This is a part of Question Answer series. If you have any question about Blogging/ WordPress / SEO/ Make money online feel free to drop your questions using contact form. Being a professional Blogger is not an easy job and it requires many skills and knowledge to turn your Blogging passion into full time blogging. In this article I would answer the most important question by young Blogger and that is : How to become a Professional Blogger and why you should.
Question by reader:
One of ShoutMeLoud reader asked me question:
I want to be a full time professional Blogger like you and can you guide me on how I can become a professional Blogger. You started as technical Blogger for ShoutMeLoud.com and I have done the same. Can you guide me how to do this and in how many months you became full time blogger?
Read: Why People blog?
Become a Professional Blogger:
Let me first break the myth that Blogging is easy. If you are looking to make a living out of Blogging, you need to treat it like a business with great personal touch. You have to answer many questions to yourself before jumping into the small crowd of Professional Blogger. As far as I know, there are many Bloggers who jumped into the sea of Professional blogging but later in 2011 (Google Panda updates) and in 2012 (Google Penguin update), killed many blogs and Bloggers are jumping into other aspect of Online marketing.
Read: 4 critical phase in the life of a Blogger
Now if you are into a part-time job and considering blogging as full-time work, answer to this question is little difficult because its based on your current job and family scenario. I started Blogging as full-time career when I was 22-year-old (Single, no family responsibilities, can take risk in life) and all this scenario helped me. I have covered the complete detail into my Bloggers journey article. Just to let new readers know: When I started blogging, I was working part-time as a software engineer and I also had another job in my hand with Accenture. In March 2009 I left my current job and became another professional blogger from India.
That time I was making almost 400-500$ from blogging while working for 3-4 hours a day and I was sure that if I will work around 12-16 hours a day, I can increase my online income to 3-4X. Though the time when I left my job for blogging, my income sources were Direct ads, Google Adsense, Affiliate Marketing and services. Out of which I will consider Google Adsense as a recurring income and rest as variable income.
This was my little story but now for you who is thinking of becoming a professional Blogger, you need to re-think as with time I realize there are many skill set require and is essential for anyone to get into full time Blogging. Professional Blogging is not only about writing content (That’s a job of content writer), it’s way more than that. You need to give something to blogsphere like well researched and detailed insight (More like editorial content), something which OM Malik and Michael arrington has done on Gigaom and Techcrunch respectively.
Read: Starting your blog journey? ShoutMeLoud can help
You need to understand the SEO basics, Photo editing, Grammar, Writing skills, Video creation, social media and web analytics to become a successful pro-blogger and not just another blogger.
If you want peace of mind while becoming a professional blogger, I would suggest that first start making a fixed recurring income, and once you are sure that you can survive with your blog income then its the right time time to kick your 9-7 Job and become another professional blogger. Though before taking this huge step, make sure you have created a clear road map and done your mind-mapping for your future plans and online earning. This will ensure you having a better life as a professional blogger.
Things to keep in your mind before getting into shoes of a professional blogger:
- What will be your traffic generation source?
- What will be your income source?
- What and how you going to extend your blog and blog brand?
- What’s your target with Blogging ? (Money, Fame or just because it’s another coolest job)
- Am I ready to learn new thing which will help me in long term Blogging.
- Do you have enough SEO skills to rank on first page of Google or can you drive enough traffic to your pages?
You should also read these two posts which will help you a lot in taking your decision :
For me it took almost 6 months to decide and become a professional blogger.
Off topic but I always suggest college people to start with a blog of their own. College time is the best phase when you are very creative and can imagine 10 articles a month and by the end of year you will have 120 articles and by the end of your college you will have an old established blog with almost 360+ articles. This will ensure you that you will have a side income source which will cover your few bills.
Suggested reading:
- How to build a credible Blog
- Why Bloggers must build a brand
- Why engineering students should Blog
Tip: Never put all your eggs into one basket and this is very true with Pro-Blogging. If your income source of just one blog, you need to extend your empire to make sure in future a Google algo change, a server collapse or any kind of blunders may not end your career or keep you out of money for months. Typically, a good blog can start making good income within 4-5 months.
Do let me know if you think I missed any point which one should consider before becoming a professional blogger?
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Article by Harsh Agrawal
Harsh has written 1211 articles.
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{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
Professional blogging needs lot of dedication and efforts from you. So for professional blogging, first secure yourself from financial aspects then quit your job. Obviously you need a lot of support from your famil and friends especially. Without help of friends no one can be a scuccessful blogger. Build your community and then watch & see.
Thanks for useful insight Imran and I agree with you. Before jumping into deep sea of professional blogging, one should have financial security or some kind of back up. Professional blogging is a vital decision of any one life and one should look at all the aspect before taking final decision.
Blogging needs a lot of passion, creativity & confidence. On the contrary to what people think, initially it’s more difficult to earn online than your regular job. One cannot turn a Pro & expect to become a Amit or Harsh in a year
Perhaps it needs a lot of patience than anything else. My technology blog is approx. 3 months old with a PageRank of 2 and a daily unique visit of 90. Still, I can’t see any noteworthy mention from monetization.
