Blogging For Passive Income, Step 1: Do You Want To?

Since you are here, I’ll share with you when I found myself in this puzzle. Do I even want to blog? I saw others making money, but should be making money be my true focus? Also, if I am so focused on making money with a blog, can it be passive?

Thinking about blogging for passive income?

Simply put, is it worth it? Is the money worth it?

Are You Only Blogging For Money?

I want to break this to you; so far, I have learned it takes many months, up to years, to become an overnight success at blogging.

PLEASE DON’T LEAVE! Let’s Talk About Blogging For Passive Income.

It wasn’t meant to scare you off, but the point is if you want to get money, get a regular job. You punch in, punch out, and by US law, a paycheck is guaranteed.

With Blogging, this is not true. I have the benefit of hindsight as I write this, but I didn’t appreciate the amount of work and luck that goes into blogging for an income.

Covered My Full Blogging List Here: How Do I Create A Side Hustle Blog?

Blogging Isn’t Instant Money?

Your goal is to get eyes on your page. For a small blogger like myself, that’s through search engine results.

These search engines constantly try to tune what they return in search results. Often it could be better informed. As a result, even search engines need to know what people want.

Sometimes great writers title their work based on their information rather than what people might be searching for.

The point is there are factors so far out of your control; if you are an instant gratification person, you might not want to blog.

Suppose you want to be an online content creator. In that case, there are other ways to get your content out there without being “Sand Boxed” by search engines or going months or longer, without any traffic, even with incredible outreach methods.

Your Drive Into Blogging?

Now that broke some bad news to you about blogging, let’s do a test to see if you even have the drive to blog.

Imagine, or recall if you can, a person contacts you(in person, via email, phone, etc.), maybe a friend, coworker, or even a stranger, and asks you something you know about.

Do you answer this person? Do you explain your answer? Does the person feel their question was answered thoroughly?

It’s a teaching attitude I’m looking for.

Well, I have that. Let’s look at this blog topic, Passive Income Generators.

I learned at an early age being ‘Rich’ is defined by the person. To me, being ‘Rich’ is having my bills paid without having to get up to go to work. I might still go, and I suspect I will, but I won’t have to.

My way of getting there is through stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds. This is because this is easy for me to understand. So easy. I love talking to people about stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds.

I find both curious novices and weathered investors and love talking to everyone. The American Dream is alive, just so broad it’s hard to see the trees through the forest. I am over-trying to cover every detail about investing for the average-Joe; they don’t get scared along their adventure.

I invested through the early ’90s, the dot-com bust, the 2009 Great Recession, the 2018 December WTF, the 2020 Vid, and current compound inflation and sequential recession predictions. With knowledge, we can address fears and make adjustments.

Now you see with I did here. I kept it short, but getting the chance to talk about finances, I just started typing. I had to trim this several times to shorten this example and still went over it.

Do you like sharing your knowledge with others?
Do you want to learn about something new and document it along the way?

If you have a teaching attitude, like sharing stories with others, or even find writing a form of theopro9py, you might be a Blogger.

Congrats and Welcome. 😀

Rewards With Blogging.

I’m sure I covered the personal fulfillment of blogging, and we can move on to the actual focus we are at this step, money.

Blogging today allows all of us to be writers.

Yes, Money.

It’s nice to have a hobby, but making money allows us to afford the time to have a hobby, so let’s figure out if Blogging will give us the money for life.

Now you search YouTube, so many blogging gurus will sell a program or offer their exclusive membership program for a low-low one-time fee.

I was swept in by the get-rich-gurus and went down the YouTube rabbit hole, watching one video after another. And felt I was watching late infomercials.

Feeling like when I wanted to go to sleep, YouTube said, “But there’s more,” and I watched the following video.

After a while, I noticed a common theme. These gurus weren’t pitching how much work there was but how much money you could make, and my head was filled with images of Lambo.

I wanted real bloggers and went searching. I found a niche of blogger videos that talked about monthly income reports. How they got to a certain level, even some of the bloggers had goodbye videos. This all seemed real to me.

After a while, I found there were bloggers making money, they might not be Lambo rich, but they are making decent money blogging. The topics were boring ones: house plants, cat breeds, car repair, home repair, etc.

I started thinking about the websites I visited for my DIY home repairs, and those webpages were blogs, and I remember ads and affiliates on those pages.

Was there money to be made? Yes. But from the sizes of those blogs and keeping track of the goodbye from blogging messages, it takes a while.

So is there money, yes. Is it overnight? I wish. But for me, it has been a no, and I hope for you it might be.

Pros About Blogging.

These are the Pros of Blogging I found.

*- Can Start And Stop Blog Writing At Anytime.

