Here’s What I’ve Learned About How to Grow a Blog and Make Money Online

by Gary Leff

Doctor of Credit offered to read any new blogs out there about miles, points, travel and deals.

I actually read every new frequent travel blog that I come across. I add most of them to my RSS feed (I follow blogs with Newsblur largely because it was the closest to Google Reader which shut down in mid-2013).

I also try to link to smaller blogs as well as bigger ones that have something that strikes me as interesting on a given day. Sometimes that means I get an idea for a post from them, and give them a ‘hat tip’ and other times it means including them in a list of links of things I found interesting on other sites (which is arguably better for their traffic, but either helps their SEO).

So I’ll make the same offer, if you have a blog that I should be reading please leave it in the comments. You might actually be surprised that I’m already reading it, but I might also have something to learn.

Along those lines, at one point or another every blogger offers navel gazing advice for other bloggers. I’ve largely avoided posts meant for bloggers since that’s not the audience for this site. But I’m also pretty regularly asked for advice, I’ve thought about it a great deal, and it would be great to be able to respond with a link to this post anyway (!).

How and Why I Started This Blog

I started blogging one weekend day in May 2002 on a lark. I had several friends with blogs back then, and I thought I’d try my hand at it. Only I didn’t have anything useful to contribute solely on politics and current events, which were the only blogs I knew about at the time. So I decided to write about travel and miles and points along with an eclectic amalgamation of offbeat news.


My Original Blog

My interest in stories like poop falling from the sky stems from my ‘quirky’ sense of humor, and dates back to the beginning — although my very first post was about credit card mileage-earning.

In the beginning I’d get 30 visits a day. The very first link to this site came from legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy. Within a year I was getting 500 a day, although there were exciting spikes along the way — Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit would link to me regularly, especially for my regular coverage of the TSA and the early bumper stickers I created to Impeach Norm Mineta as Secretary of Transportation (the TSA had been part of DOT before it was moved to the super German-sounding Department of Homeland Security). The tagline for the stickers was “Liberty & Security Not Bureaucracy.”

I don’t think I was getting 2000 visits a day regularly until I was about 4 years in. One thing that helped me jump to even that level were links from my boss’s blog and an opportunity to guest blog for him.

When I look back at my posts even from those first few years I’m not super proud of them. It took me a long time to find my ‘voice’.

But it was fun. I’m not naturally a great writer, but I still love the creative outlet and opportunity to express myself. I got to interact with and even to know many people who share my interests. In 2005 I even declared what I wanted for Christmas and a reader sent it to me.

Back then blogs interacted with each other more than they do today. Blogging was a conversational medium. You linked to someone’s post and shared why you agreed or disagreed with them. That’s how traffic was built. That formative experience for me has a lot to do with why I credit where I find things, and why I try to send traffic to blogs (by including them in lists of links) when I feel like they deserve greater attention.

How to Grow Your Blog

Even though my blog traffic is, by some measures, ‘impressive’ I may be one of the worst people to offer advice on building a blog. I don’t do very many of the Things. You’re. Supposed. To. Do. and it also took me a Very. Long. Time. to build a readership.

Nonetheless, I hope my experiences will be useful to some who are blogging or considering it.

And when I talk about quality content, I mean it on my own terms. You don’t have to like this blog, or like every post, and I respect your opinion. I only use ‘quality’ in terms of producing the kind of content that I’m trying to produce.

  • The most important thing is to be patient. Success doesn’t happen quickly, or at a minimum the lack of quick success doesn’t mean you won’t be successful.

    There are some blogs that do take off (relatively) fast. I think that Million Mile Secrets was built very intentionally, with a business plan, offering something to readers that didn’t exist at the time. The site was founded by a brand management professional, and it took off quickly.

    My experience though is the opposite. Here’s what my traffic looks like over the past 7 years:

  • Be patient and persistent. Just keep at it. It takes time to build your voice. It takes time to build enough content so that people will find you through Google when performing searches. Post regularly, and post often. All things equal the more I post, the more traffic my site gets.

