Is Blogging a Good Career to Pursue?

So you want to be a blogger, huh? Well, that is actually a great idea and you have my full support with that but let’s be honest, blogging is maybe not exactly what you think it is.

But that’s why you landed here on this article, I guess!

So let’s talk blogging. What makes blogging fun, what are the advantages of pursuing a blogging career, is it even possible to earn enough money to live blogging and what are actually the so-called dark sides of blogging?

We will go through all of these questions and I am trying to give you a really good picture about what you can expect your daily life to be if you are really going to pursue a career as a blogger (which I do, actually).

 

Is blogging a good career moneywise?

Ok, guys. I know this is what you have been waiting for.

After all, it is only normal that you would like to know if you can make some decent money with blogging or not.

And let me just serve you the answer straight away before we will actually dive into the details: YES.

You can absolutely earn life-changing money if you have a successful blog. That was true ten years ago, and that is still true now in 2020 and will also be true in 2025. Well, maybe. With the latest trends such as AI and Chat GPT, things might get pretty tough.

So how much are bloggers that pursue a career in blogging make on a monthly basis?

Well, bloggers can make anywhere from 1000 dollars a month up to like 30,000 dollars a month.

Are you serious?

Absolutely. It could be even much higher than that.

Ok great, so I will just start blogging and a couple of months later I will earn that life-changing money, right?

Well, not so fast, sport.

While blogging can truly be an awarding job, there’s a lot that goes into being successful in this business, just as with any other business basically.

So how can you launch a successful career in blogging? What are the skills you need to have (and if you don’ have them, how can you develop them) to be successful in the blogging business?

 

Launching a successful blogging career: skills you need to have

If you want to be successful with your blog in 2023, you are likely going to need a lot of different skills.

Ten years earlier, blogging was probably 90% writing (quality) texts and then wait until your articles ranked and if you were good at what you were writing about, then that was probably already enough to make a decent amount of money.

Surprisingly, that did not change that much over time. It is still possible to run a successful blog in 2020 with mainly focusing on quality texts & with waiting until your texts finally rank on Google (which takes a looong time, but we will get to that later on).

However, what changed is that the blogging game is now much more colorful and there are now many more facets to it:

Social Media (Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok, Instagram, etc.), running a Youtube channel, selling your info products, running a podcast…and actually many other things you can (should) do.

That said, you don’t necessarily have to do all of these but becoming a master in some of these facets will definitely increase your chances to become a successful blogger.

Or let’s say to build up an interlinked blogging empire because after all, all these things that I just mentioned can be linked together and can work for you to make your blog and your blogging career a success story (or make it fail if you don’t do this good enough).

So what are the core skills you need to posess to pursue a successful blogging career?

 

Blogging Career Requirement #1 Be Patient

Ok, that sounds super basic and boring. Don’t we need patience for any kind of job?

Well, we do. But not in the same degree as we need this for blogging. Let me elaborate.

Let’s say you have a traditional blog in mind that focuses on publishing well-written content.

So let’s assume that you set up your first website, you install WordPress on it ( I would highly recommend you doing that!), you buy a nice wordpress template to make things look good, you install a couple of nice plugins and then you are actually good to go (start writing), right?

Well, yes. And that will be it, for quite a long time. You will be writing text after text, putting in all this hard work to get the best content out there as fast as possible…and most likely absolutely NOTHING is going to happen!

Why is that?

The reason is simple: It takes a loooooong time until your blog posts will start to rank on Google. Especially if you are working on a new domain (you just bought a new domain for your new blog).

So what does that mean?

That simply means that even if you have the greatest content ever written by a human being, it will most likely not be seen by many people… and not just for days…it will be months…many months, I am afraid!

So, for you, as an upcoming blogger, this means that you will need to have a lot of patience (especially when just launched your blog) until you will see some traffic and engagement in your posts.

And again, we are talking months here. A new post on a new website will need like 6 to 9 months to rank well (if ever) on Google.

Just to make that even more clear: Even if you write like 25 blog posts in the first month of blogging, the chances that you will earn money from that (if you are just relying on Google traffic) are close to 0.

