Blogging as a hobby can be incredibly rewarding, both personally and even financially. I’ve been a blogger for several years now and I find it therapeutic to blog. Initially I started blogging as a means to earn an income and it took much longer than I expected for this to happen. But over the years blogging as a hobby has become a part of my online business efforts which I enjoy the most.
I tried all sorts of topics when I started out and blogging is a great way to learn about things. Anyone can start a blog about anything by researching the topic which you’re interested in. You can even start for free using the many free blog platforms available:
- Blogger.com
- WordPress.com
- Hubpages.com
I’ve found it’s best to blog about a topic you’re passionate about in order to keep up your motivation for creating regular content.
Blogging As A Hobby vs. Blogging For Money
Blogging as a hobby is a great way to approach it. Not all bloggers earn money from their blogs and if earning an income from a blog is your intention, this can take some time and dedication. Many blogs exist just because it’s an interesting and fun thing to do. If you want to earn an income online there’s faster and more reliable ways to do so. Checkout this video series for more info.
Blogging on the other hand is definitely a slow method of generating an income online. It can work, but you will have a lot of work to do in order to get enough people to come to your content.
If you decide to start blogging with the intention of making an income from it, it’s worth choosing a topic which you’re passionate about. Otherwise it can be difficult to put in the necessary work to make it happen. It’s also much harder writing about something you known little or nothing about. Each piece of content will need to be researched. With something you’re familiar with it so much easier and more fun! See best micro niche for blogging.
Blogging As A Hobby – Monetising Your Blog
There’s a few ways you can monetise a blog but the main ones are:
- Google Adsense – or a similar advertising platform
- Affiliate marketing
- Your own products (e.g. ebooks, downloads etc.)
Google Adsense
Google Adsense is a platform which you can join as a blogger to help you monetise a blog. Once you join, you can place some code on your content and Google converts that code into adverts which are appropriate to your visitors. So if your blog is about mechanics, the adverts which show will relate to this topic to encourage more advertising clicks. When someone clicks on your advert, you receive a commission which is a percentage of the advertising revenue made by Google.
Adsense pays only a small proportion of the advertising spend per click, so this is only tiny amounts. But with enough traffic this can become a nice passive income source.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a popular online business model in which bloggers and other advertisers promote other people’s products through their online content. Affiliate marketing is a great way to monetise a blog. Ideally choose an affiliate product to sell which is suitable for your audience. You can then promote the product directly from a blog, through banners and links, and/or build an email list and promote products through it.
An email list is often used by bloggers so they can monetise a blog with affiliate products. By giving something away on a blog, such as an ebook, you can collect emails and promote affiliate products to your list. See the power of email marketing for more on this.
Your Own Products & Lead Magnets
You can also use your own products to monetise a blog if you have them. Many bloggers will create ebooks and downloadable documents which they sell directly from their content. I use a few ebooks which I’ve created but rather than sell them I use them as lead magnets.
A lead magnet is something you use to encourage people to join your email mailing list. As you collect subscribers on an email list, you can build more trust with subscribers by sending a number of messages over a longer period of time. As you do so you can also promote affiliate products and your own products if you have any.
Blogging As A Hobby – Choosing A Topic To Blog About
Choosing a topic to create a blog about is probably the most important part of blogging as a hobby. You’ll want to enjoy blogging. If a blogging hobby becomes just about the outcome – what you can “get” from it, it can cease to be a joyful way to spend your time!
I’ve blogged about a variety of topics which “trying” to make money from a blog and many of them failed outright. The worse thing you can do is go into a topic with money as your only objective! There’s millions of other bloggers out there who are trying to do exactly that. What sets bloggers apart is that those who love their topic, and love to blog will always come across as more authentic, and stay in the game for much longer! This is what’s needed to both enjoy your blogging and to make money from it over the long term.
A short lived blog will rarely make any money! But if you love your topic, you’re much more likely to keep at it, and this gives you a clear advantage.
Ikigai & Writing A Blog
When I started blogging I didn’t know my topic. It was only through trying and failing multiple times did I actually make blogging both joyful and profitable. I eventually found an online business program which helped my find my way online. Access it through this free resource.
I learned about a Japanese term called “Ikigai” which roughly translated means “reason for being”. When you find a topic you care about, blogging is much easier! Ideally find a topic which you’re also able to monetise somehow. Not all topics can be easily monetised so this part of blogging as a hobby is worth some consideration.
If you’re not interested in making any money from your blogging, it’s easier to pick a topic! Write about whatever you’re interested in!
Blogging As A Hobby – Traffic
Getting traffic to a blog is what many bloggers struggle with. There’s lot of ways to get traffic as a blogger including:
- Sharing your content on social media
- Choosing catchy titles which are more clickable – See Buzzsumo.com for some of the most popular trending blog articles
- Link building back to your blog posts
- Optimisation for SEO – (Search Engine Optimisation)
- Boosting traffic with paid ads
A successful blogger will eventually attract free traffic from the SERPS (search engines results pages) through their SEO. If their content is good, this can happen naturally over time as more people digest their content and naturally share and link to it. But you can also help this process work faster by writing content and targeting long tail keywords within your copy. See also find long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty.
Keyword Domain Name
Once you have decided on your overall topic for a blog, you can build a website around your main keywords. This can help you get more traffic through SEO in some cases. This website for example was built around the main keywords affiliate marketing mentors.
If you have a specific topic, like I did, it can help to find a keyword with low competition. Compare Google’s keyword planner for that term with the relative competition on search traffic. Once you find a good keyword which describes your topic well, and which you would like your site to rank for, you can purchase a domain name with your chosen keyword in it, if available.
If you want a broader topic, choose a more generic domain name which gives you a broader scope. I started off with just using my name for one of my earlier websites – see it here.
Getting Ideas For Content
One method I use with blogging is to find keywords which relate to my main topic. To do this you can type your main keyword into the Google Keyword Planner. The planner will then suggest more keyword ideas which you can use in your blog content.
A good strategy is to find long tail keywords which offer less competition on a regular Google search. If you do this with enough posts, over time many of your blog posts should start appearing in the search results. This does take some time and dedication through and you’ll need to make a habit out of blogging for some months before you start to see regular visits to your site.
Blogging As A Hobby – Mini Habits
Blogging as a hobby for me has been a regular habit for some years now. The benefit of blogging is huge both in enjoyment and from a financial point of view as well. Initially through I struggled making money through blogging for a while. But after some time, you can break through and generate a passive income through blogging.
If you make it part of your daily routine, and enjoy blogging, you’re much more likely to keep up with it and turn it into a passive income source.
See also micro habits to change your life.
