Money

How I Make Money Blogging at EdgeofDavid.com

My goal is to make this "Edge of David" brand into a $1-3k income source minimum.

Edge of David

26 Nov 2022 • 11 min read

I'm currently self-employed and my income comes from the following:

Being a top-rated Fiverr seller.

A niche website about teaching abroad and online.

"Website Creative Pro - This is a full stack online business as I like ot call it. Website, email, YouTube, paid ads, selling digital products, affiliate marketing, display ads, sponsorships.

You can get the details by subscribing to the email list. When you do you get access to this:

Then there is my personal, creative outlet - Edge of David.

When I started blogging here back in 2010 my goal was to become a professional blogger making a full time income.

I straight up failed (obviously) because I was giving life advice as goofy, out of shape 26-year-old living in Connecticut who had just quit his job and was working one-off jobs at Robert Half Account Temps to make ends meet while figuring out his next move.

Not exactly an inspirational life, but I now see how risky that was and how that risk and pain is required for serious change. I eventually went abroad to Thailand to teach English and during that time I built my content marketing business over a few years.

I wasted a lot of time on this site back then to be honest because I didn't understand content marketing, SEO and how my blog would even make money in the first place.

But it was a necessary learning experience about content marketing, business and finding your thing - read my post on toxic self help for more about how to know when to quite and when to keep going to you don't waste your life on something.

Edge of David as my creative outlet

So after 2 years or so of blogging here, I was able to get this site to about 150 visitors a day, making roughly $50-80 a month from ads and around $100-300 from affiliate marketing.

Circa 2010 - Designed with the now defunct Headway theme for WordPress. Not bad for a total amateur.

This was great because I eventually went abroad and worked at a government school in Thailand as a broke English teacher making 33,000 Baht a month, roughly $850-1000 a month given the exchange rate.

This was enough to cover my expenses but not save, so an extra 150-300 USD flowing into my life made a huge difference.

However, anyone how knows me knows that no way was I content with being some English teacher. This is why I made my popular "teacher trap" video because too many guys get comfortable scrapping by, drinking a big LEO (a cheap beer in Thailand) every night and dating some lo-so farm girl they think is a 10, but eveyone else sees as a 4.

It genuinely pissed me off when I would go to Bangkok (I lived in Ratchaburi at the time) and not have the funds to go to a nice rooftop bar, always having to worry about how much things cost, having to leave Bangkok on Sunday night for a 3 hour van ride back to Ratchaburi and meeting guys who were living the life I wanted - a life of freedom and self-sovereignty.

I didn't give up

I kept trying different things and was ok with acknowledging that all the time and effort I had put into edgeofdavid.com was a learning experience but if I had kept at it, it would become a waste of time.

I had to accept that despite starting in 2010, I was starting over from scratch with a new project. That's a painful realization because time is valuable and you want things to grow, but failure is part of the process like all the clichés state.

So I decided that going forward, I'll always keep this brand as a personal thing. As I live abroad, travel and was growing a business I just needed a place to create. I even started my vlog for the same reason. In the back of my mind I did think that maybe vlogging would be my thing. But like edgeofdavid.com the EOD vlog never took off.

I'm actually thankful it didn't because I love, absolutely love my current business model of making educational tutorials. The vlog however like the blog did teach me how to make videos which proved essential for my main business.

Funny how things work out.

Now I want this brand to make money

I enjoy having 3 brands to work on. My niche website on teaching which I use as a case study, my main "full stack business of Website Creative Pro and Edge of David.

So let me break down the income and how I plan on making money blogging with this website and how to make money blogging in general if you're curious.

I'm Going Old School

Everything is a function of traffic and attention.

Since I'm one of those weird people that feel compelled to write, the traffic to this site keeps grinding up and up:

...and I enjoy making casual vlogs using my iPhone or Sony X3000 - It's pretty obvious to me that I'm going to keep at this side project.

Just one thing is missing, having something to sell here to my audience an website visitors.

With any website, the following are the main ways you can make money blogging:

Display ads
Affiliate marketing
Selling products
Email list
Sponsored content
Subscriptions

Display advertising

Display advertising is simply running an advertising network.

YouTube has the partner program and with a website, you have a wide range of networks to join.

The AdSense program is a good start and with their auto ads updated it may actually be quite viable now, but I've had the best success with Media Vine.

You do have a minimum of of 50K visitors per month to apply however so it's not for low traffic blogs.

Select content to run ads

With any ad network, you want to look at your website from a holistic approach and run ads on the pieces of content where it makes sense. Content, where it makes sense is where there is no clear affiliate offer, or offer for your email list or product.

Most of the content I publish here is decent for running ads because there is no relevant product tie-in. Like where I wrote on why hell is when you meet the person you could have been.

What affiliate offer is there to make?

Literally nothing.

So running ads are ideal for this type of content if we're looking at monetization optimization.

