Is it really possible to start blogging away debt, and how long will it take? A blog is a good way to generate an income without much financial investment. However, for a blog to succeed you will need to put in some work. A blog is more of an investment of time and energy rather than investment of money. So if you have the time, and a passion for writing a blog regularly, it can be a good way to generate an income from the internet.
You can start blogging away debt in a number of ways. Ideally start with your passion, or an interest you have. Blogging is great when it starts generating an income because it’s passive. But there’s usually a long period of content creation before a blog can be effectively monetised.
Here’s an image from James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. I find this a useful analogy when talking about blogging.
What you think will happen with a blog is very well described by the diagonal line in this chart. What actually happens is the curved line. With a blog you write a lot of content and nothing much happens. But if you stick at it long enough, your results start compounding. That’s where the results line goes up exponentially; that’s where the results are! It’s where you can see some dramatic results and a regular passive income from your blogging efforts. That’s where you start blogging away debt! See also how long does affiliate marketing take.
Blogging Away Debt – Groundwork
Keeping the image above in mind, it’s useful to set the groundwork for blogging away debt, if that’s your intention. Without a long term plan, it can be easy to get stuck and lose momentum. If you spend too long looking for results without putting in the work, you can easily get demoralised and quit.
Choose the wrong topic to blog about and you can set yourself up for a much tougher journey. But if you choose a topic you’re aligned with, which floats your boat and which you are enthusiastic about, you can blog forever! It’s well worth therefore defining your blog topic before starting out. What would you love to write about and for a long period of time? Forget the monetisation methods for a moment and really dig deep into the topic of interest which you can build content in for several months or even years.
Ikigai is a Japanese work which is roughly translated as “reason for being”. If you can tie your ikigai together in some way with your blog, you will much more easily be able to sustain the necessary levels of motivation and work to succeed with blogging away debt.
Blogging Away Debt – A Cautionary Tail
I thought blogging away debt was going to be easy. But I started down the wrong path. I thought if I picked a subject which had very little competition, that I could more easily monetise it and get free traffic! So I picked a very micro niche to blog in – harvesting mushrooms – talk about a very specific niche! I knew nothing about mushroom harvesting and nor was I interested in it.
I started with the money and thought that by finding an untapped niche, I would rank at the top of Google and earn visits by virtue of having less competition. Micro niche blogging is a good idea because you have far less competition on the search engines than many more popular topics. But the best micro niche for blogging is one in which you at least have an interest in!
Start With Why
I blogged and blogged about mushroom harvesting and my blog was called whentoharvestmushrooms.com. I did get top ranking for the main keywords but over time I lost interest and my blog dropped down the rankings. The posts were difficult to write because I didn’t know the topic. As such they took considerably longer as I had to research every one. I couldn’t sustain the necessary effort and eventually gave up. Nothing was worse for me than to write more content on this subject which I had zero interest in!
So before you rush into blogging away debt, consider that you’ll need to keep at it for some considerable time to make it pay. Building your blog around a passion or interest means you’ll be able to keep it going over the longer term. This in turn will give you more chance of it becoming a successful blog, which you can more effectively monetise and start earning an income from.
Blogging Away Debt – Why Most Fail
Many people start with the intention of blogging away debt and quit long before it has become a reality. See affiliate marketing failure rate. So it’s wise to choose you path carefully. Don’t rush in and make sure you have a good foundation. Blogging can build an amazing passive income and it’s worth keeping this in mind when you’re struggling in the early days.
Another great analogy I like to use for blogging is the Chinese bamboo tree. The Chinese bamboo tree has an astonishing 4-5 year gestation period where it doesn’t show any growth. If you were trying to grow a bamboo tree and knew nothing of this, you would likely decide you’ve been sold a dead crop. But after the 4-5 year gestation period the Chinese bamboo tree shoots up by 90 feet in 6 weeks.
Blogging is like this too. Initially you won’t see much in the way of results for what can be a long period of time. Depending on your topic, how much you do and the relative competition it can take months or years to make money from a blog. How you monetise your blog is also another factor.
Blogging Away Debt – Products/Advertising
There’s two main strategies which most bloggers will use to monetise their blog:
- Affiliate products – sell them from your blog directly and/or build an email list and sell them through email marketing. See the power of email marketing.
- Advertising revenue – Google Adsense runs a program where you can place adverts on your blog posts. You earn small amounts of revenue generated from the advertisers when people click on your ads.
Affiliate marketers use their email list to generate interest in them and their topic. Then they sell affiliate products to their email list subscribers. Building a list is definitely a good idea. From a blog you’ll only get a small percentage of people directly buying from you. But if you give them value through email messages, you can develop a longer term relationship. People can purchase from you even years after they have signed up to your email list. So it’s well worth building an email list of subscribers to help monetise your blogging efforts.
Recurring Income Products
Depending on your blog topic, you can usually choose from thousands of products which will suit your audience. But it’s worth considering your products before you start a blog too. With my mushroom harvesting blog I made the mistake of not doing this. I threw myself into the task, but later found that it was difficult to monetise that topic.
Again use the ikigai principle here. If you choose products you like and find valuable, chances are good that your audience will too! Especially if you are aligning your values and interests with the topic of your blog.
Recurring income affiliate programs are particularly good for affiliates. Most affiliate products will only pay you once for each sale. But with memberships and software products, (which pay recurring commissions), you continue to earn on monthly basis from the sales you’ve made previously.
Blogging Away Debt – Summary
If you’re serious about blogging away debt it can be done. Just be aware that blogging is a long term strategy and it will take some time and effort to make it profitable. There’s other ways too of making an income from the internet. Checkout this free video series which will explain some of them.
Blogging is a great low cost way of building a digital “footprint” online which you can monetise. If you choose a topic you’re passionate about and stick at it over the longer term, you’re much more likely to succeed.
Here’s some other articles on this site around the topic of blogging: