I’ve been blogging for over ten years now and yes, smart ass, to you it feels much longer than that. I started Eclectic Blue because I wanted to write and not because I wanted to make money. It turns out that this was just as well since I’ve paid out, and still pay out, loads more than I’ve ever made from kind hearted souls who buy me a coffee. But there is something warm and touching about the feeling I get when someone buys me one. So, thank you so much. So, does anyone make any money, never mind an actual income, from blogging? This is what Chris Oliver of Forex/Binary Option Trading, whatever the fuck that is, says this about a survey he/they carried out:
“We found 16% of bloggers were earning less than £200 a month, while 8% earned £1,500 to £2,000 a month. The rest earned between £200 and £1,000 a month. Now this survey should not make you think it’s not possible to earn more than £5,000 a month with your blog. I know people earning £10,000 a month and more!”
I don’t really need to break that down any more than that, do I? According to this presumably authentic survey, 76% of bloggers take home between £200 and £1000 a month and 8% between £1500 and £2000 a month. I am not quite there yet, trousering low single figures of pounds every month, for which I repeat over and over again I am very grateful and indeed humbled. But where did it all go wrong?
Well, of course it didn’t all go wrong. I didn’t go into the wacky world of writing in the expectation that I would soon be flying business class the Maldives or driving a gold Rolls Royce. In truth, I barely thought about the money side at all. I am not going to lie and pretend that there wasn’t a small part of me that dreamed – I can’t really say hoped – that someone might pick up on my work and give me a gig and indeed some folk did just that. However, my gigs were never paid gigs. The thrill of seeing my name in print was, for the most part, sufficient a reward. Samuel Johnson once said, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” Maybe he was foretelling my story?
There are a number of reasons why the big bucks aren’t rolling in. In no particular order:
- I don’t specialise
- I don’t have the first idea how to organise ads
- I don’t market the blog properly
- Not enough people read it, probably because
- It’s not that good
I am also at a big disadvantage because I am not a celebrity, a former politician, married to Tyson Fury or a former royal. These are not the sole criteria for being a successful writer but they all help. A working class bloke from Briz (Brislington, that is, in Bristol) who doesn’t write anything particularly original or exceptional. That’s me. And it will have to do.
Thanks to the kind folk who buy me coffee, I’ve saved a few quid which I keep in a separate bank account for use on a future writing project and in 2025 it is going to happen, whatever it is.
When I was at Briz School, I was going to be a journalist. Then I left school and went into a dead end job in order to help put bread on the table, stayed in it for nearly 40 years and now the working life is over I’m at last writing whatever I want. And if my loyal readers get anything out of it, well, that’s a Brucie Bonus. Thanks for reading.
