One of these blogs is associated with my Medium account (the one below), one is for my music, one is for golf, one is just a mirror blog, two are ministry blogs, one is about blogging, and the other is a review blog.
Lately, I have updated my blogs with a new magazine theme and have started posting on them again.
It is the off-season for me as a golf course greenskeeper, so I have some time to write and blog. This includes coming back to Medium and doing some work here the last two weeks.
I’ve written 9 articles on Medium in this time; most of these I also posted in the blog associated with this account.
That is the backdrop information for the stats I want to show. Now that you have a sense of my productivity, let’s look at the stats I found in Google Analytics and here at Medium.
Blogs and Medium Stats
In the last 30 days, all of my blogs combined pulled in 408 unique visitors or users. Not very good I know. My main blog pulled in 252 of these, and the one associated with Medium pulled in 67 (2nd most popular of my blogs).
Looking at the stats of my Medium account today, I’ve pulled in 254 views, which although not a read, these are the equivalent of a visitor or a user with Google Analytics.
My Blogs: 408
Medium: 254
Three of my blogs have Google Adsense on them as of this article (2 more are under review) and about 5 affiliates. At Medium, I’m not yet eligible to make money yet, as I have less than 100 followers (67 as of today).
Saying this, I have made .02 cents from my blogs with 129 visitors and no money from Medium — in the last 30 days.
The only affiliate I’ve made money with (ever) on my blogs is Presearch, which is in the form of cryptocurrency, and I have yet to cash it out.
If I were in the Medium Partner Program and was able to make money from the 254 views, I would guess this would amount to around .25 cents. On a side note, I’ve made around $2.50 in the last 30 days from HubPages.
As you can see, making money from blogs and writing on Medium and HubPages (have 20 articles there) isn’t a cakewalk.
It is also true that I haven’t been working very hard on my blogs and these sites until recently. The work I have put in on Medium has increased my views from around 50 to 254 a month.
I also have 7 eBooks published and have made zero from these in the last month. Although, over the last 9 years, they’ve made me about $600 total.
Analysis and Estimations
Although these numbers are low and could be discouraging, I’ve been at this too long to be deterred. I like to write/blog and find it a fun and interesting journey; coming back and embracing Medium and HubPages has made it even better, as I get much more interaction with other writers.
What I see is the potential for my blogs and Medium account. Medium is already bringing in as many views as nearly all my blogs just after writing here for less than two weeks — this was boosted by reading articles and interacting with others.
Both my blogs and Medium have the potential to drive traffic to my eBooks as well. And, if I had enough traffic, my affiliates would get some action too.
So how much traffic would I need to make a living from blogging and writing online with all these things in place?
See, I already have everything in place to start building my online writing income. All that’s needed is dedication and hard work to make it happen. Of course, this would assume I had the time to put in a full-time effort.
As of now, I have some time off, but soon I’ll either be back working the golf course in the early spring or starting another career with the college degree I’m going to earn in February (I’m applying at two different places now). This doesn’t mean I’ll stop writing, yet it does mean it will be a part-time effort once again.
Like many writers, if I could justify spending full-time hours on my online writing by making a full-time living, this could be a viable option. Even so, I do want to work in the field I’m studying, which means my writing online is going to be a part-time effort for the foreseeable future.
Either way, I want to build my online writing audience and revenue. Let’s look at what this would take.
Realistically, it would take about 50k visitors a month to make anywhere from $500-$5000/month. How much money depends on the content, the email list strategy, the SEO, and monetization tools.
For instance, some people focus on writing their eBooks and everything else they do points visitors to this product. Others focus on writing about certain topics and depend on affiliate marketing and ad revenue. Others may focus on getting subscriptions and donations. Finally, others may do all of the above.
Making money from a place like Medium is just a bonus to income earned from other products and services offered by writers and marketers. For instance, there are many eBook writers and bloggers on Medium who are using it to build an audience.
My main focus on Medium is to build an audience for my blogs (email lists) and secondary for my eBooks. If I were writing more eBooks and had new material coming out, this would become my focus. I do have both my blog and eBooks linked to my Medium about page and profile.
Essentially, getting traffic is key. Building an online network to create traffic to these sales funnels is the main objective. Even if someone isn’t trying to make money and their sole objective is to build their email list and audience, their main goal is to create traffic.
Social media is another good way to build traffic. Personally, I don’t like to hang out on social media except to post something, so it doesn’t work as well for me. Places like Medium and HubPages though do work for me because they are built for writers who love the craft.
Conclusion
Writing online is a great privilege for me; being able to share my thoughts and topics I feel are valuable and interesting is fun and worthwhile in itself. Making money from this endeavor has always been secondary, although it does help justify spending the time I want to spend doing it (to my wife and myself).
With the analysis we have discussed we can see there is potential with both hosted blogs and Medium. Being able to generate almost as many views with Medium after less than two weeks than all 8 of my blogs shows me how valuable this platform is in creating traffic for my online writing efforts. Hope this helps your efforts too, see you around.
A new book that, as a Christian believer in a flat earth, you may find interesting:
ReplyDeletehttps://trustyoursenses.org/