Making a living as a blogger or influencer is a flexible and rewarding job, but the income often isn't reliable. How bloggers make the most money shifts over time and the opportunities for earning across social media platforms change.  When it comes to being a blogger or influencer it is wise advice not to put all your eggs in one basket. You need to ensure that you are protected against changing circumstances.

Diversify your blogging income to protect against risk to your earnings
Diversifying your blogging income can help make your earnings more reliable

How Blogger and Influencer Income Is At Risk

Loss of Social Media Accounts

If you are predominantly on one platform then your income will be significantly affected if you lose your account. While it is unlikely the popular blogging platforms will shut down, accounts are often targeted by hackers or trolls (TikTok accounts in particular seem particularly sensitive to being removed after multiple complaints). You can normally appeal, but sometimes the accounts are lost for good.

Impact of Global Events

The pandemic had a huge affect on the income of many bloggers and influencers, particularly those in the travel niche. Less views on websites meant less ad income, less holiday bookings meant less affiliate income, and less holidays meant less paid opportunities. In the same period there was huge growth of websites which supported home learning and activities for children and numerous niche accounts on TikTok like cleaning.

Loss of Website

While websites should theoretically be more secure because you own the content and url occasionally people lose their blogs or websites due to viruses or hacking. People have also made mistakes where they haven’t renewed their domain name and it has been bought by someone else. It is good practice to back up your website and your host should have copies too and be able to help, this can be time consuming, expensive and not always possible.

Change in Algorithms

Whether it’s a change in Google’s algorithm leading to less blog traffic or a social media platform leading to less reach we are all very susceptible to changes to the our visibility of posts.

Reputational Damage

While it is normally only a problem for the really big influencers or celebrities who are well known, there have been a few “scandals” where influencers have been caught out doing something or saying something which creates a backlash and prevents brands wanting to work with them.

Illness

Passive income will be minimally affected if you become ill, but any income which requires ongoing work eg writing posts, promotion, outreach, will all be impacted if an illness results in you being able to work. This could include mental illnesses, physical illnesses or injury. 

My Predictions of Future Changes To Blogging Income Streams

I personally think that while for most bloggers and influencers there will continue to be a growth in opportunities and payments for sponsored work over the next 5 years, many career bloggers will be impacted by the constant driving down in price of selling links

Sponsored work with brands requires an engaged audience and the personality and skill of the creator (which brands will pay for), but links just require a website with decent metrics eg a good DA. The competition and ease of getting a website that can be used for this work (you can even buy established blogs) means that competition will push the prices right down. People living in countries where the cost of living is less can also afford to accept low prices so there is no need to pay higher rates. 

While I think blogs still have their place and a huge number of people search for information and find answers on blogs, people tend to no longer regularly read all the posts by a favourite blogger. For brands wanting to reach new audiences and increase awareness of their product social media advertising is key so it's likely that sponsored work will continue to move to social media platforms in the future.


These risks can be at least partially protected against by diversifying your income streams, but how do you do that without losing focus or spreading yourself too thin? 


7 Ways To Diversify Your Income As A Blogger or Influencer

If you try and be on all social media platforms and run multiple blogs it will become too much. The quality of content will probably suffer. It's important to take a more strategic view and the approach will be different for everyone. For me I chose to get my main blog established and largely supporting itself before I divided my time to start building up a new blog. Your goal should be to generate as much passive income as possible through two or more approaches.

Focus On Page Views On Your Blog

Good SEO across your website with quality posts should ensure that even if some posts are affected by an update to Google’s algorithm or a competing post others will grow. You don’t want to rely on one or two good posts and instead aim for lots of well ranking ones. Having high views allows for revenue from ADs and affiliate links. This passive income means you can earn money even in you can’t work.

Use Affiliate Links And Ad Networks

Although having ads on your website can impact the user experience most people are used to them now and wont be put off if your content is good. The more views you get the more income you will make from the adverts. With affiliate income you will only earn money if people click through the relevant links and buy products. This works really well on some posts and it doesn't provide a negative experience for your readers if the links are useful.

Build Accounts On Multiple Social Media Platforms

While most of us have a preference for one platform over another it’s important to maintain a presence, and try and build an audience on several platforms. This protects against loss of an account and changes to specific platforms. It doesn't have to be a lot of extra work because you can repurpose content, using it with minor changes on different platforms. You can also encourage people to follow you on your other channels with bonus content. 

Create A Product

Creating a product can be an additional income stream which works well for many influencers. Physical or digital it’s up to you and what it will be ultimately depends on your niche, skills and interests. Whether it’s writing a book, creating courses or selling your photos to be used as stock images you can use your skills to create something people will buy, that isn’t reliant on your blog or social media.

Sell Your Skills

If you are a great writer then you can get freelance work as a copyrighter, a good photographer can take photos directly for a brand marketing, if you love social media consider if you want to take on some clients as their social media manager, if you are super organised maybe investigate what you can offer as a Virtual Assistant. You can also consider selling niche skills like video editing, identifying ad audiences, funnel building etc. Sell directly or use websites like Fiverr and Upwork (although you will get lower rates through these).

Cover Multiple Niches

You need to think carefully about the time you commit before starting a second social media account or website, but having content in two niches can help protect you against change. They don’t even need to be completely different eg you could cover global travel and local travel. Or your might focus on different interests eg money saving and cooking.

Build Your Email Lists

Everyone should work on building an email list. You need to ensure you follow data protection guidance and back up your list, but it is one way you can reach those interested in your content even if you lost your social media account or website. It allows you to let them know what is happening and how to find you again.