10 Reasons Why Your Blog Is Not Making Money

“Why is my blog not making money?” Is a common question from new bloggers and even from some bloggers who’ve been blogging for years.

If you’re frustrated because you’re not making any money with your blog (or at least not the kind of money you were hoping for) it’s a good idea to stop and reevaluate what you’re doing.

Blogging is not only about writing content and posting frequently. To make money blogging you need a well thought out strategy, goals to work towards and consistency.

Let’s have a look at 10 possible reasons why your blog isn’t making money and a few ways you can fix this.

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Can you still make money blogging?

Yes you can definitely still make money blogging.

Blogging is not dead and I cannot see it dying anytime soon.

As long as people are searching for things on Google, there is a demand for your content.

So why is my blog not making money?

There can be a lot of reasons why your blog isn’t generating an income. Here are my 10 best reasons why you’re not earning money with your blog and actionable steps on how to fix this.

1. You Never Planned Your Blog

Did you plan your blog before you started it? Or did you dive straight in, created your website and started writing?

If you want to start a blog to make money, it basically means you’re starting a business, and to start a successful business, you need a plan.

When you plan your blog, you determine what the purpose of your blog is, who you are trying to help and what goals you are trying to achieve.

Here’s a few questions to ask yourself when planning your blog:

Who is your target audience?
What are they struggling with?
How can you help them?
Who is your competition?
How do they monetise their blog?
How do you stand out from your competition?
Etc.

Even if you’ve been blogging for a while, it’s never too late to plan your blog. Planning your blog will clarify the direction you want to take your blog in and help you set smart achievable goals.

If you’d like some help planning your blog, you can grab my Free Blog Planner here:

Get the free

Ultimate Blog Planner Workbook

2. You Didn’t Pick A Profitable Niche

Many beginner bloggers start a blog about a topic they’re interested in without knowing if this topic is popular or profitable.

If you want your blog to be successful it makes sense to pick a blogging niche that has the potential to get lots of traffic and has several ways to monetise this traffic.

You can use a free tool like Ubersuggest to find out how many searches your topic gets per month. Simply type in a search term that someone would type into Google and see how many searches it gets.

Another good way to find out if your chosen niche is profitable, is by checking your competition. If lots of other bloggers are blogging about this topic, it is a profitable niche.

It’s even better if you can niche down within your niche and write for a very specific audience. This will help you become an expert on this topic which will build trust with your readers and with Google.

Click here for profitable blog niche ideas.

3. You’re Only Monetising Your Blog Through Ads

A lot of beginner bloggers think that the only way to monetise their blog is through advertisements.

But to make enough money with ads you need a lot of blog traffic, and that’s exactly what most new blogs don’t have much of…

So if your blog has been making $1.54 on average per month, it’s time to think about other ways to monetise your blog.

Other ways to monetise your blog are:

Affiliate marketing
Selling digital products
Offering a service
Sponsored posts

The easiest way to make money with a new blog is with affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing means you promote products for other companies with an affiliate link, and when your reader clicks on this link and buys something, you get a commission.

Grab this free list of affiliate programs and start making money with your blog!

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make a passive income from your blog, so if you haven’t tried it yet I highly recommend you give it a go.

You can read how to get started with affiliate marketing here.

4. You’re Scared To Invest In Your Blog

Starting a blog is a huge learning curve and you need a lot more skills besides writing.

If you don’t have any pre-existing knowledge of blogging or marketing it is a good idea to invest in a few courses.

There are plenty of good quality blogging courses that are quite affordable that are sure to speed up your blog growth and your income.

One course that helped me increase my blog income is Making Sense Of Affiliate Marketing.

This is a course by Michelle Schroeder-Gardner, who earns 50k per month with her blog just by affiliate marketing.

Making Sense Of Affiliate Marketing includes all her affiliate marketing techniques that she uses on her own blog.

The techniques are easy to implement and they helped me increase my blog income from $70 to $700 in just 3 months.

Don’t be scared to invest in your blog, a few small investments at the start can really make a difference for the growth of your blog.

To find out all the details about this course, you can read my full course review here:

Making Sense Of Affiliate Marketing Course Review

5. You Don’t Have Enough Traffic

Even though you can make money with little traffic with a solid affiliate marketing strategy, it’s obviously easier to make more money when you have more traffic.

