How To Make Money Blogging: With Professional Blogger David Peralty

David Peralty was a full-time blogger for five years and created a lot of content about WordPress. In his own words "During my five year career writing online, I published more than 30,000 blog posts using my own name and various pseudonyms. I was part of over 100 podcast episodes. I felt very fortunate doing it all, and while I experienced some horrible burnout from some of my later projects, I still look back on my time working for Jacob Gower on Blogging Pro as some of the best times of my life." You can follow David at his personal site http://peralty.com.

What got you into blogging, is it something you set out to do or did it fall into your lap?

"Blogging wasn’t what I expected to do with my career, and no one that I knew was blogging at the time, and other than Darren Rowse, I hadn’t heard of anyone making any money doing it.

I went to school for computer networking, and finished as the tech bubble had finished collapsing. When I got online, the idea of journaling my life was super appealing to me as I had always enjoyed writing. I was learning PHP and creating my own online publishing system between using Blogger and being introduced to WordPress.

WordPress changed everything for me. I started following its development, and became part of the WordPress community. When a young man ended up buying a bunch of blogs that I had loved, I contacted him for an interview. He hadn’t planned out what he was going to do regarding the continued content development on those sites and offered me a job."

Would a person have to put a lot of time and energy into turning blogging into a career or could they do it in their spare time?

"Because the barrier for entry is so low now, with hosted software solutions, and more available information and tutorials, I don’t believe that blogging is an easy career option for most people.

There are people that rise to be well known and make some serious money from their content, but content is mostly a commodity these days, and it can be hard to build an audience. I would hazard a guess that unless you are being employed by an already established blog, the odds of earning a livable income from blogging alone is very low, especially in the first two years of publication."

How can a person make money from blogging, let alone enough to turn it into a career?

"This is a complex question and the options aren’t as many or as simple as they once were. I would say that the best way to make money from building your own blog today is to use your blog to build a brand and then convert that brand into a product. Look at people like Chris Garrett (chrisg.com) and his Authority Blogger community or what the Copyblogger team has done as an example.

Of course another way, and the way that I did it, was to find blogs you can write on and get paid. There are many successful blogs out there that need content production and are willing to pay for it. Envato is a great example of that, paying some high rates for quality tutorials in a variety of niches.

At the end of the day, making money from blogging requires a lot of hard work, organization, and the ability to develop and built multiple potential income streams through banner advertising, affiliate programs, creating products and services, or crafting content for others."

I see that you referenced yourself as a former professional blogger, what caused you to no longer do it?

"Two things: burnout and advertising rate drops. When the recession started happening, online advertising rates dropped like a stone, and sites that I worked on started making a small percentage of what they were earning only a few months prior. So then I switched to working on a site for a friend that I didn’t totally enjoy. I put in long, hard hours, and got paid a decent wage, but it caused me to not enjoy blogging as much. I then ended up taking a job doing web development for the local government. I’ve since mostly just stuck to personal blogging as I haven’t been able to find the determination to stick with professional blogging tasks/jobs for any reasonable period of time.

Thankfully, my skills in web development and online marketing have kept me well employed."

If you could give one piece of advice to a potential blogger from you personal experiences in blogging, what would it be?

'Be true to yourself. My blogging career came to a halt because I chased money for the sake of money. I didn’t think about what that would do to my psyche. I didn’t realize that by working on projects I didn’t enjoy that I could ruin my passion and interest in writing professionally. I have also seen others go through this same transition, and I am still trying to help one close friend change paths before he is too far gone and quits blogging as well.

If you aren’t being yourself, doing what you enjoy, writing posts you’d love to read, then no matter how hard you work, it won’t last, and you won’t achieve success."