Can you honestly expect when you start a blog that you can turn it into an income? Is it unrealisting to expect a profit, or can everyone be earning a profit tomorrow with a blog? Lets have a look.

I have seen many people talking in forums, desperate to find out when their blog will start earning an income. Many times these people are desperate to earn an income for whatever reason and expect that by starting a blog, they instantly have a right to advertisers paying them large amounts of money for advertising. Can you ever start a blog and honestly expect to turn it into a profit?

The Bloggers’ Costs
Well, to start off with, what is it going to cost you to start a blog? Many of these unfortunates start with free tools such as Blogger, so the costs are minimal. But what about people with better intentions? Many will at least register a URL, for about $20, some might even self-host WordPress, maybe taking the annual costs up to $100.

So at most, without paid advertising, a blog has to have an income of $2 / week to break even. Anything above that is a profit.

How Can You Earn From A Blog?
Next, how can you make money out of a blog? Well, Google Adsense is always a winner, as are affiliate commissions from services such as ClickBank. But most of the desperates are trying sponsored posts, which can, with a good blog, turn huge returns. I have seen opportunities where the advertiser is offering hundreds of dollars for a single 200 word post, for a suitablly qualified blog. Even basic posts can sell for 50c – $2 per time.

What Is Required To Make An Income?
These schemes will require one of two elements, if not both, to earn an income. First, for Adsense and affiliate commissions, you need genuine blog visitors arriving onto your website, reading your content and clicking onto your adds.

For sponsored posts, some advertisers and schemes want high traffic volumes whilst others are more interested in the Page Rank of your blog. Some will require a combination of both.

So basically, for a brand new blog with no Page Rank and no visitors, it is probably worth almost nothing and that is probably exactly what you will earn at this point.

How Can You Achieve These?
But both of these aspects can be worked upon. If you write frequently for a few months, I’d say 4 or 5 months at the most, and match this writing with article writing, then with time and patience you will see an improvement in your Page Rank, which generally updates about every 3 months.

You probably need a Page Rank of at least 2 to start earning a decent income from opportunities where Page Rank is important. But get to 4 or 5 and the price of the opportunities really does go sky high! A rank of 2 should be achievable by the next update or two, if you set your mind to it and worked hard for 4 or 5 months.

Likewise, for traffic based income, once you have posted a handful of articles then aside from the link building, some guest posting and other tricks can start to build the required visitors.

Is A Profit Achievable?
So can you expect a profit from a blog? Well, start it today and expect a profit tomorrow and you will be let down. But set to the work, concentrate on what needs to be done for a few months and you can start to make a small income. Keep at the work and you should ultimately turn it into a larger income. But it does take a lot of effort to get there.

To learn more about the stages of setting up a blog for a profit, sign up to our newsletter and we will send you a free copy of our new Ebook – how to start my blog – which helps you in all stages from setting it up, securing it, getting new readers and turning it into a profit. It is an absolute must for new bloggers.

Written by Keith Lunt, experienced blogger.

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