"How Do You Make Money From a Blog / Social Media / Your Grandmother's YouTube Channel?!"

People ask me this cute shit ALL DAY LONG. It’s a very confusing topic, I suspect, because many folks assume that you are throwing up advertising banners from 1998, rockin’ those Google AdSense clicks like nobody’s business.

To be fair, that is a thing—I’ve strategized with one company in particular doing 3-4 million every month in advertising revenue from their apps—however, that’s the exception, not the rule, because advertising requires mega eyeballs, and that blog you just started last month isn’t going to have enough. (Whomp, whomp.)

So how do you make money from a blog? You don’t. You make money by selling things.

This is how commerce has always worked, and those who learn how to take (or make) a product or service and sell it to someone else are always going to be 100x wealthier than those who just help other people sell their stuff (AKA employees).

A blog is not in and of itself something that generates money; it’s a vehicle to do so. It’s a modern-day storefront. And it’s a way that you can create a conversation and give people a real reason to care about you and your work—which is an important precursor to, you guessed it, sales.

And unless you’re Nike, or Amazon, or someone with a big enough budget to take out all sorts of ads and demand the world’s attention, the only recourse you have left?

Is to earn it.

That’s what a blog is: not a product, but a promise.