I been making money from donations and over the period 10-15 years I made just 2000€ in donations.

So to keep this post short I can say that donations are not a reliable source of income, unless you have huge loyal audience, which most people do not have.

As from my experience you need 100K views to just get one donation. You would be making more money via ads if you would be monetized.

If you are starting content creation for fun, sure you can ask for donations, but it will be little 5-10€ and very rare. At least in Lithuania where donation culture is something new.

So, if you want to write a blog, you need to write in this manner.

First is the headline, ideally the headline should be exact search query people type into Google search, and the blog post itself should be an answer to that search, because people online don’t read, they are searching for answers to their problems.

So, first write for search and then for human.

Many people fail at blogging just due to this simple mistake. They write headlines the way nobody is searching for, when you start a blog, your main traffic source will be search, so you need to write for search, later when you build a readership then you can write whatever you want, because you already have an audience.

But at first write for search.

Readers find blogs via Google and other search engines. Nobody will be typing www.vygintasvarnas.lt to find my blog, unless people already know me, but most people don’t even know that I exist. I’m not Elon Musk or so, most people don’t know me, don’t care about me, and don’t pay me.

So readers have questions, and they type questions in search engines, then they get tons of results and they pick one or few from the first page of Google Search, nobody goes to page 100 of Google, that’s rare.

Each article competes with other articles, and the first thing a potential reader sees is the headline, so making your headlines interesting can make or break a website, but I’m not in a business of writing good headlines.

So when you write a blog, you are competing with other billion to trillion content pieces which include photos, podcasts, pictures, videos and finally text. Most blogs don’t get any views. That’s the rule of thumb.

Bad writers don’t have anything to say.

That said, good writers always have new and interesting things to say.

Good writers see the world in words, and have high linguistic IQ.

But at this time and age – you don’t need to be a writer, as it mostly doesn’t pay any money. I’ve been writing for years now, and I barely make any money. These are diminishing returns for the amount of work you need to do.

So it’s better to be a programmer, cyber security expert rather than a writer. Entry to writing is very low, anyone can write, that’s why the competition is enormous.

Yes, you can create value, but that doesn’t translate to automatic payments. Most value people give online is free. It doesn’t translate to any money.

So, if you believe that you only need to produce value and you’re getting automatically paid, that’s not true.

Over the years I made a lot of value, but that did not translate to me being compensated fair.

If you want to make money – you need to sell something, personally me – I don’t want to sell anything. Sales just make me think of ways someone should pay me, but that does not translate into any kind of money.

I think they ‘should’, but that doesn’t mean they ‘would’.

Making money online so far was the most toughest thing I ever managed to do. People are greedy and they don’t want to pay. If people aren’t paying for Hollywood movies, so what makes you believe people will buy your videos, order your newsletter or pay in any way for your content.

The web made stealing very easy. And you are not a thief when you are not caught.

Nah, I won’t make any money from this blog. You know making all the money is a lot of hassle.

It’s better to work for free. When you work for free – you can do anything.

Many people are so obsessed with making money, besides I get my disability check. So I can give content for free and get my disability check for free.

Free for free.

Sure, having money is nice, but whatever, I never was a big money maker. 🙂

Selling direct ads gives you a bigger cut, because you eliminate the middlemen. Google Adsense takes like 40-50% of the cut, so you are left just with 60-50%, WordPress WordAds is similar.

With direct ads there is more management, but more profit.

If you happen to make a good blog with decent amount of traffic, you can ask decent amounts of money for direct ads, currently I sell direct ad for 5€ a pop.

As this blog is fairly new, I won’t make a lot of money, but as I populate the blog with content, I might be sitting on a fair amount of money.

If you want something to work – you need to work, right? 😀

Quality suffers from speed, it’s not enough to write one blog post and expect money to roll in, those people who say you need 50 videos, or 50 blog posts are deluded you definitely need much more, as most of what you write won’t get any views.

You can write the most qualitest blog post, and it still won’t rank and get traffic.

So you don’t control quality, all you can control is speed and volume. The two things you surely control, but you don’t control quality as it is subjective – while speed and volume are objective.

Blogging is a lame business, just because you need enormous amount of content. And you not only don’t get any money, but also rarely get any traffic.

Most bloggers assume – you’ll just write a few blog posts and money will roll in, but that’s far away from the truth.

When you start a blog – you need to keep producing new and fresh content for years, otherwise you’re not getting any traffic, not to talk about money.

For most people, their blogs won’t make any money, that’s the harsh truth. I know this because I’ve spent 15 years creating content every damn day, although it’s scattered over the web, but whatever.

Attention is fleeting and not loyal.

So, I just woke up, well, maybe one hour ago.

Today is another day in the Matrix.

Today I want to start with this: It doesn’t matter how much you post, if it’s not distributed properly – you won’t get much views.

Blogging is a celebrity business, simple people can be bloggers, but they can’t be successful.

There is like one billion blogs, that’s a blog for every 8 people on the planet, and those blogs host numerous posts, so the internet is oversupplied with content.

Most blog pages linger with little to no views.

Fast forward, most bloggers don’t make any money blogging. Not only they are not getting money, they are also not getting traffic.