With over 3 billion people using the internet and spending an average of 6 hours on social media platforms, it presents a massive opportunity for bloggers to sell their content, products, and services.
The internet leveled the market by enabling access to new markets for everyone, popular and unpopular, rich and poor, small and big businesses, to sell their products or services.
Though many bloggers are making a kill through their blogs, there is untold truth a few people will tell you. It is a journey that needs passion, patience, and resilience. Iconic bloggers have identified their niche and passionately focus on it, placing them at the top of their game.
In this article, we reviewed12 superstar bloggers making millions of dollars a year to learn their inspiring journey of how they turned blogging into a golden goose and some secrets to their success.
Michelle Schroeder-Gardner
Michelle is a 33years old blogger and the founder of the ‘Making Sense of Cents’ blog, inspired by her college life. The college loans overwhelmed her, and she had to find ways to settle them in college. It was then the idea of starting a blog crossed her mind.
Not only did she create the blog to escape from her financial quagmire, Michelle learned to manage her financial needs and improved them.
Michelle started her blog in 2011when in grad school but never made anything from her content, but she managed to monetize it six months later.
After launching her blog, Michelle started sharing financial information with others, making her blog quite popular. A few years later, Michelle settled her $ 38,000 college loan and continued to increase her earnings over the years.
One of the most amazing things about Michelle is that she sold her house to spend her time touring the world to get inspiring and engaging content for her blog.
Michelle and her family lived in a recreational vehicle (RV) to facilitate her full-time travel blog. The immense commitment reflects Michelle’s passion and desire to succeed in her endeavor.
Michelle generates most of her revenue through affiliate marketing, selling her blogs to interested websites, and advertisements. She is a self-established blogger who generates over $ 100,000 monthly revenue from her blogs and site.
Jeff Rose
Jeff Rose is famous for being one of the most established YouTubers worldwide. However, he was not always as successful and fortunate as today. He was one of the people who didn’t believe that blogging could be the main source of income for anyone. However, the 26 year old college dropout quit nine years army job to become a professional blogger. Today his blog earns him over $100,000.
Today, he is an entrepreneur disguised as a financial planner and writes blogs for his website. Jeff Rose is the founder of the ‘Good Financial Cents’ blog that falls within the financial niche.
Although Jeff made a lot of money from his online ventures, he decided to write books on financial strategies and planning so that his content would reach and positively impact as many people as possible. In his blog and book, he advises his readers on the most effective investing methods that would make them money quickly.
Pat Flynn
Pat Flynn is a professional architect turned to blogger by 2008-2009 economic downturns. After losing his job, Pat Flynn had no ideas what to do next. Luckily, he had created a small website on the internet to help him study for his impending architectural exam.
The website attracted attention of curious internet users and garnered thousands of visitors. Pat then realized he could make some money if he capitalized on his website traffic.
In October 2008, Pat decided to do an online business course to become versed with e-commerce. He published an ebook which he sold at $ 20.00. Pat made about $ 7,000 from his monthly sales. He got excited and he discovered that this is his path and passion.
Since then Pat made blogging his source income. Pat overcame adversity and turned it to an opportunity that earn him a living and change the community.
Today, Pat income is over $ 100,000 a month and he diversified his income from affiliate marketing, selling books to app subscriptions.
Sarah Titus
Sarah divorced her 14 years husband before becoming a blogger. Marriage was already tough for her as her husband had affairs and got a few women pregnant. One day, her husband woke up and left, and a few months later, Sarah and her two children ended up in a home shelter.
Sarah associates her blogging journey to a God’s call. To educate and encourage people who may be going through the emotional turmoil of marriage.
Sarah Titus, the founder of the Sarahtitus.com website, is famous for her love for single women, maybe because she can relate. She founded her website in 2013, and since then most of her work and blogs target single women interested in making money from home.
In her blogs, she educates women on how they can make money from the comfort of their homes and still manage to make perfect wives and mothers.
Sarah teaches women how they can bring a balance between working and parenting. She generates most of her revenue through affiliate marketing, advertisements, and selling printable through her website. Sarah Titus makes an average of $25 million yearly from her business.
However, her work is not entirely restricted to parenting. She also writes blogs covering lifestyle topics. Readers who love her work are inspired to become better writers and have taken on writing as a passive way to make income.
Sophia Lee
Sophia Lee’s story has inspired most people, especially when it comes to how she started her career journey. Sophia started her journey when she was still in college.
She narrates that she had to wake up very early to focus on the content she wanted to blog since she did not have that much time during the day. In one of her YouTube videos, Sophia urges students and those who have a primary job not to use their situation as an excuse not to start and invest in their blogging dream.
Today, Sophia is one of the most successful bloggers around the world. She makes roughly $ 75,000 a month through blogging, affiliate marketing, and adverts. She encourages her readers to follow through the steps of successful bloggers if they want to become successful bloggers themselves.
Miles Becker
While Miles Becker is one of the richest and most successful bloggers today, he recounts that there was a time when he was flat broke with no single cent to start and run a small business. In fact, at the time, he had a huge debt of $ 50,000 that needed to be paid ASAP.
He was scammed into putting some money in his credit card for a particular course to make him money. He also had to move back in with his parents since e did not have enough money to sustain himself.
