Do bloggers (you) really earn money ?
There is a firm belief in online world that - More than 99% bloggers don't earn money. Not even a single penny.
Do you earn from your blog? Even a single rupee till date.
Share your experience here.
Reason: rectification
When I started blogging two years back, I just did that for fun. I wanted to share my personal travel experiences on a platform and created my blog without any intention of earning. Two years later, I still write for the fun only. But from last one year, I have earned about 50000 INR through sponsored posts , many gift hampers and many IB meets because of this blog only.
yeah it is true that more than 95% of the bloggers dont earn money
because most of the bloggers want to earnmoney just by writing what they like and share personal stuff.
What I have observed is people who share their expertise through blogging earn well..
just being a good writer is not enough, we need to have all the qualities of a enterprenuer.
after all,, people who treat blogging as a business can make money.
I personally made more than 20k in one year through adsense and approx 10k from sponsored posts from my blog readitt
Indian blogs dont earn much, because :-
1) Google refuses to approve. Even if it approves it shows geotargeted ads. Indian advertisers do not spend as much as say US, UK. So the avg Click through rate is low.
2) Online advertising is still not mature enough in india. Hence there are fewer opportunities in form of affiliates, Sponsorships etc.
3) Our blogs do not rank high on google because - a) We do not spend on SEO and optimize the blog adequately (due to costly paid SEOservices), b) We do not treat it as a business while others do.
absolutely true!
Hello Akash KB,
To me, you seems to be correct. Don't know much about indian bloggers but seems most of them want to have a popular tech blog or they like to share about celebrity, bolywood and exam results, and due to too much competition or low potential in categories niche like games, exam results they don't earn much from Adsense or they don't even get approved because of low quality blog or having copied content.
I didn't made much from my blog but just started working on it seriously and got a dozen sponsor post/review, 2 dozen guest post and lot of invitation and interaction with aadvertisers! Made a few hundered dollar in last 2 months! I will surely multiply this!
There are many ways to earn from blog, you just need to google for opportunities and have to join a few popular sites and all you need is to have a good looking blog.
One more thing to mention, Google Adsense reported to earn $7 billion last year. They just announced they have 2 million publishers. So, even if we simply calculate the earnings of individual publisher then according to it an individual blogger earns $3500 a year and that's huge if you're asking about a penny!
Good Luck Keep on blogging and success will come!
Mind it, its Google who earned, and they never disclosed the ratio of the percentage shared between publisher and adsense program 
Sorry Hunky, but it's not true as Google has already declared that for adsense ads they share 68% revenue with pulishers and for site search engine they share 50% revenue :)
Hi Himansu,
Really a good analysis about Indian blogs + blogosphere & earning potentials 
:)
In my opinion, If you have gained readers over the years, even for your personal blog, and if that has a potential to harness those pageviews to earn some money, why shouldn't you do that? I started my blog as a personal sort of blog - The idea to inspire people to practice container gardening clicked me when my neighbours started following me and potted plants started appearing on the nearby roofs - One even went to the extent that he brought a whole tree and got it planted in front of his house. Though my blog isn't mature enough to harness its popularity to earn some money, I would like to do that in a few months.
And for those, who complain about not even getting the Domain and Hosting fees, I would suggest trying some online surveys. I've been associated with one and have earned Rs. 600 in the last two months in the form of Rs. 200 each flipkart vouchers. This time I've planned on getting a Paypal money transfer when my earnings cross Rs. 500. I've completed the survey, and waiting for payout. I know that the amount isn't much, but doing this apart from regular blogging might help you earn your Domain and Hosting renewal fees over the year.
I'm not positng any link, because neither am I self promoting nor doing any affiliate marketing here.
but it would interesting to know what is the site that pays you for filling surveys
@CyberKID What you said is true. Online surveys can help one in covering up a part of the costs involved. 
@ Gowardhan Try these : thepanelstation.com , in.toluna.com
Yup! Ranjith has pointed you in the right direction. I'm on the panel of Toluna. Have been associated with this for about 3 years now, when another survey panel ciao was taken over by toluna. But, I've started taking surveys more regularly now, and get paid on a regular basis. Earlier there weren't a lot of options to cash in the points but now, you have a lot of options available on Toluna including Flipkart and Indiatimes shopping vouchers of denomination 200 and 500 and recently a paypal checkout has also been added, which can be used to withdraw the points accrued for Rs. 500 cash in your account. Moreover, you get paid for bringing in affiliates (Rs. 5 each).
Another one that I've been paid on is indiaspeaks.net, though, here, surveys come less frequently, but, you have options like getting your cellphone recharged for as low as Rs. 50.
There are other options, beyond ads, guest writeups, sponsored posts/reviews, to earn atleast our domain and hosting fees, that is Affiliate Marketing. Online businesses thrive on visitors, and there are many online businesses that want you to generate traffic and bring in visitors, and if those visitors purchase by visiting from your link, you get paid the commission. GoDaddy does that, so does Flipkart, Amazon (.in), to name a few. You get image ads to post on your blog/website, and I suppose except, flipkart, that reviews your application and your site's potential, both others let you do that freely.
IMO, these can add up to your earnings from your site/blog, and can eventually supply you with the much needed finance for your site/blogs.
@Ranjith - thepanelstation.com and in.toluna.com are really interesting sites and completely new for me
Now, let me accept that I didn't qualify for even a single survey when I gave correct information. The following answers qualify me for a survey most of the time. 
- Age : ~25 years.
