The Truth About Making Money with a Small Blog. Many bloggers never understand that there is rythem to success and customer trust
Post by Peter Hanley coachhanley.com
You’ve heard the stories. Someone started a blog in their spare time and now makes $10,000 a month passively. Meanwhile, you’ve been posting consistently for a year, your traffic is stuck at 100 monthly visitors, and you’ve made exactly $0.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most bloggers don’t make meaningful money from their blogs. And if you’re running a small blog, the path forward is completely different from what the “make $10k/month blogging” gurus are selling.
The Reality Check
Let’s be honest about what small usually means. If you’re getting under 10,000 monthly visitors, you’re in the majority of blogs. If you’re under 1,000, you’re with millions of others. This isn’t failure—it’s just the starting point that most people don’t talk about.
At 100 monthly visitors, you’re not going to make money from display ads. You won’t hit the 100,000 monthly impressions threshold that most ad networks require. Even if you could, earning $100 from display ads typically requires around 250,000–500,000 monthly impressions. The math doesn’t work.
This is where most blog monetization advice breaks down. The strategies marketed to bloggers work for blogs with substantial traffic. For everyone else, there’s rarely a honest conversation about what’s actually possible.
What Actually Works for Small Blogs
So what can work? Here are the realistic options—not the fantasy ones.
Affiliate marketing with genuine recommendations
This is probably your best bet. You don’t need traffic volume if your content genuinely helps people solve problems. If you write about something specific—say, budget productivity tools for freelancers or kayak recommendations for beginners—you can recommend products you actually use and earn commissions.
The key word is genuine. If you’re writing about products just to place affiliate links, it won’t work and your readers will know it. Write as if you’re recommending something to a friend. The commission ($10–$50 per sale) matters less than the fact that it’s achievable with small traffic if you write with conversion in mind.
Where do I start wit affiliate marketing?
Digital products or services
A small but engaged audience is perfect for this. An email list of 500 loyal readers interested in your niche is worth more than 50,000 random visitors. You could create a guide, template, course, or tool related to your expertise and sell it directly to your audience.
The advantage: you’re not competing on traffic volume. You’re competing on trust and relevance. If your blog serves a specific niche well, people will buy from you.
Consulting or freelance work
Your blog doesn’t need to be profitable on its own. It can be a portfolio that attracts clients. A blog with modest traffic but high-quality content in a professional niche (writing, design, marketing, development, etc.) is often more valuable as a business development tool than as a direct income source.
Someone might find your blog, realize you know your stuff, and hire you for a project. That $2,000 project is worth more than a year of blog monetization attempts.
Sponsorships from niche brands
Once you have a small but engaged audience in a specific niche, brands in that space might sponsor content. They care less about your total traffic and more about whether your audience is their target market.
The Hard Truths
It takes longer than you think
Most blogs don’t hit meaningful monetization for 12–24 months of consistent work. Some never do. This isn’t a failure of strategy—it’s just the reality of building authority and audience trust.
Most money comes after you have momentum
By the time you can make real money from your blog, you probably won’t need it as much. The process requires patience, consistency, and genuinely helping people before you see financial returns. If you’re blogging specifically to make money quickly, you’ll likely quit before reaching the point where it’s possible.
Monetizing too early kills growth
The #1 mistake small bloggers make is trying to monetize before they have an audience or authority. Plastering a blog with ads nobody clicks on, or promoting random products you don’t use, doesn’t work. It just makes the blog look like spam and pushes readers away.
Focus on value first. Trust and audience first. Money second.
Consistency matters more than going viral
You don’t need one post that goes viral. You need 50 really good posts that rank in search, answer specific questions, and build credibility over time. Small blogs succeed through boring, consistent execution—not through luck or optimization tricks.
A More Realistic Framework
Instead of asking “how do I monetize my small blog,” ask these questions:
Who specifically does my blog help? The narrower your answer, the better. “People interested in fitness” is too broad. “Women over 40 returning to running after years away” is specific.
What problem do I solve that’s worth money? If your blog addresses a problem people already pay to solve, monetization is possible. If it’s just entertainment or general interest, it’s much harder.
What would my audience pay for? Could they pay for a course, guide, template, service, or recommendation? What format makes sense?
Can I build a small list of engaged people? Email lists of 100 truly interested people are better than 10,000 disengaged followers. Monetization starts with genuine engagement.
Is this a side project or a business? If it’s a side project, lower your financial expectations and enjoy the creative outlet. If you’re building a business, be strategic about which monetization model you pursue.
The Real Path Forward
The truth is that making money from a small blog usually requires either patience, niche expertise, or a willingness to diversify beyond the blog itself. The blogs that make serious money typically:
- Spent 1–3 years building before monetizing
- Solved a specific problem better than anyone else
- Combined multiple revenue streams (affiliate + digital products + consulting)
- Used the blog as a platform for their actual service or business
- Built genuine relationships with their small audience
If you have a small blog and haven’t made money yet, you’re not behind. You’re just at the beginning. The question isn’t “how do I monetize now” but rather “what are my realistic monetization options given my current audience size, and which one aligns with my expertise and effort level?”
Stop waiting for the magic bullet. Focus on the hard part: writing things people actually want to read. The monetization will follow—just not as quickly as the gurus claim.
You can find all the answers at Wealthy Affiliate