There seems to be a misconception out there that professional bloggers make tons of cash in their sleep. Unfortunately, this is often times the work of some scammy internet marketer trying to sell you some six-step blueprint to making oodles of cash with a blog in three months.
The reality is that professional bloggers work – hard. Granted, I don’t work as many hours as I did at a regular job, but I’m still working quite a bit to continue building my business. Furthermore, I do sometimes make money in my sleep, and I personally know several professional bloggers who make a lot of money in their sleep, but it didn’t come without a lot of elbow grease.
If you’ve ever wondered how much professional bloggers actually work, I’m here to break it down for you.
The Groundwork
What most people don’t realize is there’s a lot of groundwork that goes into professional blogging. I was blogging regularly for years before anyone actually cared about what I had to say. I’d also been blogging for years before I realized “Woah, I can actually do this for a living!” By the way, this was while I was working at a regular job.
The reason so many blogs fail to become businesses is because people don’t have patience. They want things to happen overnight, and they just don’t.
Gary Vaynerchuk has regularly said he did a daily YouTube video about wine for 18 months before he started getting any attention. This makes sense. Building a business out of blogging is just like any other investment, it takes time and money before you see things coming to fruition.
Professional Blogging vs. Amateur Blogging
I tend to think I’m somewhere in the middle of my blogging journey. I’m no longer working seven days a week, but I’m not exactly making the amount of money I know I can make.
The Middle Way is when professional bloggers have learned what services can make them money, they know how to market them and they’ve started delegating and building systems. In other words, they aren’t doing everything by themselves anymore and they are strategic about what makes money and what doesn’t. They spend most of their time focusing on the activities that make them money. This is, in my opinion, what starts separating professional bloggers from amateurs.
Additionally, by this point, they’ve put in enough groundwork where opportunities are starting to come to them instead of having to hustle so hard all the time.
Granted, at this stage, you’re still working quite a lot. I’d say on average I’m really working 25 to 30 hours a week. This is part-time in comparison to a day job, but it doesn’t include the time I spend on social media.
The Tipping Point
What I’ve come to notice is that eventually, after a lot of time and effort, many professional bloggers reach a tipping point in their businesses where they really start seeing opportunities and money coming in.
I know professional bloggers who are making tens of thousands of dollars each month, and I know they still work pretty hard, particularly on marketing and promotion, but they do tend to enjoy a bit more time freedom because they’ve learned to incorporate systems and different streams of income into their businesses.
I’m personally not there yet, but I plan on learning everything I can from these guys so I can make my way there.