- Do you work in any of the following companies : None of the above
- Did you but or plan to buy XYZ : Yes
- Employment Status : Employed full time
- Who takes decisions for home purchases / office purchases : Myself
Again 
Oh yes! Qualifying for their surveys is a strategy. You need to strategize on taking the surveys and answering the questions. @ Ranjith, fortunately, most of the things are applicable to me, and with some experience, you get to learn ways to answer the surveys.
Mostly, when the question regarding employment in a certain fields, most of the time you need to select none.
So, Here I'm cashing in the Toluna Points for 500 INR. It takes a lot of patience to collect these - and even to get the rewards.
I haven't earned anything from my blog via Adsense because Wordpress does not support adsense or any form of advertisement on blogs :( :(
I do however advertise posts for authors and host them which helps me to earn a little. I also do PR for Indie Authors who are self published so that has currently netted me about 15k INR this year :D :D :D
You can try Affiliate Marketing. Maybe, my above post could help you out with some ideas
. Anyhow, you're earned 15K this year from your blog.
I want to increase my website traffic on this I wrote an article you can also see this and tell me what you are thinking of http://www.electrotechguide.com/top-10-effective-ways-to-increase-your-website-traffic-2013/
Posting links on the forum the way you are doing is not allowed.
CyberKID, Ranjith Sir, I didn't know about links. sry for that I don't do that again 
Sorry Aditya Dey for link promotion. I don't do that thing again because I don't know about this
Akash,
My blog is too new to earn anything, still waiting to reach 1000 or 2000 daily pageviews maximum.
But, I have recently earned 300 INR for writing long long articles on a website. :P
300 INR very cheap...
I do see some success stories in India but most of them are tech, business or beauty blogs. I think the kind of opportunities that are available for bloggers in the US, UK etc are yet yo come to India (if they ever do).
I have earned money twice, both sponsored posts. Both times the sponsors contacted me (I haven't successfully approached sponsors and had it pay off.) I made $5US off the first, $25US off the second, coming to a grand total of $30 (about 600 rupees.)
Of course these two sponsored posts were months and months apart and the last one was like six months ago. Haha.
That said, I *have* actually been approached by sponsors that I turned down because what they wanted had absolutely nothing to do with content of my blog.
I am a Lifestyle blogger, by the way. The first time I got paid was for a post about glasses. (I wear glasses.) The second time was for a college book rental program, which I almost turned down because I'm not college, but they said I could write about the charity they supported instead which helped impoverished children get medical care, and I was all for that!
People do earn money, but I don't see a lot of people earning money from shared hosting especially with those whose site's IP address hosts a lot of sites, especially those which are banned in google search engines, mails, spamming. I found that to be the case. If you're really serious about it, shift to business plans where they have limited (4-6) sites hosted via the same IP address for more extra cost, or shift to VPS. There are those that do provide business shared accounts. They cost more, a lot more from those dirt cheap shared hosting. But if you're serious about earning, you have to do investment in time and effort, not just money.
My first web site went live in 1998, about 15 years ago, which was abandoned later (but alive even today!) Two years later, I moved to a custom domain name and took blogging as a more "serious hobby". I never knew I could make money out of it and never thought about it, until I discovered Google AdSense in 2003~2004. For about 4-5 years from 1998 to 2003, I spent most of my life with my blogs just for the passion but then I discovered I could monetize it.
2 years ago, I quit my job as a software architect in USA and returned to India for a semi retired life. I no longer work in any companies except some training sessions when I get bored, free seminars in colleges and so on. Thanks to my blogs. With a collective traffic of about 9 million page views per month, I made very decent money in last few years from my websites.
If the high earning bloggers in India share their revenue numbers publicly, the "top 10 earning bloggers in India" list you see everywhere would have had a completely different set of names and not the names that you always hear in the blogosphere.
It was much easier to make money few years ago. If you can write good content, you will get lot of traffic and you can convert the traffic to money. But that is not the case anymore. With the ever changing Google algorithms and huge number of so called bloggers, it is practically impossible to start something new and make decent money by following ethical web practices.
Several bloggers have approached me asking my advice on their disabled AdSense accounts. But when I ask their background, I was suprised manytimes - those kids who have absolutely no valuable content in their website made several thousand dollars per month until they got disabled by Google. One person approached me a few weeks ago saying his AdSense was disabled and he has more than $10,000 outstanding balance in the AdSense account as the previous month earnings. His blog had no useful content except lot of strange pictures, many of them adult kind of content, which he copied from many other sources. He already received many cheques, each worth more than $10K. Many others who can't even write their name properly wrote hundreds of pages of text, which they call articles, and made few thousand dollars monthly! When I wrote they can't write even their name properly, I actually meant it. Many bloggers write their name in all lowercase in their author bio under the article. When I ask whether they know they have to write the first letter of a name in capital letter, many of them think it is not a big deal. (I studied in a non-English medium school and my language itself not great, which I tell people when I criticize the poor language of others, so that they won't start arguing with me about my English!)By the way, the point I am trying to make here is, there are many people who make a lot of money from blogging. Many great bloggers make great revenue but many others don't. Probably, they are not able to figure out the tricks to get traffic or just not able to convince search engines about the value of their content. Also, there are many others who make a lot of money who actually don't deserve it. If you have a great blog and like to monetize it but failed, then take a serious look at your strategies. Are you optimizing your blogs well for search engines, in addition to making it valuable for readers? Is there any critical problems that prevent search engines from giving the respect your blogs deserve? Are you not taking advantage of the social media opportunities?
Blogging still has potential to make good money. It is not just writing articles, commenting in other blogs or sharing in IndiVine. There is a lot more to be done to convert blogs to a business.
Sign in to reply to this thread
