Why Don't You Make Money Blogging?

Hey Guys x

If I had a pound for every time I'd heard the above question, I'd really never have to even try to make money from blogging!

Forgive me, it's 1.30 am, so this is going to be a late night rant. If I sound pissed off, I'm tired too.

I always say this, but I never started blogging to make money, I don't think most people do. I've never expected to make money from blogging and, to be honest, right now that's not something that I'm trying to do.

But that doesn't stop everyone from asking me about the money that I can make.

At Christmas, when I saw family, whenever blogging was mentioned (and I never mentioned it. One of the cousins saw my Instagram, found the blog, saw I had over 70,000 views and started telling people about it) the only question I was asked was 'do you make money?'

Not 'do you enjoy it' or anything about my blog in particular, they just wanted to know if I got paid for it, and it really annoyed me!

Is it not possible to do something and just enjoy it without trying to get paid for it?

But I thought I'd talk a bit about why I'm not trying to make money from my blog.

For one thing, I don't want my blog to feel like a job. I mean, even now when I'm not getting paid I feel a slight pressure to post. If I relied on my blog for the money that it made, that pressure would be extremely heightened and it might make me not want to blog, which would be really sad because I never want to feel like I'm working when I'm blogging - it's my favourite hobby.

Also, to be honest, I don't get many opportunities to make money. It's probably my own fault for thinking that my blog isn't good enough, but I never even ask for payment when someone asks me to write a post. For me, if I like what they're promoting or think of a cool post to write about said thing, I'll do it without payment, which I know I shouldn't do, and I'm going to try not to do this this year. But my favourite post that I've done with a brand was a Halloween post, where I incorporated their lock system, with a creative post about how I would survive a horror movie. Even thought I got nothing from this, it was fun to write, and people enjoyed reading it. I didn't even think to ask for compensation!

In addition to that stuff, I just don't think my blog is good enough. Like, I love my blog, it's my favourite place on the internet and I'd never want to hire anyone to make it more professional or more well-written, it's me and I love it that way. But I don't know anyone who would think my views or followers are enough to want to pay me to advertise something or to advertise their own blog with me, so it's something that I don't even consider. And this isn't a problem for me, don't mind it whatsoever, but it is another reason why I don't really monetise my blog.

As well as that, as I'm sure most bloggers who use AdSense know, it doesn't pay a lot at all. Not that this is a reason not to do it (as you'll see, I do have ads on my blog), but it's not something that you can rely on. AdSense is the easiest one because once it's set up, you don't really have to do anything, which is great. But don't sign onto AdSense thinking that it's going to make you a millionaire right off the bat, because it won't!

And mainly, I don't make money because I don't think about making money from it. When I post, I think about my post, I think about my blog as a whole, but I don't think about it as anything bigger than a little corner of the internet. To be honest, the fact that my blog has been read over 70,000 times astounds me - I wouldn't be surprised if 'Blogger' emailed me and said that there's been a mistake! But yeah, I don't even think about it as something that could make money, and I like it that way.

Anyway, it's 2am so I might have to go and get some sleep!

Thank you for reading!

Do you make money from blogging? Let me know in the comments!

Lou xx