After going through so much suffering, Miles decided to venture into blogging but did everything wrong from the very beginning when he first decided to become a full-time internet entrepreneur in 2014.
This is because he was always looking for shortcuts, a move that was skyrocketed by a lack of money to invest. However, one day, he decided to commit his mornings and nights to build his blog, and this was his life-changing moment.
Today, Miles writes blogs meant to educate his readers on choosing a niche, connecting their websites to Google so that readers can find them easily, and how multiple assets from blogs can help someone generate multiple streams of income.
He runs a multimillion business with hundreds of thousands of leads, with millions of guests visiting his website each year.
Neil Patel
Someone is more than likely to come across Neil Patel’s name if they are searching for SEO services meant to put their blogs on top of search results. His business has never stopped growing since he started it as a teenager. His site is one of the most trusted on the internet, and it generates millions of dollars yearly through adverts and personal consulting.
Neil Patel’s journey to success started when he decided to upgrade his lifestyle from a mere music CD seller after realizing that selling burned CDs could get him in trouble. At 15 years old, Neil made car parts and sold them to high school students at a discounted amount.
A few years later, when Neil was 16 years old, he decided to create his first website as a way to start an internet marketing company to make more money.
Neil is always consistently releasing new and updated content, which has greatly pushed his site and placed him on top of the other marketing gurus. He was named by the former U.S.A President, President Obama as a top entrepreneur under the age of 30.
It is tough to tell exactly how much he makes every year, but we are sure that his pay slip comes in millions.
Alex & Lauren
Alex and Lauren are friends who decided to quit their jobs and become full-time bloggers. Before the duo decided to take on blogging as a full-time job, Alex was a personal trainer while Lauren was a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). Their desire to make some extra cash that drove 30 years old friends to find any online job that they found themselves doing blogging.
Alex and Lauren are some of the richest bloggers that live together as a couple. This couple has managed to gather immense wealth through digitally selling their products, sponsorships, and advertising customer products and services. They have also managed to make a six-figure income through affiliate marketing.
Alex and Lauren also started a health and wellness website that is doing very well by gaining many guests in just a few months. The couple managed to gather many visitors by taking the time to understand their target audience
. They also made a website known as ‘Create and Go’meant to help the individuals who aspire to be bloggers in future. The couple collects an average of $ 12 million every year from blogging and affiliate marketing.
Adam Efroy
Like the other successful bloggers above, Adam’s story is also fascinating. When in college, Adam developed a habit of not attending some of his classes, which would sooner catch up with him. He was kicked out of college in his senior year, and he was forced to go back and live with his parents after being put on academic probation.
After spending a few years at home, Adam decided to learn digital marketing due to boredom. Later, he realized that sitting behind a computer and helping clients with SEO and PPC was an amazing way to escape his problems. He went back to college and graduated while still learning about digital marketing
Today, Adam runs a multimillion business that educates readers on how to increase their blog’s revenue potential, how they can master their blog monetization strategy, and how they can efficiently scale their backlink acquisition. He makes an estimated $ 1.2 million yearly from course sales and affiliate marketing.
Ryan Robinson
Ryan Robinson is the founder of ryrob.com, a website that focuses on providing ideas on how someone can make passive income through blogging and other business undertakings. Besides selling online courses, Ryan also collects most of his revenue from affiliate marketing.
Ryan leaves a quote in all of his blogs meant to encourage his readers that they do not have to be a Jack of all trades but to be masters of few. This is one of the reasons why most people refer to him as the king of the financial niche.
Rick Kesler & Jim Harmer
Ricky is an internet entrepreneur and influencer who runs a successful online school known as ‘Founder of income’ school with Jim as a co-founder. He has helped most of his followers create successful online businesses as their main source of income.
However, Rick was a research laboratory worker before he became an influencer. He has also worked in many other companies that have given him valuable experiences.
However, he never felt fulfilled working in those areas. His dream was always to open and run his own company. It was his friend, Jim, that introduced him to internet marketing in 2015, making it the same time they started IncomeSchool.com.
After Rick was laid off from his job, he and Jim decided to run their own online business, a project that took them more than three years of hard work to achieve. Today, the duo makes millions of money from course sales, company, and affiliate marketing.
Shane & Jocelyn Sams
Shane and Jocelyn started as school teachers, making $ 38,000. As teachers, they were working 12 to 14 hours, and it was then that Shane realized that this schedule would never allow them to make extra money. At the time, Shane and Jocelyn were young parents to a small baby boy.
It is their need for extra money that Shane decided to search for ways to make money online. His life-changing moment was after he discovered the blogs written by Pat Flynn on how to make passive income.
At that moment, Shane thought that blogging was something that he and his wife could do to make more money. They made 11 cents the first time they started blogging, $15,000 in the first month, and $ 30,000 in the second.
Today, Shane and Jocelyn, now 38 and 36 respectively, have three websites that generate them passive income of roughly $ 50,000 a month.
In Summary
In a nutshell, the stories of the 12 iconic bloggers are accurate indicators of what determination and passion can do to any struggling blogger.
Our pick is that identify your area of strength and what you are passionate about and capitalize on it. The Internet gives you an unimaginable audience, and it’s up to you to convert your passion into a source of income.