Why Your Blog Makes No Money Latest 2012

 
I’ve gotten this question quite a bit in the past few months. “Hector, I’ve been blogging for a while now, but I can’t seem to get any sales for any of the products I’ve promoted.. what can I do?”
That’s a great question, but one I can’t answer without knowing a lot more about the main blog topic, the purpose of the site, and the business idea behind it.
What I can do, however, is tell you why I believe most blogs don’t make any money at all and what to focus on to turn your situation around.
I can say, from experience, that if you focus on fixing these 5 things, you may start to see income coming from your blogging efforts. Ignoring these will get you more of the same results you’re getting now; and I’m sure you don’t want that.

5 Reasons Why Your Blog Makes No Money

Started Off On The Wrong Foot
This is a much too common mistakes many bloggers make. They build their blog around what they believe to be an awesome idea, that is doomed from the start. I’ve have some friends ask for advice on blog topics and I’ve had to gently shut them down.
For example, if you’d say you wanted to build a blog about Star Wars and make money from it, I’d say you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning. The reason is because that the people in that “niche” don’t have an urging problem that their trying to fix or a desire that they’re trying to achieve.
* To avoid starting off on the wrong foot, pick a niche where people are searching for solutions.
Your Content Sucks
This is also much too common. I wrote a post about this a few months back, click here to check it out. But the point of it was that you need to focus on creating valuable content that people actually want to read if you want to sell anything.
And no, I’m not talking about addressing “trending” topics and catching a big wave of visitors because your post ranked highly for “Justin Beiber & Selena Gomez”. Leave that for the entertainment blogs.  Your goals with the stuff you create should always be to help your readers. Be their leader and guide them towards their desired goals.
* To avoid sucky content, focus on helping your audience relieve pain.
No Branding Strategy
What are you known as? What’s your unique selling proposition? What are your colors? Blog branding and personal branding is something many successful bloggers take seriously but not many people talk about it. One thing to remember when trying to earn money from your blog is that people buy from those they know, like and trust.
Blog and personal branding helps you build that trust and establish that likability. The key to branding your blog is to be very obvious about who you are, what you do and how you can help your visitors. This way, the minute someone new lands on your site, they can figure out what your deal is in about 8 seconds.
* To avoid a mediocre brand, focus on building trust through design elements and your tagline.
You’re a Blogger Not a Marketer
Not that there’s anything wrong with bloggers, but overall, marketers (specifically, direct marketers) are more strategic than bloggers. Marketers focus on building an email of people who are interested in what they have to offer. While bloggers want lots of people to subscribe to their RSS feeds.
Marketers plan out an entire product launch in order to get people excited about the product; bloggers might post about it once and then create a banner to place on their sidebar because they don’t want to be too pushy.
Which is the best approach? In my opinion it’s a combination of both. Bloggers are much better at cultivating relationships with their customers and building communities. These things are needed to thrive in the online space. But bloggers shouldn’t be afraid to build a list, market and sell a product that is intended to help the end user.
* To avoid falling into the “I don’t wanna sell to my audience” trap, study direct response marketing.
Lack of Business Sense
The last reason, and possibly the most obvious one, for your blog not making money is a misunderstanding of what is it to do business online. There is no magical internet fairy that will put money in your bank account just because you provide valuable content. Money isn’t going to appear under your pillow because you decided to start blogging one day.
Business blogging is just that – Business. And just like an offline business, you need to have: