GETTING PAID FOR BLOGGING – MY STORY & KEY THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW
I don’t make a livable wage from blogging. In fact, I barely make pocket money from blogging. Maybe it’s because I’m would hate to do affiliate linking or advertorials and write about something that I didn’t really want to try out or care about, or maybe it’s because I’m too lazy to reach out to advertisers.
My blog, deerdrama.com was created on December 25 of 2014. After months of unemployment, I decided I wanted to do something more with my time… I guess… I decided to write about dramas (sounds pretty ridiculous in retrospect, doesn’t it?).
I love blogging as a hobby because I genuinely loved sharing my commentary and reading other people’s comments on the same drama – the small amount of money is just an added plus. Either way, if you’re looking to get paid for blogging – here’s my story, here are my stats, and here’s how much I get paid.
How I got started
I wrote my first post on Deer Drama on December 25th, and I literally got zero views in the entire month of December. Midway through January, my blog ‘blew-up’ (ok, more like a little burp as opposed to an explosion). I ended with 18 000 views at the end of the month.
To which I thought… Does this make me a real blogger now? How do I get paid?
WordAds
To be honest, I didn’t do a lot of research on where I could make money, nor did I read a lot of reviews. All I knew was that WordPress and Google both had its own system in paying out for its bloggers. WordPress has a program called WordAds, where they pay per impression, meaning that they paid out for every view on your page.
Google on the other hand, has two – Adwords, which is pay per click – which is very self-explanatory – every click on an ad will get you paid. Google also has Adsense, which is pay-per-impression.
I saw that my site was on the first page of Google when I googled relevant drama words, so I didn’t want to mess it up. I mean… I was already hosted on WordPress anyways – I didn’t want to switch to mess up my ranking on the Google search engine, and plus, I’m sure I’d get more impressions than clicks, since my blog is about, well, dramas.
So I applied to WordAds. Apparently when you apply, they check out whether you’re eligible with the content and amount of traffic that you get (which I heard was minimum 10 000 views), so I waited patiently for my acceptance email.
Getting PAID, Homie
I got a confirmation email that I was accepted into WordAds a few days later. I was so excited to get paid for the month of February. For all seriousness, I was thinking pretty unrealistically. For the month of February I got nearly 69 000 views and your homegirl thought she was going to make bank.
I got…
$45!
Hey I can buy anything I want with 45 dollars… at the dollar store.
There were two catches that I didn’t expect:
- Out of 69 000 impressions, only 28 500 counted as impressions. I guess y’all have ad blockers on.
- I didn’t even get paid out for the $45 at the end of the month. WordAds have to owe you at least $100 in order to pay you. I guess I’ll have to postpone my dollar store trip to next month.
One last catch…
In the month of June I got 180 000 views on Deer Drama. Guess how much I got paid?
I got…
$47!!!
I was actually pretty shocked. I mean, I got over double the views of February, and I only got paid out 2 dollars more? Like… what even?
According to WordAds,
North American ad placements currently pay-out at a much greater level than international ads.
So even if you are getting a higher amount of traffic, that all depends on where it’s coming from, and your blogging income with ad revenue will vary greatly.
Conclusion
I might be preaching like a rap song, but honestly – don’t be chasing the paper, but be chasing that life (in other words, do what you like, not what pays). If making money was your goal, then even a minimum wage job has more pay-off. It took me an hour to write this post, and considering the amount of posts I need to write to get enough traffic for that $45, I could just work a 8 hour shift at McDonald’s at 10.25 and make $82 easily. Then again, if you really want to make a career out of blogging – and you don’t mind doing affiliate marketing and advertorials, I’m sure there is more money somewhere in there.
For me, if I tried to make a business out of it, I’m sure I wouldn’t enjoy it as much, or probably repel a lot of readers from continue to visit my blogs. Thanks for reading this post – if I did it for the money, I would probably have stopped blogging by now. Very cornily speaking, every time I read a nice comment, it fuels me to write another post – so thanks y’all for being there to support!
HI sanchanel, :), very interesting post, I keep track of posts about WordAds and that is how I found your post.