And even after half a year, you will most likely still just make pennies out of blogging.

But man, if you stick with it, dear blogger, there will be light at the end of the tunnel, and those people will come and check your blog out…

if you do put in the hard work, post regularly and simply have the skill to wait…and wait…and wait….

until it will be time for you to reap the benefits of your hard work…and that moment is going to be soooooo so sweet. I promise.

 

Blogging Career Requirement #2 Be Persistent

Persistence? First you tell me this BS about Patience and know it’s persistence, are you serious?

Damn serious, to be exact.

Blogging is really all about patience and persistence.

You will need a lot of patience to get your articles ranked at first, and you need a lot of persistence, so to make sure that you constantly publish good content, even if the rewards are not there at first.

You need to believe in yourself and you need to believe that you can actually pull this of and make your blog a success story!

Because the truth is, if you really really want to pursue a career in blogging, you can absolutely do that. In fact, most people could, if they would indeed be both patient and persistent with their work.

Blogging Career Requirement #3 Be smart and plan (it) in advance

There’s a lot that goes into Blogging, really.

First of all, you need to find a good topic for your blog.

Maybe you are passionate gardener and it seems obvious for you that you will get things going in the gardening niche. If so, that’s great.

But maybe you are someone who just really likes helping people or just absolutely loves writing…and you are probably still unsure about the actual content that you would like to produce.

No matter what your niche is going to be, there are questions that need to be answered before you actual start creating content.

And some of these questions are extremely IMPORTANT and will determine the success (or at least the potential success) of your blog

• Are people actually searching for the kind of topics that I am going to create…and if yes, how are they going to search for that content (through Google, Pinterest, etc..). For searches on the WordPress website itself, check out the Best Search Plugins for WordPress
• How am I actually going to make money from my blog?
• What is my target audience, where will my audience come from?
• Is my niche actually a high-paying niche in terms of advertisements (mainly display ads and/or video ads)?
• Is my niche seasonal or not? (Seasonality is almost never a good thing, as it will mean that your traffic will be dependent on the actual season)
• How competitive is my niche?
• What degree of authority do I have in this niche?

There are just so many important questions to ask and answer before you even dropped your first blog post.

You certainly don’t need a perfect answer to all of these just yet.

However, if you do have a very clear picture about how your blogging career is supposed to look like and how you are actually going to earn money with your blog, then this is very likely to save you tons of time and will increase the chances that your blog becomes a true success story.

Is Blogging a good career: Location

What do I mean with location?

Well, we are actually talking about where you live. Let’s say you live in Switzerland.

After graduating from school (or high school or even university), you might ask yourself if it would be better to get a regular job or maybe become a professional blogger.

In Switzerland, a regular job will usually enable you to earn at least 4000 US dollars a month. That’s quite a lot. I guess most of us would agree!

In India, however, with the same level of education, you will most likely earn much much less with a regular job than in Switzerland.

Sorry, what’s the point?

The point is that the question if blogging is a good career might be also a question of where you are actually living and what kind of salary you can expect when just pursuing a regular career that is finding a “regular” job rathern than becoming a full-time blogger.

And now let me tell you the best kept secret about blogging… or mabye it is just the coolest thing about blogging…EVER

The actual money that you can earn with your blog is NOT NECESSARILY in relation with what you can earn where you are actually living…(like standard salary in your country)

So what does that even mean?

It simply means that you can earn big time with your blog even if you are living in a poor country where salaries are incredibly low.

How so?

The short answer to is: TARGETING.

The secret is to target people in rich countries with your blog. Your blog needs to get traffic from the rich countries of the world. And most importantly you should aim for traffic from the US.

That especially holds true if you are planning to earn money with display ads on your blog! (which you should, it is a fantastic way to earn money as a blogger).

So what makes US-Traffic all that special then?

Simply put, US-Traffic will generate much more money for you (with the help of display ads!) than any other traffic.

If you have 1000 visitors from the US visiting your blog, you might earn anywhere between 5 to 45 dollars for these 1000 visitors through display advertising.