    You don’t need to post every day to be successful. Nomadic Matt is arguably the most-trafficked travel blog, and he doesn’t post daily but he does on a very regular schedule.

  • Network with other bloggers, and share your knowledge on other sites. Certainly if you want me to see one of your posts, email me or tweet me. I may not link to it, but I’ll notice it. Bloggers are always looking for content, remember that the more I post the more traffic the blog gets, so pitching a post is consistent with the self-interest of the person you’re pitching — as long as you don’t pitch a fit when they don’t link to you.

    Post to frequent flyer communities, or to reddit. Don’t pitch your posts, just develop a reputation for being helpful, if a forum lets you include your blog in your post signature the more content you provide the more traffic you’ll get. And if your content is helpful you’ll be respected, and people will have confidence sharing your posts. You’ll grow organically.

  • SEO matters, but not as much as you think. Don’t write for Google. The most important thing for getting traffic from Google is having useful content, and having lots of it. That way you’ll wind up in more search results. And if you want Google to highlight your content, get others to link to your content. I’m fortunate that this blog has something like 400,000 inbound links (or so I’m told). That takes time. Focus on content first, and then tweaking content so that Google can find it. Don’t put Google first.

  • Have something to say. Why should people read you? Why is your content different? You can do ‘the same as what seems to be successful’ and that’s fine as far as it goes, but at a minimum you likely want to have a unique twist on it. You’re probably not going to be as good at traveling the world in different premium cabins and reporting on the varied experiences near every day as One Mile at a Time. You’re probably not going to cover the best and cheapest ways to get to Tel Aviv better than Dan’s Deals. But if you have a unique perspective, perhaps because of your training or day job experience, try offering that — with abandon or (pleasant) attitude.

  • Develop a thick skin. If I couldn’t handle criticism — and even a couple of death threats (really) — I’d have given up a long time ago. This is the internet, and people who are incredibly kind in person get really nasty online. Here’s one of my favorite cartoons. Plus I make mistakes, and I learn from the experiences of readers. So I welcome feedback, in whatever form it comes.

How to Make Money Blogging

Making money from your blog comes last. I don’t have any advice on how to turn your blog into a standalone business or do so quickly.

I write all my own posts. This isn’t even my full time job and I don’t have anyone working for me. I’ve only hosted a handful of guest posts, even, and that’s been because I was interested in the specialized experiences that the guest authors had to offer — a friend who had booked a Delta business class award on Saudia to fly home to Pakistan, an attorney who offered their perspective on the legal issues surrounding the Supreme Court’s miles and points case Northwest v. Ginsberg.

Everything I know or believe about the theory of the firm? I do the opposite.

Here’s what I do know: content comes first, then readership, then revenue. There are any number of strategies for earning money off of a blog, but none of them matter without readership.

  • There are all kinds of affiliate links, for booking hotels or buying Amazon products or signing up for credit cards. When you use one of my credit card links, I’ll earn a referral credit (and I appreciate that very much).

  • You can sell courses, or e-books, or consulting services (these days my award booking service is hardly alone in the space).

  • Advertising is much easier to put up on your site than it used to be when I started.

You aren’t going to make very much money with any of these strategies if you have 500 readers or 1000 readers or even 2000 readers. Earning a living on the internet is fundamentally about scale, which means offering enough content that people want to read so that they come back regularly and you grow your audience.

If you have a lot of readers, almost any strategy will earn money. If you have very few readers there’s almost no strategy that will.

And then it all comes back to patience and time. Blogs that start because they think they’re going to make money almost always fail, because the author gets frustrated — they may come out of the gate quickly, but they burn out just as fast when other life priorities get in the way and they realize that six months or a year in there’s no real revenue from their efforts.

If you’re getting into blogging to make money, you’re doing it wrong. You have to love it. You have to write because you want to write. And if you don’t you’re unlikely to succeed.