Small correction, Adsense and Adwords are two completely opposite but complimentary programs. Adwords is for advertisers who are ready to pay money to promote their site, Adsense is for publishers who want to display ads on their sites and make money. 🙂
I think Adblockers are a contributing factor to why our page views don’t match the ad impressions, but other reasons could be lack of advertisements. Example, if you get 1000 visits from India, and no one wants to display Ads to Indian visitors, your Ad area will stay blank, so you would get no Ad impression.
I agree, the payout is just pocket money and unless you are really active and own a very popular blog, it is very hard to make a living out of blogging.
About the inconsistent payment, I think this is a temporary phase facing the Ad industry in general and affecting WordAds on a bigger scale. The Ad rates, especially in May and June of 2015, have gone much lower than previous months due to lack of advertisers on WordAds. This is happening to everyone and I have written about it in my blog: http://humanbreeds.com/2014/10/13/wordads-advertising-on-wordpress/
Having said all that, you have got some amazing statistics in your drama blog… 180,000 views per month. Excellent job! Keep it up!
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great post:) crazy that sooo many views actually got you soo little money:(
https://beautytruuth.wordpress.com/
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Really great! If anyone wants to read my comparison between WordAds and AdSense, check it out: http://dunhamandtate.com/2015/08/20/wordpress-wordads-vs-google-adsense/
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Your drama blog account brought me here 🙂 I really like your recap of “Destined to Love You” – big fan of the show and I’m half way through it. I am looking forward to reading your posts on this blog as well.
If you get the chance, please take a look at my blog that I recently created. I’m a complete noob. haha
Thanks! ❤ https://lessroutinemoreadventure.wordpress.com/
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Thanks for reading my post!!! I checked out your page, and I really like your simplistic design and style. I look forward to reading more of your blog!!!
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thanks for this post. I just recently started blogging about dramas since I have no one else to talk about dramas to and was interested in making money with it. I guess money doesn’t come in easy.
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For sure!!! I think the money really comes in for a different platform too.. Compared to my friend who earned 50 cents from 4000 views on youtube, her ratio of views to payout is so much more
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I tried making a video for tax free weekend haul but it took so long to edit and everything. The final video
looked so sloppy so I ended up just taking pictures and writing a blogpost.
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Hi! I got directed here from your drama blog too 🙂 Thanks for posting such an informative post! I have never thought of earning pocket money from blogging before seeing your post here. It’s really nice that you are sharing such information which are almost impossible for unaware people like me to ever find out on my own haha.
Hope you don’t mind me asking some questions! I get that wordpress makes payment via paypal but I have never used paypal before so I’m not familiar with it at all. This is a bit off topic, but do you know which kind of paypal account should I create in this case – a ‘Buy with Paypal’ or ‘Sell with Paypal’ account? And is it possible to buy/send money through the ‘Sell with paypal’ account and vice versa?
Thank you so much for you help in advance! You can reply me here or via email at skimmedmilkdrama@gmail.com if you find this irrelevant to your post. Once again, thank you!
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Hi!!! I am really sorry for the delayed response. I haven’t been having wifi for the past two weeks because I’ve been in Asia, so I haven’t been checking the site. First off, thanks for your comment 🙂 and secondly, it would be a sell with paypal account to receive money. I think that in order to send money, you would need to activate the buy with paypal feature, but it is quite fast to do, so it’s definitely not a hassle. Again, feel free to ask me more questions if you feel unsure, and sorry for the delay in replying 🙂
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No worries, thank you very much for the reply! 🙂 I’m thinking of setting up a wordads for my blog as well but I’m not in a rush so I will probably only get it a few months down the road, at the end of the year. Hope you won’t mind me asking you about this again then!
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Hey, cool article. Which website did u use to create your own domain?
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Hello!!! I just bought it through WordPress. If you have a wordpress account, when you decide to get a wordads account to get paid out for your work, you actually get an option right on the site to purchase a domain. I’m not very savvy with tech stuff so I would have a lot of trouble moving my hosting over to another host other than wordpress anyways, so I decided to stick with wordpress for everything.
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I’m glad that you are doing this not for the money, because I enjoy it so much. I am a fan of Empress of China and the lady and the Liar. I myself start blogging recently (like two months) and i really look up to a blogger like you who does it out of pure interest on the subject. Thank you!!
https://nonasuwanda.wordpress.com
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Thank you for your wonderful comment! It’s comments like these that make me want to keep blogging – I really appreciate your encouragement!
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