting income from blogging. You might find that affiliate reviews work for you, not advertising - or you might freelance, like I did.
- If your first attempt at blogging doesn’t work out, don’t worry. It took me a while to find my voice and figure out what I really wanted to write about.
- Conversely, don’t keep starting and quitting blogs: tell yourself that you’ll give it at least a year.
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- Making Money Thanks To Your Blog
- Fill the Gap
- How I Built My Blog From Nothing To Success In 6 Months
- How I won the affiliate game without loosing my shirt!
- The 3 Things That Have Helped My Blog the Most
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Right on Ali. Just doing something, whether it fails or succeeds, can bring so many more opportunities. I don’t even know how many blogs/sites I have made that have failed. But I tell you that I am happy that I failed and tried because now I make money daily with much less effort. It’s all about building on experiences and really finding out what we do best and then just focusing on that action and outsourcing the rest. Nice post Ali!
I appreciate your post very much. I too have been at this for a while and while I do not have 500 regular visitors, I do want to make it better. I consider myself a researcher so now I will apply the backend techniques that I have sold to my own site.
Good Luck with your continued success.
Here is a story about Backing up your blog, i hope it gets your readers taking action.
I had a nice blog, traffic was growing and adsense clicks started.Then it got hacked to a point were google tagged it a malicious download site and banned my domain, i had no back ups and had to get my hosting company to reset my account, as i could not take the risk as i was infecting peoples computers.
Using google analytics i got the ban lifted and started again that was about 3 months ago.
The first few posts are about secure install and backing up and believe me i felt like giving up so dont let this happen to you.
What an awesome story! Talk about turning lemons into lemonade. This is what success a lot of times looks like. (Not like what you expected) However when you continue a path regardless you never know what doors open from when another one closes.
I actually had a similar experience and because of it was featured in a NY times best Seller book by Joe Vitale because of my story. When you’re intention is to serve the rewards are limitless.
Great post!
Thanks for this post. As a freelancer, blogging have been one of my significant ways of making my internet presence. At the same time, it has become one of my ways of enriching my writing skills.
I started blogging about a year ago but eventually had to stop when I took up full time freelance work. Now, i’m back with a renewed enthusiasm, not for money but for a simple purpose of sharing and documenting my personal journey to full time freelancing.
The blog market is saturated with people with big dreams. I know. I am one of those big dreamers. I started blogging late in the blogosphere and what I found was that after 2 years of doing this thing called blogging I have enough content for an ebook. Blogging helped me to earn credibility.
Therefore, I totally understand what you mean by saying maybe the “traditional” way of making money from blogging isn’t all that reliable for beginners but a start nonetheless. Or maybe beginners shouldn’t rely on ad until they’ve built up a following.
Once you have the following, people will see value in your work or the captive audience you’ve built up. It take time to discover ones voice. But once you’ve discovered it, it up to you to keep promoting it.
Nice Story, I can’t even cash out my google adsense earnings because the google adsense code did not arrive so I stop the google adsense thing and move on. The best thing that blogging experience gave it to me is I land a job on SEO and done some link building task.
That’s a big inspiraiton for me..
Nicce story guys..
Say never give up and keep going !!!!!
Well said. You must treat blogging like any other business you start. It may be slow at the beginning but if you keep pushing it, there’s no telling how much you can achieve. In fact, it could even be harder to get a successful blog going because there is no real initial investment besides a few bucks here and there for domain name and hosting, which is close to nothing. Many think because it’s so cheap to create a blog that it doesn’t matter if they quit anytime, while people who put hundreds of thousands into a business keep pushing through.
It is great to read blob posts like this.
Lately I’ve been thinking about taking a break from my blog, but I keep coming back to it. It’s good to know that others experience and feel the same way.
I’ve made a little money and have a constant readership but I keep hoping to break through that ceiling and get more readers and make more sales.
Like I heard someone say once, “Keep blogging even when you don’t think anyone is reading.”
Thanks for the great entry!
Regards,
Jeff
Sorry…”blob” should be “blog.” The “g” and “b” are really close on the keyboard. My bad!
Regards,
Jeff
Thanks for your encouraging article. I’ve made a few bucks with my blogs and am a good writer. Perhaps, in addition to keeping up with my own blogs I should also do some writing for other blogs. Sounds like a great idea!
You know it is so nice to read a story like this,one realizes there are some really honest shooters out there that have had a problem making it-but are happy to guts themselves in public to where they went wrong and what they did.
It has given me some more desire to keep on-just before Christmas,not that I use Adwords much as to expensive,they terminated my account no reasons given,then some jerk put me up on you Tube as spamming my own video-I have fixed that,however I realize the trials that one has to go through to get some small success blogging-great post,thank you for your honesty.
Thanks for this story, lately I have been wondering if I should continue blogging, I don’t consider myself a writer or even much of a blogger and I have yet to make any income from my efforts.
But, reading this story kinda gave me a reality check and got lets me realize that it’s all a part of the growing & learning phase of marketing and running your own business.
Whether or not I succeed there is something to learn from my first effort…
Thanks
I think is an good, realistic history. I’m beginning to be bored for stories that claim ‘how to be rich with your blog in 24 hours’ or ‘how to increase your audience in 10.000% with a single post’. Here, he got results using something that every blogger has to have: persistence. And persistence needs discipline. And that’s one face of multiples faces of your sucess. Keep walking. Be constant in a changing world. Your readers will appreciate in the long run.
Good things to remind. I got my 1st dollar after 7 months of blogging day. Till today, the income still just enough to pay my bills not for me to enjoy. Blogging is a quite tough job. And you have approved nothing is impossible. Congratulations
Just wanted to thank everyone for the comments! It’s never easy to own up to the times in life when things went pear-shaped or didn’t work out quite according to your rosy expectations (and grand proclaimations), but it’s good to know you all found some comfort — and some tips and motivation — in this one.
Best of luck with all your blogging endeavours!
“in January 2009: I got emailed by someone who wanted to pay to advertise…” Yep, This phrase applied to me as well. One day I also quit blogging and someone did contact me to advertise on my website after I gave up. I was shocked…
I’ve got the email a week later, but I still emailed the guy, and I was lucky to make my first sale. I was so excited, and that gave me motivation to keep blogging ever since.
It does take patient, specially with google adsense I’m getting there now yeppie! Great post, I love it…
Ali’s hit me on head with the success story! It’s so true that no one can deny, blogging is a long term. If for any reason some one feels they are not able to make money after few hours, few days you need to learn the art of patience. Remember, Darren, Yaro, Amit and many other bloggers were in the same position that we are today. So, it’s continuous learning and application that will help you grow wise and make you money. One thing is “Never Give up!”, Let’s have a failed story rather than having no story.
Wow, thanks for sharing your story. Makes you think that we limit ourselves and sometimes we surprise ourselves with what happens. This is surely something I will be sharing with my readers next week on my Monday roundup, they could learn a thing or two from your experience.