Blogging is one of the most common side hustles out there, but how many people actually make money from it?
And how much can you really earn?
Most of the information in books and online comes from professional bloggers or people who write posts in earnest. There’s almost nothing out there from people who just casually keep a blog.
When I set up this blog, I went with WordPress, but it costs money, and I remember wondering when I would ever break even.
I’m still in the red, but revenue has finally started to trickle in, so I’d like to write about where this blog currently stands.
Where the blog stands
First, some background: my first post went up in March 2021, and as of writing this in September 2022, the blog has 46 posts.
That works out to about four posts a month. The quality varies quite a bit, and most of them are things I can write in about an hour.
The main genres are programming and everyday life.
The most recent traffic figures are about 3,500 pageviews and about 2,500 visitors per month.
My most popular post gets around 35 views a day.
What I’ve noticed is that programming-related posts are in high demand, and that even with few visitors, the same people come back repeatedly, which racks up pageviews.
Everyday-life posts, on the other hand, are mostly diary-style pieces that don’t turn up in searches, so they get far less traffic.
Where the income stands
Right now I mainly use Google AdSense and Amazon Associates.
I was approved for Google AdSense in May 2022 (I think I had around 35 posts at the time), and total revenue so far is 5,000 yen.
Amazon Associates has brought in 0 yen.
So the blog’s total income to date is 5,000 yen.
As for why, my site doesn’t really do Amazon product reviews, so I hardly ever post Amazon links in the first place.
Which means it might as well not be there at all…
Thinking about revenue rates
With Google ads, 100 impressions earn about 1 yen, and a click earns roughly 10 yen on mobile and around 50 yen on desktop.
So the return rate is fairly low, and it looks hard to earn any real income without racking up serious pageviews.
With Amazon Associates, I believe the commission is somewhere around 3–10% of the item purchased (apologies if I’ve got that wrong).
So if someone buys a 10,000 yen item, you could earn up to about 1,000 yen.
It’s a program where you can aim for decent income even without huge traffic.
Apparently, for most people who make money blogging, affiliate programs like Amazon bring in more than Google ads do.
Running costs
In my case, running the blog is expensive: 15,000 yen a year.
Most of that goes to the server contract.
If you shop around, there are servers that cost about 5,000 yen for three years with lower setup fees, so that’s better value for money.
I’ve stuck with my current host partly because I’m not sure how to migrate, and partly because the server has a good reputation.
At this rate, who knows when I’ll actually turn a profit.
That said, even doing it pretty haphazardly, just sticking with it earns more than I expected.
My takeaway is that blogging rewards you in proportion to how seriously you take it.
Also, pageviews generally don’t drop off suddenly, so as long as you keep writing reasonably well, the numbers keep climbing.
More than anything, blogging is genuinely fun, so I’d encourage everyone to give it a try, even for free.