Should I quit my job and start a blog?

In this article i’ll cover why writing articles and starting a blog for profit may not be worth it after all.  It starts with a quick analysis of the key numbers you need to know, followed by notes and an executive summary at the end as usual.

Question you may have about starting a blog:

Are you planning to blog for profit?
Quit your day job and make money by starting a blog?

Financial Analysis

Well, consider this first:
At an approximate 5% click through rate, that means from 1000 visitors you can expect to get about 50 clicks.

Each click is worth about $0.1 on average say.  That then means:
1000 visitors = $0.1 x 50
1000 visitors makes you about $5 in money in.

In a day job, let’s say you could earn $100 a day before taxes and costs. (We will refer to this as your base wage).

How many visitors would you need to reach that a fair income from blogging?
1000 x ($100/$5)
1000 x 20
You would need 20,000 visitors a day to reach your goal of $100 a day.

How many is that in a month for my blog?
20,000 x 30 = 600,000 a month.

Per hour from blogging?
833 visitors.

Per minute from blogging?
~13 visitors a minute, every minute for a month.

A front page article on a good social media website like Digg.com can get you between 3,000 and 30,000 hits, but good luck if you think you can get that one regularly or monitize it in any way.  So that pretty much leaves search (long-tail and short-tail).  I’ll be covering these in detail in the second part to this article series together with alternative revenue streams, such as the Amazon affiliates network.

 

Additional notes before you decide

Note on the wage numbers:

• no commute cost.
• no extra cost of outside lunches.
• 5 day work week not 7 as assumed here.
• They don’t take into account that most bloggers don’t take blogging as a full time job, as a hobby its great due to the ease of writing quick articles.

Further, note that blogging comes with no medial insurance or other financial benifits of employment.  It also lacks the social aspects of a job like water cooler discussions.

A traditional job also comes with a stable wage which can be useful for gaining access to credit facilities and mortgages should you be moving/buying a home.

Note on pros of blogging:

• You work when you want.
• You work where you want.
• You really do have freedom to move and do as you please.
• If you’re good your effective $ per hour rate will go way up.  Once you get a foothold on a niche market you can quickly write good articles that your readers will share without you needing to do it.
• People reading what you have to say – influence.

 

Executive Summary

I would suggest you start a blog/article writing as a side activity in the evenings/weekends while still maintaining a day job.  Then, if potentially succesful, you can devote more time to your blog as required.  If clearly and consistently profitable/succesful over a period of 2 months, I would suggest it would be wise to take it up full time.

Disclaimer:  All numbers above are hypothetical and at the end of the day your decisions are, of course,  your own.