GETTING PAID FOR BLOGGING – MY STORY & KEY THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

August 10, 2015

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?).

… except that I’m a girl

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:

1. Out of 69 000 impressions, only 28 500 counted as impressions. I guess y’all have ad blockers on.
2. 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!

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