So you started a blog to get rich? You saw all the promises, heard all the great ways to monetize and you jumped right in expecting to see your bank account ticking away like the Energizer Bunny. You were going to sleep ‘til noon and write a post every three weeks between the champagne brunches in your ocean sized pool and your dates with the supermodel-twins. And then take the private jet to your Hawaii beach home for a nice late dinner. Right?

What? It didn’t work? The hell you say! You’ve made 9 cents on AdSense since you started 12 days ago and you are wondering what part of blogging school you slept through? You want to know why your new Mercedes isn’t sitting in the driveway already. Why is that moldy slip-n’-slide still sitting where your pool was supposed to be by now?  Why haven’t you gotten a single call from the bank asking what they should do with all the money that’s piling up?

Well, let me clue you in to the real secret here. If you want to make money doing it, blogging is a business . And like every other business ever invented, it takes time, effort, energy, and creativity to get anywhere. It also takes money (Professional blogging is cheap - not free.)

Top 6 Reasons You Aren’t Making Money

1. You are New

The blogs making it big have been at this for a long time.People like Darren Rowse at ProBlogger for instance are indeed professional bloggers. They make a very decent living. But in no way is it a matter of sitting back and doing nothing.  Darren is a smart businessman, with great writing skills who works very hard at providing the best blog about blogging he can. (Along with some other blogs that he also publishes.) And he has been at this since 2002 - that’s six years of building his brand. Until you have six years under the belt, comparing yourself to him is a bad idea.

True, some people might blast off in a week or two, hitting it big right away, that happens in all businesses. Just don’t count on it being you. It is not the norm.  Most of those claiming to have done it have remarkably little proof of the fact. Some blurred out AdSense screenshots maybe.  They are however very eager to sell you their super duper secrets in a $19.95 e-book. You do the math.

2.      Competition is Fierce

Blogging is often marketed as a way for anyone, to make a Billion in 9 minutes. This means that there are going to be thousands and thousands of people thinking that this is their new way to freedom.  This is why small blogs are getting so little attention. There is a dime a dozen of them and most disappear within weeks, maybe months.

The problem for a new blogger is that many of these abandoned blogs sit there indefinitely, and when you are new, you are still competing with them since they have about the same amount of content. So not only are you competing with other bloggers, you are competing with bloggers that have already given up. and they are outperforming you on Google too… The unfairness of it all!

3. You are Blogging for the Wrong Reasons

Blogging with the intent of making money is becoming less and less possible. Blogs designed for this purpose try to hide it, but more often than not fail miserably. The intent shines through clearly, and people don’t like wasting time going to sites that offer nothing. If your only intent is to earn money, you probably won’t.

4. You Forgot the Other 90%

AdSense is the dominant “gateway-drug” of monetizing a blog. But advertising isn’t the only way you can make money. Most of the big time bloggers have created products that they sell for revenue. E-books, Print books, T-shirts, seminars, consulting, there are 1001 ways to leverage your blog.

Hold on for a second and consider that. They produced something they are selling? Doesn’t that sounds remarkably like a…. a…. Business?  Oh the horror! It IS a business after all.

Just remember to produce something that has VALUE! Before you go and sell it, this is a social media, and people will let you and the world know if they think you scammed them.

5. You are Overdoing it

If your blog has enough ads on it to choke a supercomputer, you will create sensory overload, and they will probably leave your site before it even finishes loading. Or if it does load, they surely will bounce on by as soon as the headache appears.

6. You Picked a Niche That 18 Million Other Bloggers Picked Before You

Your niche is making money, so you can welcome yourself to the largest blogging niche there is. It’s the same nice as every other blogger who started with the thought “I want to make a million sleeping in everyday.”

Since this is your objective, forget what you claim your blog is about. If making money was your idea, then you’re in that niche. And that niche is drying up fast. Long gone are the days where any old blog was considered newsworthy and cool. Welcome to the real world of grit your teeth and write blogging.

You can be a professional blogger, it’s just not going to be as easy as that $19.95 e-book said it was.

Blogging for a living sure beats a lot of other jobs, just don’t fool yourself into thinking that it’s any less work. It is a business; being successful requires the same amount of determination and drive as any other business. Oh, and work, lots and lots of work.

Now start writing already. Mercedes is not in the business of trading samples for product reviews.

If this article didn’t depress you, make sure you subscribe to get the second part. “How to get your blogging business off to a good start.”