For the same amount of visitors from let’s say India, you will most likely only earn pennies with display advertising. That’s just how this game works.

So you could have have hundred thousands of visitors from India and still not earn a decent salary with your blog, whereas you could earn serious cash if only those people that are accessing your website were located in the US.

This is huge, trust me.

And that said, if you would like to pursue a career in blogging and would like to earn big with it (through display advertising!, then you should absolutely focus on the US market. It’s that simple.

But how so?

Maybe you are from Poland or let’s say from Brazil, so how can you actually focus on the US market? What’s the secret behind this?

Well, the secret is simply that you are going to write about stuff that people in the US care about. Write about things that people in the US are likely to search for (on Google, Pinterest, etc.).

I can’t put all that info in this very post here but I will reveal these secrets soon in a series of other posts.

But one thing I already would like to tell you at this point is that…

…in order to reach all these customers in the US, you will definitely need to write your blog in English!

And chances are, that you are qualified to do so, as you have just read through an incredibly long post all written in ENGLISH…by someone who actually also just speaks English as a second language.

So your English does not need to be perfect! If I can do it, you can do it as well!

And if you want to earn big with your blog, one of the best tips ever that I can give you is: Write your content in English..and do that from Day 1!

Blogging in the Age of Chat GPT — Can it still work?

Blogging is dead you say?

Well, not so fast.

While it is true that running a successful blog definitely is getting more difficult, blogging is definitely not dead.

So how am I supposed to compete with Chat GPT and AI then?

Well, it all depends on your niche and the kind of information that you are providing.

Making money with low-quality info that a Chatbot can provide straightaway might not be working anymore in in 2023 onwards. That is probably true.

But there is still a lot of high-quality content to be provided that Chatbots simply can’t do just yet. Or at least not well enough.

Also, there is some type on info that I would say people just don’t want to receive from bots.

For instance, would you like to get Dating info from a robot? Probably not.

Would you like to inform yourself about plants and nature by just consulting a chat bot? Probably not.

Would you like to get a tutorial written by a blog about a complex issue? Probably not…as far as tutorials go, at least for the moment, chatbots can’t even provide any sort of images.

And if we aren’t talking about a super simple 3-step tutorial, then having some screenshots along with the tutorial is definitely something that most people would like to see.

I could give you many more examples that will make you understand that Chatbots are not quite there yet.

Also, it’s pretty safe to say that there will be raised a lot of legal issues when it comes to the question how and what kind of information chatbots can actually use to provide their answers.

With all that said, blogging can still be viable. But you need to be smart about it. Simple information that a chatbot can give you right away should definitely be avoided when starting a new blog.

For example, you don’t want to create a blog about weather conditions in different countries and cities. What is the weather like in Australia? What is the weather in the upcoming days in Seattle?

A chatbot can easily give you all this info right away. And it will probably be as accurate, if not more accurate than what you could provide.

So staying clear from this type of content is highly advised.

Make a blog around something where your expertise is in the foreground. Make it personal. Add a lot of images. Do videos. Make it stand out and make it HUMAN. That’s my advice!

Is Blogging a good career: Conclusion

So, is blogging a good career? It’s hard to answer this question with a simple yes or a simple no, really.

So we might just ask a few more precise questions to get a good picture about blogging as a career:

Frequently asked questions about blogging as a career

Can you still be successful with a blog in 2023 and beyond?

Blogging can still be lucrative, even in 2023. However, you have to avoid certain types of content. In other words, very simple content that a chatbot could provide in an instant is not something you still want to write about in 2023.

How much money can I earn from a blog?

A blog can earn anywhere from a few hundred dollars up to 6 and even 7 figures a month. The best ways to monetize a blog include display ads, affiliate marketing and selling your own (digital) products.

Is it expensive to start your own blog?

Starting your own blog is extremely cheap. All you need is content management system such as WordPress, which is completely free and a hosting provider. Cheap hosting starts at a few dollars per month. A domain will cost you about 10-20 dollars per year.