This blog started without any ads at all. GoogleAds didn’t even exist when I began. After a month or so Glenn Reynolds paid to take down the ad placed there by my first site host, Blogspot. After 7 months Randy Petersen offered to host my blog. But it wasn’t until 2004 that I had an ad up. “BlogAds” were selling on my site for $40 per week, and I told Randy he could keep it all to defer hosting costs and the technical help his team had given me to get things set up.

After more than five years of blogging I was making $250 a month from the site. It wasn’t long after that I was making $750 a month. Things really took off with the launch of an award booking business in 2009, and getting coverage for it in the New York Times, USA Today, and being named as one of Conde’ Nast Traveler‘s “World’s Top Travel Specialists” starting in 2010. But that was 7 years in. Granted I didn’t do much of anything to ‘monetize’ the site before that, so I could have made more than $250 or $750, but not that much more because it’s fundamentally about math — a function of the number of people reading what you write.

Have a Blog… or a Question? Hit the Comments

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  7. Thank you for the generous offer and the tips about blogging. Been blogging on BlogSpot since 2007, and 9 years after, decided to buy our own .com and domain so I’m starting again.

    When I started my BlogSpot site, I just put ads on the sidebar and just wrote.. it was mostly a spot for me to say what I was feeling and my experiences, so I didn’t think about monetizing properly or growing the site.

    Now with hosting costs, I’m still hoping to make a few pennies on the side to help pay for the yearly fees, but that’s about it. It’s a hobby and it’s great for us to look back at our old posts/adventures and see what we’ve been up to.

    If you have the time, you can visit our site at http://ajourneywelove.com – it’s mix of travel and personal finance

    Thank you!

  8. You get a lot of flak (probably even from me at times) but I appreciate that you write all of your own posts and you’ve been doing this long term. I don’t think there’s anyone else in the space that can say both of those things. Kudos.

  9. While I know you can’t provide tax advice, one aspect that I never see mentioned by travel bloggers, including those focusing on miles & points, when giving advice to new blog writers or those considering starting one, is the issue of taking a business expense deduction on U.S. taxes for paid trip expenses relative to a reviewed product. I’d think this is particularly important to those whose blogs are their single source of income. (It would be enlightening to see their tax returns).

  11. I love reading travel blogs myself. Sometimes they have minor tips on journeys or destinations that make a huge difference. I finally got tired of everyone asking me to write all the details down on or trips and and related stuff and email them. So my blog is travelinginspired.com. Not monetizing yet, just having fun. But I did get asked to speak about special event travel (concerts/sporting events) at FT4RL in Orlando in May. Take a peek, and thank for all of your writing!

  12. Thanks from someone who just started to write a blog. Right now I am enjoying writing it and sharing with my friends. It’s a mix of basic travel tips and trip reports.

  13. interesting that “successful” to affiliate bloggers means making a lot of money. explains a lot.

  16. Interesting post, Gary. I would hope your site brings in more than $750/month now. Is it enough to live on? Why keep your day job?

  17. @John I viewed my blog as ‘successful’ before it made a dime. I didn’t start it woth the intention of making anything and, as I share, I did not even have banner ads for a couple of years. So take your snark and… 😉

  18. Does “Hat Tip” mean
    I stole your idea because I had nothing to write about?
    I find it interesting sometimes to see the same “material” almost word for word on 4 or 5 blogs with Hat Tip attached

  20. It’s funny you should post this, I’m in the process of starting a blog now, http://www.theartoftravelhacking.com, after listening to the new side hustle school podcast and reading the incredible story of abby and Donnie at just a girl and her blog (they are pulling in $35,000/month in just 2 years and detail it all with income report posts!). While not an expert as yourself or some other people, the most knowledgeable to friends and family that ask a lot of beginner question.

  21. @Jason – I value my day job, it’s meaningful to me, I could live on blog income and award booking etc but that’s only a piece of what I get up for each day

  24. Thanks for this informative and, for us, timely post. We’ve started a blog over at mousehacking.com where we focus on travel “hacking” Disney trips. Not for everyone, but combines two things we love!