I am working only during my spare time. Often, I play video games online with pauses between pvp rounds. So I write and blog during this time.

So using downtime productively toward the blog is a Pro.

*- Low Start-up Cost.

Options for hosting were cheap; at least there were many discount codes, introductory periods, etc.

There was a lot of educational material on YouTube and Websites(like this, I hope I become) that focused on helping people start blogging.

So with low start-up costs, Blogging ROI is high.

*- There Are Blog Writing Tools To Help.

Now this is weird, but I like Grammarly; since my writing skills are poor, I learned finishing my last degree in Grammarly helped with passing my classes.

There is a free version, which I initially used, then a paid version with added benefits. However, free is a great place to start with blogging.

Cons About Blogging.

*- Content Creation Is Slow!

My writing speed and skills could be better. Spell-checking everything can take a while.

Writer’s block is real.

Now other bloggers use content creation services, but I write everything myself. Not even interested in some of those AI tools available for writers now.

*- Results Are Slow.

Let me share a story with you I heard:

You can write a post about a free, accessible cure for some horrible disease. Your goal is to share this information with others; it works and can potentially cure millions of people in this world of painful death. All at no cost.

Search engines might not like your site.

Even if you have the best information about a product, cure, or green energy, your page might only appear if you are accepted in their algorithm.

If you are accepted in their algorithm, they might delay how fast you show up, the famed Google “sandbox” theory.

*- Your Friends Will Think You Are Crazy

I’ve explained how blogging works, and in simplest terms, you offer friendly information using real-world experience to help others with questions, and my coworkers believe I’m crazy.

My family is starting to talk about my cheese falling off my cracker.

You might need to be understood and still see the results. Even with the results, others are amazed about what I’m doing, but if I say it took time to get there, they lose interest.

*- Bloggers Are Often A Secretive Bunch.

We’ve seen prominent bloggers online with their Mommy blogs, and they are open about what they do for a living.

The typical blogger runs a handful of small sites, feels they have the inside angle on a particular topic, and is afraid of people copying and pasting their hard work.

So, networking opportunities are only limited if they are trying to pitch a guest post or link exchange. :/

Blogging Start-Up Costs.

Now I will discuss my DIY approach to blogging and only go over little detail here, with more detail in a later post.

There are costs associated with blogging. Time and money, and both can be interchanged in some areas.

I went with a self-hosted option for my blog, I bought a domain(actually free with hosting services for one year) and three years of hosting, all came to about $100. Don’t jump for joy; I will cover it later. I got what I paid for.

If you want to save time, find a mentor and get their program. And only one program at a time, and dedicated to following their outline.

If you want to save money, read blogs (like this blog), and watch YouTube videos about blogging for passive income.

I didn’t do this, but there are free blogging hosting services, but you have to need a domain, and it might not even be found by search engines. If you want to go this route because you want time to create our content, don’t.

I saw no benefit to free hosting services since free was free, but there was no income growth.

Well, talk more about hosting in a later post. This post is getting long, sorry.

Blog Maintenance Costs.

By the time you reach your 1-year mark, your domain might expire, and depending on the hosting package you got, you might have to renew.

Whatever mentor you find might have a yearly fee.

There are costs associated with keeping your blog going. Having good records lets you figure out what works and doesn’t and eliminate expenses.

Take your time and learn from every moment you blog, so you can determine how to trim the waste and maximize your returns.

Can You Even Make Passive Income Blogging?

Wow, I got this far, and now I’m focusing on Passive Income from blogging?

The simple answer, Yes – Can You Build Passive Income From A Blog?

What I measure as passive income, I can walk away from my existing blog, and I have writer’s block, and the blog continues to make money.

There are steps to take for this to happen, and we will be covering how to work toward this as I go over what I did to create passive income from blogging.

So… Yes, you can make passive income blogging, and I am making passive income from blogging.

Blogging For Passive Income Next Step…

If you have reached it this far, I only can assume, like myself, you see the reward in building an online presence with blogging.

Also, more importantly, the potential to earn money passively with blogging.

Again, Originally I had a narrow view of blogging based on seeing so many lifestyle blogs and how they were regularly updated with current events. You needed to earn a passive income.

I was wrong, and as I walk you through the steps I made, we can all succeed together. So what is the next step?

Next Step: Picking A Blogging Niche, A Blog Topic – Step 2.

Passive Blogging Steps	Next Blogging Step
My Blogging For Passive In 10 Steps	Step 2: Finding A Blogging Niche

Your Feedback

Always been interested in learning from people in all phases of blogging, starting up, veteran, or even those who gave up blogging.

I want to learn what works for you or what doesn’t work for you. So please leave a comment below.

Tom, Growing His Passive Income Generators.