Darren Rowse, everyone who is familiar with the word ‘blogging’ knows him — there are only few people who knows how to blog but don’t know who Darren Rowse is.
If you fall under that ‘few’ people—he is a full-time professional (really!) blogger making a living from his blogs like ProBlogger. How he make money blogging? What does it take to start making money from a blog? That is what we’re going to discuss about.
Darren has mentioned on this Google+ profile — he accidentally stumbled upon the blogging media while he was researching a project.
Blogging was a medium that Darren Rowse stumbled upon by accident in 2002 as he was researching a new project – little did he know that just 18 months later he’d be one of the world’s first professional bloggers and making a living from his blogs.
Well, an accidentally discovered thing just changed his life and it turned into his gold career — and now people consider him as brand blogger who makes a living from blogs.
How Darren Make Money Blogging
Here I collected the main income source of ProBlogger:
Text Link Affiliate Ads
Update: Darren has told that he don’t use Text Link Ds as affiliate (read his comment below!).
Does that still works? If you go to ProBlogger homepage you’ll see the affiliate ads on the right sidebar — he would have removed that ad if it don’t work. You’ll see the banner of Text-Link-Ads — that’s probably is affiliate ad.
They will pay 10% of all revenue earned by publishers that you refer to them.
Darren stopped to use text links in 2007 as it Google has started penalizing the sites who sell links. Therefore, now it seems he only use affiliate option and not selling links.
But you can sell links in your site if you have ‘trick’ to hide from Google for being penalized. If you don’t want to take the risk then just signup for Text-Link-Ads affiliate account.
If the person you referred earn over $1000 in a month then you’ll get 11% of his total earnings – that’s $110 for you or more!
Private Forum
Who doesn’t like to get unique information and techniques? ProBlogger has its own forum powered by vBulletin and charges $5.96 per month.
Forum includes the varieties of discussion about the topics like blogging, making money with blogs, blog design and so on.
More people signup to the forum the more will be the earnings. One amazing thing is that it has recurring payment system. This feature helps to earn money through blog in auto pilot. However, the forum must have genuine contents and members – and that’s why ProBlogger forum is clean and have awesome members and posts.
31 Days to Build a Better Blog – Seriously, can I?
Darren came up with great idea in late 2005 that he could give challenges to his readers and help them to build better blog.
Actually, he first implemented the idea to reach readers in form of post, giving his readers to complete some few tasks as a home work focused on helping them to build better blog.
Later then, his readers demanded the challenges in simple written form so he just wrote the eBook collecting all tips, challenges and daily task to do to build better blog.
The eBook sold out great and it is updated few times to keep readers up to date of current challenges to complete.
I purchased eBook 9 months ago and I was really impressed with the tricks and tips that he shared in the eBook. You’ll be given some simple daily tasks up to 31 days that you’ll have to complete in order to make your blog better and get tricks to know what it takes to become a successful blogger.
According to Darren over 13,000+ copies has been sold and still he is getting lots of money by just promoting the eBook in his blog.
Genesis Affiliate
When you use something it becomes easy to recommend and promote service or product to someone since you know well if it well worth to buy or not.
Same thing goes for ProBlogger. Darren recommends genesis theme to his readers as you can notice there is a short information about it below every ProBlogger posts. Anyone who reads the post easily notice that information while reading through the article and makes them to check it out and apparently buy it.
Job Board
ProBlogger has a great feature Job Board, where people can post and find jobs. It costs $50 per month to post job on the board.
$50/month is quite good as Job Board gets many posts daily. Most bloggers like to hire people on ProBlogger job board to find blog designers and web professionals to setup blog for them.
Other Sources
Beside these, Darren uses some other monetizing techniques to get maximum income through Problogger. Simply he recommend his users to use Chitika, Amazon associates and other similar networks using his affiliate link. He have also some other tools and books for bloggers that receive a decent amount of sales.
Things you should learn
- Darren actually didn’t expect to reach this level with his blog when he accidentally started blogging — but you may have started blogging with some good information and knowledge which can lead you to the top level. And yes, he didn’t may have thought he would start blogging for money.
- You can see that he only shares his experience about blogging through posts and he have over 100K active readers. If you can also share higher quality of information, you can grow the readership and expose your blog in the internet and become famous icon.
- Darren is up with ProBlogger blog since long time and has earned passive income. You might not have expected to earn more than what he earns but if you aim the goal to cross it then definitely you can! Just simple formula is don’t give up — keep working until you feel that you’ve started to get something what you’ve aimed. For that, lower you aim so you can cross certain milestone.
- ProBlogger didn’t got hundreds and thousands of readers in just one night. It took several years to reach that level. So, you better don’t expect to become ‘reach’ with your blog in just one night, day or month.
I haven’t mentioned that Darren has other blogs that earns him fat amount of money online. ProBlogger is just part of his blog to make money blogging.
I may have missed many other ‘hidden’ income source of Darren. Share it via comment!
About Anup Kayastha
Great analysis Anup! I find it fascinating that Darren does so well with a blog. The big thing that he did early was to make a blog for *content* rather than a blog for *money*. He provides good content and is rewarded monetarily by making good decisions with that content.
I love how you investigated the actual money-making components of his blog. Obviously, he is certainly doing something very right to have 100k subscribers. Most of the things he’s implemented can be done by anyone.
Thanks for the great post!
And he’s the source of inspiration..
I’m glad you liked to post
Thanks for the comment,Jack!
Hey Anup,
Darren Rowse is GOD of blogging. He makes 10 figure income from blogging. Ones I heard that the “31 Days To Build a Better Blog” E-book has been sold 20,000 times times for $29 that means he made more than $500,000 by selling an E-book.
