It was about 8 months ago that my eyes were opened up to the possibilities of earning income online. I never thought people who blogged could make a profession out of it. I decided to venture out and start my own blog back in August of 2011. It wasn't this blog (this one was my 2nd blog), but I realized that it was possible for me to earn some decent money with my blog. I started dreaming big and decided to shoot for the stars by declaring my goal to "retire" by the age of 27. I hope to have enough passive income in 2.5 years that I can not have to worry about getting another day job.
How Passive Income is Possible with Blogs
As I have discussed already, building up passive income is very possible with with a blog. Whether you agree with me or not, earning passive income with blogs has become a reality. The trick to earning any passive income is to generate enough income from something that you can afford to either automate the process or hire someone to complete the day-to-day tasks and you still have a profit. If you can do this, the idea is that you can repeat the process since your time isn't consumed with the day-to-day tasks.
This can easily translate to a blog. As I see it, there are 4 main parts to managing a blog:
- Writing content
- Networking (commenting on other blogs, twitter, facebook, etc.)
- Advertising
- Managing the site (backups, replying to comments, planning direction of site, etc.)
By hiring out most of these services, you can minimize your time commitment and still see success. For one of my sites, I am currently hiring out two of these four. This allows me to spend less than 2 hours a week on the site and still get a large profit. I can't do this with all of my sites because I am invested in the direction of two of them (20's Finances and this one).
Why Bloggers Fail to Earn Passive Income from Blogging
This is primarily the reason most bloggers fail to achieve passive income from blogging. They become invested in their blog and refuse to hire out parts of managing a blog. They would rather spend a few extra hours each week to have complete control of their site. I don't blame them, but in doing so, they limit their ability to scale their earnings. In other words, instead of putting one blog on auto-pilot and build up a second one, we often become too focused on the one blog that we already have. As you know, I have chosen to take the multiple blog approach.
When I realized that I am limiting my ability to grow my income, I started to outsource more tasks. Instead of saving the extra couple hundred dollars a month to provide content, I decided to hire two staff writers for steadfast finances. This allows me to save a lot of time from writing while also providing a steady supplemental income for two quality writers. More importantly, it frees me up to start other sites, like my most recent niche blog how to be debt free. While I may be taking away from my current income, paying for certain aspects of running the blog allows me to create multiple blogs at the same time. The benefit of this is that it increases my future income. Blogs take time to build up, but once they reach a certain point and age, they really take off. This is the reason why I have chosen to re-invest a lot of my earnings to building up an empire of blogs. Before I know it, I will have a large collection of blogs that could earn $500-1000 each month. There's nothing better than that!
Shawn Manaher is a former financial advisor, has founded 5 online businesses, and is a coach, speaker, podcast host, and author. He's been featured on Forbes, The Consults Corner on TAE Radio, The Writing Biz, What's Your Story, and more.