To get more blog traffic, it’s important to promote your blog again and again.

The best way to promote a new blog is with Pinterest. Pinterest is actually not a social media platform but a search engine. This means if you create pins and use keywords in the title and pin descriptions, your pin can come up in the Pinterest search results.

For detailed instructions on how to get started with Pinterest marketing, make sure to grab my free guide:

Get The Free Guide

Pinterest Setup For Success

6.You’re Not Using SEO

To increase your blog traffic for the long term it’s super important to learn SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

Optimising your blog posts for SEO means you’re using keywords and phrases in your blog post so Google can find your post.

SEO traffic is the best traffic you can get to your blog because it’s very targeted traffic and this audience is more likely to buy.

Think about it:

If someone types into Google: best espresso maker, it is very likely that they want to buy an espresso maker.

If you were to write a roundup post of the best espresso makers and include your affiliate links to these products, you’d have a good chance people would click through and buy through your link.

Getting your blog post to rank high in Google is the best way to increase your affiliate sales.

To find out how to optimise your blog posts for SEO, read:

SEO for Bloggers – The Essential Beginner’s Guide

7. You Don’t Have Your Own Product Or Service

A good way to make more money blogging is by offering your own product or service.

Great services you can offer online are:

Virtual Assistant
Social Media Manager
Graphic Designer
Web Designer
Editor/Proof Reader
Accountant/Book Keeper

If you don’t have a skill you can offer as a service, try to think of a product that will be perfect for your target audience.

Digital Products are ideal to start with as a blogger, because there are no up front production cost.

Examples of digital products are:

eBook
Online Course
Printables
Templates
Planner
Calendar

Digital products are easy to create with tools like Canva.

If you would like to create printables for your blog, follow this tutorial:

How To Make Printables To Sell

8. You Don’t Have An Email List

Growing an email list is super important if you want to monetise your blog.

Did you know that email marketing has the highest ROI (Return On Investment) compared to all other forms of marketing?

Email marketing is a surefire way to increase your blog income, so if you haven’t started your email list yet, start now!

You can start growing your email list for free with Mailerlite or Convertkit. These are the best email marketing platforms for bloggers in terms of ease-of-use, compatibility with third party apps and list segmentation.

Email is a great way to build brand recognition and connect with your audience. When your emails regularly pop up in their inbox, they will start to feel familiar with your brand and trust your opinion when you recommend affiliate products.

9. Your Email List Is Not Growing

It’s great to start an email list but if you only have 14 people on your list and half of them are your friends, it’s not going to help you grow your blog income.

So how do you get more email subscribers?

You give them something for free in return for their email address!

Offering your subscribers an enticing optin freebie is guaranteed to increase your subscribe rate.

An optin freebie is often a digital product like an ebook, short email course or a planner.

If you’re looking for Canva templates that will help you create stunning Lead Magnets like eBooks, planners, worksheets and more, check out this post:

7 Freebie Templates to Create High Converting Opt In Freebies

A good optin freebie will offer a quick fix for your subscribers’ most common problems, and subscribing should be the logical next step in their journey.

To find out how to create a freebie that’s perfect for your audience, read:

How To Create Freebies For Your Blog

10. You Don’t Have An Automated Email Sequence

New subscribers are great, but are you giving them what they are looking for?

Your subscribers are most engaged when they first sign up to your list, so this is the best time to share your best tips and build a connection.

To make sure your new subscribers don’t have to wait a week for an email from you, it’s a good idea to set up an automated welcome series.

It’s easy to set this up with Mailerlite or Convertkit. You write between 3 and 7 emails and schedule them to be sent out one or two days apart.

Having an automated email sequence is a huge time saver, you set it up once and all your new subscribers will get this email series on autopilot.

Remember to include affiliate links where relevant and towards the end of your email sequence you could even promote your own product or service.

If you need help setting up an automated email sequence in Mailerlite, check out my course:

Easy Email Setup With Mailerlite.

In this course I’ll show you in step by step videos how to:

Create a freebie for your blog
Make a mockup for your freebie
Set up an email sign up form in Mailerlite and link your freebie
Add your sign up form to your blog
Create an automated email sequence that gets triggered when someone signs up to your list
+ Bonusses!