In short, if you're getting organic traffic to a piece of content with a clear affiliate offer then don't run ads on those pages. Like my "books for men" page is monetized with Amazon Associates so any ads distract from the main offer I have on that page.

Running ads on Edge of David

I'm not exactly sure yet if I'll do this. Currently edgeofdavid.com is getting 150 visitors a day. Too small for any ad network beyond AdSense. But I do have a lot of pieces of content that don't have a clear offer.

I would also need to upgrade my Ghost.org plan (the platform I built this site on) in order to verify my site properly to be inline with

Affiliate marketing

I'm still surprised after 10 years people have no idea what affiliate marketing is. You can sign up as an affiliate for companies and promote their product and service.

If people click your link and purchase, you get a commission. With the right traffic source and content, this can scale up to tens of thousands of dollars a month.

The catch?

You need the right traffic and content, which is not easy, as everyone is going after lucrative keywords because that is where the money is.

You'll also need a lot of content ranking well for many transactional keywords where people are searching for help or advice on a purchase decisions or they need help learning how to do something.

Most people are lazy however and won't stick it out. They will create create five videos for YouTube or start a blog and write 6 blog posts and then you guessed it, quit.

I don't mind this reality because this work is the actual barrier to entry to keep lazy, stupid people at bay.

Lastly, you also need to know what you're talking about too and demonstrate expertise.

For example, edgeofdavid.com built on Ghost.org. I use, like and understand Ghost. So when I recommend it, it's from a place of actually using the service I'm talking about instead of doing what beginners do and overly hyping something up.

Affiliate marketing and Edge of David

I'll leverage affiliate marketing when it makes sense here, but this won't be something I focus on. If I happen to be writing about something that has an affiliate offer then sure, I'll link to offers as needed.

Like in my Gemini credit card review post:

I get a referral bonus when you sign up to Gemini and buy Bitcoin (or any digital asset). But the point of this post was I wanted to share with you the reader how this Bitcoin back credit card has performed after a year of usage because I actually use and like this credit card.

Selling products

This will be my focus.

You should have something to sell to your audience. What that something is depends on your audience and what they want.

Shocker, I know.

For example, Justin Welsh built a massive following on Twitter and LinkedIn. He drives that attention to his email list then sells a course on his process for writing content because in an interview he showed his Notion account and the audience was blown away by his systematic, process-oriented approach to Twitter and LinkedIn.

Then, people wanted more content templates so he setup a subscription to receive new content templates for Twitter and LinkedIn each month.

Selling products is quite lucrative but it does take time to know what your audience wants.

Old school ebooks on Edge of David

I'm going old school and have planned out 3 ebooks with relevant bump offers I intend to create.

I'll link to these ebooks using Ghost.org's product box which looks like this:

Ghost

Independent publishing made easy. Create your high converting blog and email list toay.

START YOUR BLOG

I won't link directly to the checkout page, rather I'll create an effective sales page using either Lead Pages or Carrd.co and use Thrive Cart as the way to manage the selling and delivering of my products.

I'll also create a simple course on how to create a blog with Ghost as I'm an expert at using this platform.

The price points for my products here will be low as you don't need a complicated sales funnel to sell low priced products that are $7-$47 in price.

Email list

This is one of the reasons why I use Ghost for this blog.

Convert Kit is great and all and it's what I use on my main brand. I need to be able to create complicated sales funnels, if functions and auto responders.

But here on this blog? No.

All I need is the ability to send out broadcast emails once a week that hit your inbox (and not the spam or promotions tab). I can do exactly that with Ghost.org.

An old saying is that the "money is in the list"

This is somewhat true.

It's more in the relationships you develop with people over time than the list itself. People don't buy from you until they have interacted with you multiple times over months.

For many of my course sales, it's not uncommon for people to purchase from me 6 months after they sign up to my list and get a ton of free, helpful content.

So if you do decided to start a blog, I would seriously recommend you consider how to leverage email marketing into your blog. Email works best if you're building a personal brand where you're a perceived expert on something.

The email list here at Edge of David

I'm going to use my list here to be helpful first and foremost. I'll soft sell products and services as it makes sense and if my list grows enough in size I may consider taking on sponsors.

Subscriptions and Edge of David

Since Ghost.org makes it so incredibly easy for me to offer a paid subscription, I would be a fool to not at least make an offer available.

I've decided that I'll keep content I don't want to share publicly behind a paywall because sometimes I do want to write about things that are not appropriate for a broad audience.

I'll slowly add to the private content here to make it worth the price of entry, but it's not going to be my main focus.

I may also setup channel memberships and a Buy Me a Coffee page as an additional revenue stream.

Make money blogging at Edge of David

So I'll wrap it up there, in short my strategy is to keep on creating content on YouTube for fun, writing blog posts here when I'm inspired, grow my email list organically and then to create a few low cost products to offer my audience.

I want Edge of David to be a side project, a creative outlet where I just create videos, blog posts, emails and make product sales passively.

Simple as that.

I'm going old school.