Ever wonder how much passive income a blog can really make? I’m a full-time blogger and today I’m going to dive into this oft wondered about topic on the income potential from blogging professionally!
First – What is Passive Income?
Simply put, passive income refers to the income that you can generate, without any active input. For example, dividends from investments are a common source of passive income.
When it comes to the world of blogging, passive income refers to the cash flow that you can obtain, when you’re away from your computer or smart phone. While passive income streams do take a little work to set up, they will continue to earn you money, for the foreseeable future and are well worth the initial investment of time and energy.
Remember that in the long run, you’ll continue to earn money from your passive income streams when you’re sleeping or on vacation!
Passive Income Streams for Bloggers
One of the reasons why blogging is an attractive business for folks who want to generate passive income from home is that as a blogger you can set up multiple passive income streams from a single blog.
Although many bloggers ultimately choose to run several blogs in order to maximize their online earnings and diversify risk, one blog is enough to earn passive income. To discover some of the different passive income streams which you may want to set up as a blogger, keep reading!
Affiliate Marketing
The beauty of affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to offer your own products or services in order to bring in a steady stream of income. Instead, you’ll be able to hand-select products on legitimate platforms such as Amazon, market them on your blog, and take a commission if one of your readers makes a purchase.
The key is to carefully select products and services that organically suit the primary theme of your blog. For example, if you’re a travel blogger, it’s a smart idea to market affiliate products in the travel sphere such as suitcases, luggage tags and passport holders.
If your blog is focused on parenting, you may want to choose affiliate products that parents would find useful or that would appeal to children such as strollers, children’s clothes, and toys.
If you’re interested in passive income from blogging, marketing affiliate products on a blog is one of the easiest ways to earn revenue from your blog.
Sell eBooks
You can also use your blog to sell eBooks which you’ve self published. eBooks are a great source of passive income as even years after you’ve written the book, you’ll continue to earn passive income every time that your eBook is sold and downloaded online.
Selling eBooks is easier than you may think, as a blogger you’ll already have a captivated audience who see you as an authority source on your chosen niche and who will be likely to be interested in purchasing an in-depth guide on your niche in the form of an eBook.
If you’re new to self publishing eBooks, Amazon makes the process as simple and stress free as possible.
Paying Memberships to a Blog
The more popular your blog becomes, the more viable it becomes to ask your readers to pay a monthly or yearly subscription to your blog which will give them immediate access to all of your informative, engaging blog posts. If you’re confident that you’ll be able to provide valuable, information rich content that your readers won’t be able to get anywhere else, it’s well worth considering making one of your blogs a blog that only paid members can access.
To start off, you may want to create a free blog post and publish 1-2 posts per week, plus a paid section of the blog which offers 3-4 additional posts per week. If your content is good enough, this will entice readers to purchase a subscription to your paid blog.
Licensing photos
If you’re skilled at taking high-quality, professional photos, you’ll be able to license your photos in order to gain passive income from your photos. For example, you may want to sell licenses that give other people and publications permission to use your photos, through a stock photography platform such as Shutterstock.
If you decide to take this route every time someone pays for the license to use one of your photos, you will receive a small amount of passive income.
Sell online courses
If you are an authority on a subject such as earning income online, web design or planning budget friendly trips around the world, you’ll be able to sell your own courses through your blog. You may want to include videos, eBooks and automated emails to your clients as part of your online courses. So if you have knowledge or expertise that you believe your readers will be willing to pay for and want to earn large amounts of passive income from blogging, seriously consider putting together your first online course.
Passive Income Potential
So how much can a blog really make passively?
Successful bloggers can earn upwards of $100,000 per month thanks to passive blogging income. Just read the income reports of Anne at Yeys and Jon at Fat Stacks. They’re certainly the exception, though!
Last year I made around $250k from blogging. A realistic expectation would be to earn $30,000 a year from blogging.
Here’s the cold hard truth: most bloggers will fail.
They simply don’t have the dedication it takes to push through the early few years when things are very slow and income is dismal.
It’s About Volume
You need to publish a lot of content to see regular passive income from blogging. You’ll need hundreds of posts at a minimum before you see any real traction with blog income growth.
More Effort, More Money
The good news is that the more effort you put into blogging and publishing high-quality content on a regular basis, the more money you can earn while you sleep!