Anyway, thanks for connecting with me.
Ehsan,
10-figure income? Do you really mean $1B? Are you sure? Not that I’m aiming anywhere near there. Just does not seem possible to me. I’ve heard of $1M+ bloggers, but not $1B.
As far as I know income with six digits number is simply known as ’6 figure’. Similarly there’s a ten digit number in ’10 figure’ which is actually a billion.
His blog actually got me started way back 2009. He’s indeed an inspiration.
He’s been my inspiration too.
Thanks for the comment, Don!
Hey Anup, wanted to thank you for stopping by and visiting my new blog and taking the time to leave a comment. I really appreciate it, and it looks like I’m going to enjoy yours as well. Already see a few articles I need to read today.
Darren has definitely accomplished so much in the blogging world, and he and his team put out some great content as well as products.
Take care my new friend.
Warren — Thanks for the comment Warren. I hope you find my next articles interesting too
Thanks for the mention. A couple of quick comments (on my iPhone so excuse any mistakes):
1. The TLA banner is an ad not an affiliate thing.
2. The other sources of income from problogger are the other ebooks/kits. There are 6 now (one of which is 31dbb). 31 days is the best seller but the others do ok too.
3. I also run an annual conference in Australia whic is another income stream. In addition there is the problogger book (hard cover) and some speaking opportunities
Lastly as you mention, Problogger is my side project in many ways. The main focus for me is digital photography school.
And yes, none of this was overnight. It all started in 2002 and has been an evolution (a slow one). Still can’t quite believe I do this for a living though
Hi Darren,
I always thought TLA was one that you always use as affiliate. I’ve just updated the post. Thanks for clarifying and sharing your other income source with us, that makes us even more inspired.
And yeah, your comment on my blog… that actually feels good!
@Darren
Like so many bloggers Darren I find both you and your site to be a source of inspiration while I build my own blog/business up.
The fact that you stopped in here to reply only raises you up further in my (and I’m sure others) estimation of you. Good for you!
Darren,
Thanks for sharing that you do digital photography as your main focus. I would really like to start blogging, but have my artwork of rug hooking be a primary thing for me. Wasn’t sure there would be time to do both, but I guess you are a good example. I’ll just have to get my feet wet and see where it takes me.
HI Anup,
You did a champ task bro.
I have read Darren article so many times specially his Income source detail to keep myself motivated.
You are very lucky bro that you got comment from The Great Pro Blogger – Darren Browse.
Great JOB BRO
Thanks for your comment, Sandeep! Keep visiting
Anup, Thanks for inspiring the bloggers by posting about One of the successful blogger and that is Darren.
Glad you liked the post. Thanks for visiting!
Great round up of ProBlogger’s income streams. Darren is really an amazing blogger, I think most of his revenue are contributed by his own ebooks which are totally amazing. His books are being read by bloggers from all around the web.
Yeah, Darren himself has mentioned that his one of the best selling eBook is 31DBB. And that’s one of his great income source.
Thank you for the comment!
Yes, Darren knows what it means to blog. 2002 to date is quite ages to learn a lot and in his days, he had little competition (few resources too). Most bloggers starting today have to fight big time to meet with the challenges.
Yes, nowadays competition is high. Good for him that he didn’t have to face a competition
Darren’s blog was one of the reasons why i decided to try and make money online, so when I have my lean months I will tell my girlfriend it is HIS fault!
You should also add he makes a lot of money from his photography blog. I was reading at one point he was in fact making more from his photography blog then he was from the pro blogger site, He’s done great online and I hope soon I will surpass him with the blog engage community.
Yes, Darren himself has mentioned that his photography blog is one of the that earns him the most.
Thanks for the comment and good luck with your BlogEngage project!
Darren Rowse has many successful stories, we can’t discuss in a single day, you’ve highlighted some important things about Darren. He also own digital-photography-school.com blog and earn from Amazon associates.
Thanking you.
Yes Naveen, it’s hard to discuss about Darren’s success stories so I just only tried to highlight how he earn through his blog, ProBlogger.
Thanks for stoping by in my blog. Hope to see you again!
So the lesson we need to learn from Darren Rowse is that we should not only promote affiliate products but also start making products and sell services once blog starts getting great audience.
That’s the another point, thanks for adding it.
In fact, even I’ve got great success on creating my product (eBook). I’ve shared some of my secrets of my success in my latest post: http://www.moneymakingmodes.com/how-i-sold-over-500-copies-of-my-ebook-in-just-3-months/
I have read some awesome ebooks of Darren and those are great resources and I think he earned so much money from selling these stuffs.
Hi Trung, thanks for the comment. And yes Darren has earned good money with the eBook since he promoted it through his own blog which gets highly targeted visitors.
Darren Rowse is an excellent blogger and has many sources of income. But the one I would like to point out is that membership sites are the key to a lasting passive income.
Membership sites are great because you can vary their subscription levels, provide the members with useful new privet content and you provide a value by delivering information that is useful and can directly relate to your customer.
I highly recommend you start a membership site only once you have established yourself and your brand for sometime and have many visitors, subscribers and bloggers asking for your assistance. Only then in my personal opinion will you be able to deliver quality information and passive income because you have learnt, developed a community and others are seeking specific information that you can provide through your own experiences.
Well said Matthew, I agree with you.
Creating membership site would be a great income source. What we’ve to care about is popularity, knowledge, people, trust and experience. The content what you offer in the membership site also play great role and it’s the final impression of first subscriber – here they decide if it’s worth to continue subscribing to site or not.
Thanks for the insightful comment, Matthew, I appreciate it
Read Anup Kayastha’s recent post How I Increased My Backlinks Business Income by 237%