Basant talking about monetization, it comes eventually with traffic and trust. Blogging is a social networking event IMO, the more you give to public, more traffic and trust you will build with time.
nice points Harsh and thanks for putting my question here.
I’ll definitely look upon ur points and try to act upon them
Hope me too get success
Thanks a lot’
Atul
You welcome Atul. I’m sure the same question will be in the mind of other bloggers as well. Wish you luck with your future venture.
Regards
Harsh
You are right that the best time to start a blog is in college. In that time, people have their own time to manage, and have many resources to write.
Any blogger who wish to be successful, FIRST thing he needs is to be PASSIONATE about the thing which he/she wants to blog. If you want to be a professional blogger, that means you should be very very much PASSIONATE. It is only than your blog would be having quality content with regular updates.
First identify which are the things you are passionate about and find out how other blogs in that niche is doing. Do not turn PRO till you are assured of a higher income than what you are/would be other-wise earning. I agree with Harsh when he says following:
“If you want peace of your mind while becoming a professional blogger, I will suggest first start making a fixed recurring income”.
For me, I loved to guide younger ones in their careers/career exam.
That was how I started blogging two year back. But although I am earning good, with 250000+ monthly visits, I have still not turned PRO. The reason? I would wait for that day when I am assured of $2K earning RECURRENTLY per month from my blog. May be that would require another 2 years of PASSIONATE blogging!
taking full time blogging profession is difficult in india….
Tushar “taking full time blogging profession is difficult in india….”
Its not difficult at all in INDIA in fact on the contrary it’s very easy and much more rewarding in India. Consider that you are earning $500 per month through blogging. Now weather you stay in US or India, there won’t be much difference in your revenue generation through your blog. But if you stay in US you can barely pay your rent with $500, but if you are in India than $500 is equivalent to 25000 INR. You can have a decent living (+ some savings may be) in India with that much money. So in that way its really good to earn some extra money through blogging if you are in India. But one more thing blogging and earning money is not everybody’s cup of tea. It requires hardwork, patience and dedication like any other thing in which you want to succeed.
I too trying for fulltime blogger..
As im newbie for blogging im working morethan 12hours a day making backlink and submitting to social website but i cant reach the minimum traffic of 10k views per month..
im soooo tired..
Any one knows any SmaRt WoRk to achieve that target
If so…Please…. share here
It will b very helpful for me
Yes, College time is the best phase to start. I agree on that.
You get a lot of time.
And even if someone doesn’t get a job after finishing college, then can always count on this
I would suggest while in college, develop two to three mini sites which keep giving you revenue. They can work as money pump for remaining life.
I agree with your Vivek and this will help them to cover some of their bills in future.
Well that is true if the mini sites are making you good money regularly. Which in fact is not what the real picture is like. It may stop producing money at one point of the time..
Hi harsh,
I am a college student. Its about to end in june I have a job offer in Oracle India but still I am passionate about blogging. I started a blog for comics (http://rajcomicscollection.blogspot.com )in last june it has 1500+ pageviews but not a significant revenue. Its less then a dollar per day. What you think is this gonna work better.
I have started another blog two months back I am working on it. Its about blogging and web related tech.
Hi Abhishek. I suggest you to get one of your own domain name, preferably a .com or .org one, nevertheless keeping the subject of your blog in mind you can also go for .in domain name. And I also suggest you to transfer your blog to Wordpress platform instead of blogspot because WP looks more professional, easily manageable, lots of useful plugins available and its SEO friendly….
Every blogger have to atleast work hard for 1 year then he can enjoy the fruit of blogging..
Really Funny and Interesting to do it regularly..
nice points Harsh and thanks for putting my question here.
I’ll definitely look upon ur points and try to act upon them
Hope me too get success
I personally think that if an employed man wants become a professional blogger then he should start a blog and should operate it side by side. He should also learn all the blogging techniques at that time (may be in the sundays or off times). And once he starts making a descent amount of money he should leave his job.
Anyways, very nice post for those who want to be a professional blogger.
It is not possible to create a full-time income online within a few weeks, or even a few months, you have to test yourself in the world of blogging to see whether it has something for you or not. That’s my advice.
This is great inspiration for a newbie to the blogging world. I’m in the process of honing the vision for my blog before I launch it, and this post really sums up everything I need to keep in mind before I take the plunge. Looks like I’ve got lots of hard work ahead of me!
Hi,
Grеаt tірѕ Harsh! It’ѕ hаrd tо bесоmе а рrоfеѕѕіоnаl blоggеr іf уоu аrеn’t ѕurе whеrе tо ѕtаrt, but luсkіlу thеrе аrе рlеntу оf оnlіnе rеѕоurсеѕ tо hеlр оnе fіnd thеіr wау.
Best regards,
Amrik Virdi
Love to read articles on shoutmeloud as usual. I am also a professional blogger and motivate to read this article on the same. It suits me.
Thanks
I am 13 years old and I have started blogging . This was a great post Harsh . You were 22 when you became a full time blogger . So maybe by the time I will be 18 years old , I can become a professional blogger.
Right now, I am more interested in using my blog towards eventually marketing my programming on the Android. Eventually though, I do want to start earning some money from my blog. It might take me a while to get there since I don’t have anything set aside for it.