A few days back I was online on some message board, and the topic of blogging for money came up. Someone was asking if you can still make money blogging, and if blogging can be profitable on it’s own, or if blogging these days is solely a traffic driving tool for a larger business, but not something that can be profitable all by itself.
While I agree that we’re no longer living in the Made for Adsense (MFA) days when someone could keyword stuff a one page website, get it to the front page of Google, and profit, I do think money can still be made blogging and vlogging without it being part of a larger business.
I personally earn a respectable amount of money solely from blogging and content creation, and I know many others who do as well. I had commented on this gentlemen’s post and said I felt while it’s more challenging than it was 5 or 10 years ago, it’s definitely possible. I believe I even linked to a recent Reddit post where a guy was talking of making 10K a month off his travel blog.
Someone else commented back and said okay sure you picked out an example of someone making money, but that’s hardly proof that money can be made, that guy is an “outlier”.
If you’re not familiar with what an outlier is, it’s something who’s the exception rather than the norm. There’s a fascinating book I read a while back and have been meaning to go back and re-read by Malcolm Gladwell, which is titled “Outliers: The Story of Success”.
The book focuses on how while people who become successful are intelligent people and hardworkers, oftentimes there’s more at play, there’s some life circumstance or piece of luck that benefits them and really puts them at the top of his game. There’s many examples given throughout the book, however one interesting one and more well known example from the book is about hockey players. Most of the best professional hockey players and best hockey players in the world are the oldest kids in their class or their grade. The difference in size and maturity between say a kid who just turned 5, and another kid in the same grade or class who is 6, maybe even 6 and a half is astounding. Because they are more mature and larger they are naturally better players and wind up getting more attention from the coaches, go on to play on better teams and in better leagues, and then go on to be seen by more scouts, invited to more invitationals and travel teams because of that. Basically, while not taking anything away from successful people, there’s oftentimes more to their success than just their ambition, hustle, and hard work.
This brings me to why you must become an outlier. The online poster who said don’t bother blogging, because those people you hear about are outliers, he was wrong in encouraging someone not to try something. With anything in life,if you want to be successful, if you want to be the best, if you want to make good money, you’re going to have to be an outlier. If you’re not an outlier your average and ordinary. Whether we’re talking athletics, business, opening a Shopify store, starting a Youtube Channel, whatever you do in life if you want to be good at it and be successful with it you’re going to be an outlier. The majority of Shopify stores fail. The majority of businesses fail. The majority of Youtube channels fail. Those who succeed are the outliers.
So next time you’re feeling overwhelmed by some job or task your taking on, remember, you’re going to have to be an outlier, and you can be an outlier.