Can Blogging Be A Passive Source of Income?

My Answer to Some New Bloggers Who Asked If Blogging Can Be A Passive Source of Income? 

Today, I want to comment on the expectations of new bloggers who think blogging is a continuous, passive source of income.

I believe this is in order because many people seem to have some sort of misunderstanding about what blogging entails.

As a result, they tend to nurture some unrealistic expectations of what’s needed to start and grow and successful blog.

Inasmuch as I agree that blogging isn’t as labour intensive as some other sources of Income, the fact remains that blogging is a very active source of income, and not close to being a passive source of income by any stretch.

Below are the reasons why I arrived at my conclusion above.

There are 3 major ways to make money via blogging.

1. It is either you sell your own product or services, or you sell other people’s products and services as an affiliate, or getting paid per clicks by placing Adsense, Ezoic ads on your site.

If you’re selling your own products or services, you still have to write the copy, build a list, and regularly create contents to communicate with them either via email or social media.

If you’re using Affiliate marketing or Adsense, you still have to keep publishing and updating blog posts in order to increase your income or keep it steady.

2. Traffic

There are two major ways to get traffic to your site, either through organic methods or through Adverts.

Both of these methods require constant activity in order not to experience a traffic drop which will also result to a drop in your income.

To get traffic organically you have to keep building backlinks to your site.

To get traffic through adverts, you also have to keep running, Tweaking and MONITORING your advertising campaigns.

All of these are daily activities!

3. Google Updates and Ad Platform Updates

A site rankiNg number 1 on Google today could find itself at number 109 tomorrow if affected by a Google Update.

Similarly, an advert performing incredibly today may flop tomorrow once the advertising platform changes their rules or targeting options.

To mitigate the effect of all these on your blog, you can’t afford to completely hands-off your blog. You still need a constant monitoring and tweaking.

For example, if your site was affected by a Google update, you need to go back to the drawing board and troubleshoot what led to the decline of your traffic.

You either need to add more posts, remove some posts, build more links or remove toxic backlinks pointing to your site.

All of these makes blogging a very ACTIVE activity and not a passive, “set-and-forget” kind of stuffs.

Please if you want to go into blogging, make up your mind to give it what it needs.

Don’t be misled to think or expect it to be a passive, hands-free source of income. Even if you use Artificial Intelligence softwares to write your post, you still need to actively monitor performance and traffic of your blog.

While it’s possible to use automation and spend less time to make money with blogging, fact is, you still need to spend time on it daily, no matter how small.

1. So please, do not go into blogging with false or unrealistic expectations.