8 Reasons Your Blog Doesn’t Make Money

So, you’ve started your blog.  You’ve added what you think is good quality content.  You’ve blasted your links to all the social bookmarking sites that you can think of, and, you’ve asked all of your Twitter followers and Facebook friends to Re-Tweet your links and Like you posts.  You seem to be doing all the “right” things when it comes to positioning your site to make money online, but, you have yet to make a single affiliate sale, no one is beating down your door trying to buy advertising in your sidebar, and you still haven’t earned enough via AdSense for Google even to send you your first check.

Over the past 8 years or so, I’ve been what most would consider to be fairly successful when it comes to making money online and I’ve spent a lot of time looking at other blogs and forums to see what tips and tricks I could pick up to improve revenue I was already making.  In that time, I’ve seen some variation of the question “Why doesn’t my blog make money“ asked, quite literally, thousands of times, and, although the range of reasons why most people’s blogs don’t make money is as big as the number of times the question itself has been asked, I believe there to be a core set of reasons most people that ask this question seem to overlook.

I’ve put together of list of 8 reasons why your blog doesn’t make money, and, although your blog may not suffer from all 8, chances are that if you are struggling with making money from your blog, it falls victim to at least a few of them.

8 Reasons Why Your Blog Doesn’t Make Money

1. You can’t write – Even though this should be one of the more obvious reasons as to why a blog doesn’t make money, it actually is the one more difficult reasons for would-be bloggers to come to grips with.  Whether it be because the language you are trying to blog in is not your native tongue, or, you simply have zero skills when it comes to putting words into print, poorly written blogs don’t generate revenue because visitors don’t tend to stick around long enough to convert.
2. You picked a horrible niche – I once had a conversation with a business owner who ranked number 1 in Google for 15 of his top 15 search terms.  What this business owner didn’t understand was why those 15 top placements in Google’s SERPs only produced a combined 72 page views per month on average.  This business owners problem was that the niche that he was clearly dominating, wasn’t one that customers cared about.  Each keyword that this business owner target generated less than 5 visitors per month.  Ranking number 1 in the SERPs means very little if no one is actually searching for the keyworld.
3. You didn’t pick a niche at all – When your blog is about baseball cards,   red automobiles, dog grooming, landscaping, and wedding planning, chances are such that you won’t rank in the SERPs very well for any of those keywords.  Your blogs content is all over the map, and, unfortunately for you, people who search various search engines tend to focus on a specific topic that they are interested in.
4. You blog about yourself  - Most of your visitors don’t care about how your day went, want to read stories about your dog, or look at pictures of your cat.  Personal blogs generally don’t make money unless your a a famous or infamous personality.
5. You don’t have your own domain name –  The intent of this post is not to wage the paid hosting vs. free hosting battle, however, if you are trying to make money online and didn’t feel it worthy to shell out the $5 to $10 it costs to register your own domain name, understand that a large percentage of your potential customers will not do business with you simply because you don’t look as professional.
6. You don’t get enough traffic –  No matter your niche, the amount you earn from your blog will be directly proportional to the amount of traffic that you get.  Assuming that you are doing everything else properly, increasing your traffic will increase your sales.
7. You are buried by your competition – When it comes to making money online from your blog, being on the first page of Google for your niche keyword phrase is where all the action is.  If you are buried down on page 10 for your keyword phrase, people searching for it rarely will find your site.  Before you enter a niche you need to analyze your competition to see if you realistically can compete with them for your niche keyword phrases.
8. You don’t follow the rules – It is especially important for bloggers trying to make money from programs like Google’s AdSense that they follow their rules and guidelines for using their service. Placing images next to ad units to entice visitors to click is egregious and will probably get your account banned, but, little things like failing to create a privacy policy or placing too many ad units on a single page will just keep you from generating revenue from clicks.

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