    (Sorry if this double posted — I thought I posted earlier but now don’t see it, so I may have just posted on DoC)

  26. Oh wow I didn’t realize it had been around for so long. Very interesting post and very impressed that you still do all the writing yourself. I do too but I’m only two years in.

  27. Love this post. I started my blog Cardpe Diem this fall because I was so obsessed with reading about points and miles that I felt I could be synthesizing what I was finding. It also gives me something to do when I’m bored at work!

  29. Thanks for offering this, Gary… although I know you know my blog, because for a while the only traffic I got was when you linked to me! (www.windbagmiles.com is the blog.)

    Also, here’s a tidbit that I found interesting… A little while back you hat-tipped a post I wrote about SAS business class award space, and I saw around 700 incoming clicks from that link. Then The Points Guy hat-tipped you with credit to me, and I saw 3 incoming clicks. That tells me that you have a much more enthusiastic readership!

  30. I remember the post where you expressed surprise at the ads which had just started to appear. It’s been a great evolution to be a part of, and I’ve learned a lot along the way.

  31. @Jordan possibly had something to do with where the link was placed in the post? In any case, the links do send some immediate traffic (or not) but either way help with SEO.

  32. Because most travel blogger (ie credit card shill) content is usually regurgitated crap stolen from other sites (Flyertalk etc), I never click on any link and make sure my adblocker is activated.

    If you indeed “love” to write then do it for free. But what invariably happens is when $ gets involved, content is driven by whatever pays the most. That’s why we are fed a steady stream of credit card shilling thinly masked under the guise of some type of travel expert or thought leader codswallop nonsense.

  33. Hi Gary, I’ve been a reader since 2009 and really appreciate all of your content. I’ve even reached out to you with a few random questions over the years and you’ve always responded. Thanks. I write about whatever strikes me at the moment at OurFrugalLife.com but most of my content is about traveling internationally with young kids. Thanks for checking it out!

  36. This is great advice Gary. Thank you. I’ve been blogging steadily twice a week for over four years now, and only recently has my traffic started to climb.

    If you or anyone would like to follow, I primarily talk about financial intentionality, but I also talk about traveling and travel hacking (mostly without credit cards). I’d love to hear from you.

    And for those who care: no ads or affiliate links. 🙂

    http://unlikelyradical.com

  40. Thanks Gary for the post and the encouragement — love learning from your experience!

    I’m running mostly a financial freedom blog called http://www.centsandsense.com which offers a value perspective on making, spending and saving money… including on travel!

  43. Gary, one thing you didn’t mention that would be really helpful to know is the timing of getting credit card referrals. That seems like the most lucrative part of all travel blogs, but most bloggers are too small for affiliate links. At one point did cc affiliate links become possible, and do you think it is possible for newbies to reach that point? With the big sites owned by credit card referral companies, it seems like the little guys are not going to have a chance. How would you advise those just starting out who genuinely care about helping people and would benefit greatly by having referral links instead of helping the rich get richer? Most aspiring bloggers probably don’t hope for millions, but would love some extra money for their family.

  44. @Mser “If you indeed “love” to write then do it for free.” Indeed if you read the post I did it for free for many years! I love my day job, too, by the way.

  47. Hi Gary,

    Thanks for sharing all this- my dad is a long time reader of yours and he frequently sends me tips and posts from your site to help me with my business travel, cards, etc. He travelled for his career and I’m beginning to as well. One thing I didn’t expect was an article from you on blogging! I blog my adventures as well from a gluten-free and money savvy perspective, and I thoroughly enjoyed this post and its message. If you’d like to check out my blog- it’s http://www.lifesabeacham.com

    PS- snagged two exit row seats for the price of one on my next flight to PHX- booyah.

  48. Gary – Your blog is by far one of the best and most thoughtful ones I read on the miles and travel topic. Why? Because I know its really you writing honestly about your experiences.

    Would love if it you could check out our blog, any comments are welcome! – http://www.milesandcoupons.com

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