There’s No Money In Blogs – Lyons Dan
In this post which I wrote back in April 2007 I talked about certain myth that people has about blogging. One of them is that lot of people think and believes that it is very easy to for them make money through blogging but the fact is that it’s not very simple for every one to start blogging and start making huge money.
Ask Dan Lyons, who just burnt his in this confusion. Look what he has to say after experiencing a failure in blogging. He was blogging since 2006 under the pseudonym as fake Steve Jobs of Apple.
For two years I was obsessed with trying to turn a blog into a business. I posted 10 or 20 items a day to my site, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, rarely taking a break. I blogged from cabs, using my BlackBerry. I blogged in the middle of the night, having awakened with an idea. I rationalized this insane behavior by telling myself that at the end of this rainbow I would find a huge pot of gold. But reality kept interfering with this fantasy.
My first epiphany occurred in August 2007, when The New York Times ran a story revealing my identity, which until then I’d kept secret. On that day more than 500,000 people hit my site-by far the biggest day I’d ever had-and through Google’s AdSense program I earned about a hundred bucks. Over the course of that entire month, in which my site was visited by 1.5 million people, I earned a whopping total of $1,039.81.
Soon after this I struck an advertising deal that paid better wages. But I never made enough to quit my day job. Eventually I shut down-not for financial reasons, but because Steve Jobs appeared to be in poor health.
I walked away feeling burned out and weighing 20 pounds more than when I started. I also came away with a sneaking suspicion that while blogs can do many wonderful things, generating huge amounts of money isn’t one of them.
(As stated to Newsweek, complete story HERE)
Dan Lyons aka Fake Steve Jobs now closed his “The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs” blog and come up with what he truly is “The Real Dan”.
The failure of Dan shows again that its not always easy to “generate” a living through blogging. Even writing 10 to 20 posts a day dose not guarantee that you will end up the day with bunch of dollars in your wallet.
Can you tell me why Dan failed and why people always follows fairy tales and riposte empty hands.
Dan Lyons, aka Fake Steve Jobs, holding up an Apple turtleneck for size at an event at Kepler's Bookstore in Menlo Park.
Picture Courtesy : WikiPedia
Wow.. how could you get yourself into the New York Times? Cool
Sometimes seeing how people can make money so easily even during their first few months of blogging can be discouraging.
Man, you really were into it before, weren’t you.. I don’t think I feel like blogging from my PocketPC and stuffs
Thats not me michael, i guess you overlook the post, like sometime we kick the bike in gear.
History repeats itself ?
I am a FULL-TIME blogger.
Just a little earnings to continue travel & write – Thats my wish.
I do not know about your post person.
But the question is :
Am I going to earn little to continue travel & writing ?
Or
I have to close blog because of ZERO finance ?
And if I close whos loss it is ?
Only mine ?
I disagree.
I wish for your success, and would like you to continue your journey.
I am continuing till either readers are present or funds to support. Without both it is impossible to continue journey…
I am not here to earn-n-earn.
I am here to write.
And They are the decision-makers.
:~|
Hi Shanker,
Without hard core metrics, it would be impossible to see exactly where “the real Dan” fell short. However, if he was using adsense and only made a little over a grand with over 1.5 million views, you would have to wonder where hiS traffic was coming from. Maybe his blog was too general…maybe the traffic was coming from social media such as digg or stumble upon..both of which are hardly monetizable…
On a side note, an “internet marketer” could’ve made money from his traffic. It is all just a matter of testing and finding exactly what the audience is looking for….if nothing else, they would have thrown together someway to build a list and then started to sift through the visitors for opportunities.
Sure, making a blog profitable may be harder than simply sticking some adsense to it and hoping that something will stick..but it isn’t exactly rocket science….it is all a matter of finding what moves your audience and then sticking the appropriate offers in front of them…then again, I don’t consider myself a blogger….I am a marketer.
Beside a good blogger one must be good at marketing his content or idea. I agree with every bit you pour above.
Couldn’t have agreed more. Even if there is money to be made blogging, it isn’t going to be enough for many to quit their jobs. On the other hands, I second Leo that making money from blogs is more than just getting hits for “adsense”….
Smart marketers knows the art of conversion (and that’s why they are called “marketers”) while “bloggers” have fun writing something they are passionate about.
And Dan just happened to fall in the last category.
Yan
I wrote a post few time back that one must blog for his/her passion and not only for making money. Money is a peripheral that come automatically along.
Sad story it is. It seems like no matter how hard you work luck is the only thing that can make you reach…
from last few months i start believing in this “LUCK” thing. 90 out of every 100 people word hard and 10 out of every 100 people succeed.
I believes there is some KISMAT(LUCK)connection
yes, blogging is about passion, if you don’t passion about, there will be no power enough to generate revenue. No matter you are full time blogger or not
Its possible to make money thru blogs and 1 or 2K$ would be okay for someone in Asia/India who does not have very high aspirations but as Jage said “passion” is the key. Moreover, the “adsense and its ilk” model is not sustainable in the long term. So, alternative models like selling products or services somehow would be important ..but then its no longer a blog…!
Making money from blogs is not easy , however people have made money blogging
I know that having a single blog will not give tons of money easy. But you can leverage from a succesful blog to have some affiliate biz, Network Marketing and a lot of other schemes that will actually give you money.
The idea seems pretty appealing – you’re just doing something fun and someone pays you for that. In reality however it’s not that fun if you’re doing it just for the money and suddenly you realise it’s really not that great of a way to make money.
IT depend on what the goal of your blog is if it is ad or service based – your blog might actually allow you to create a day job from your passion.