Making money from a blog: Interview with Ali Luke of Aliventures.com

After the interview with Elna of TwinsMommy, today I am so happy and proud to interview one of most favorite bloggers Ali Luke, founder of an amazing blog Aliventures.com. This is one of the best blogging sites teaching others how to blog.

When Ali started AliVentures, she had traffic mainly through her guest posting on other blogs back in 2009-2011. She covered so many awesome topics along the way.

Making money from a blog:

Ali is one of my favorite and successful bloggers in the world. The best thing I like about her is, she not only makes money out of her blog but also teaches others how to make money blogging as well.

She holds no information to herself, she is transparent with her audiences. She shares everything she learned in blogging.

I follow her blog and learned so much from her. You can follow her too: here is her blog: Aliventures.com.

Credit: Aliventures.com

1. Can you describe how did you first get into blogging and what inspired you to get into blogging?

I’d been interested in blogging as a medium for sharing my thoughts for a while, and had a couple of fledgling blogs as a student and just after graduating from university. But I got into blogging much more in late 2007, when I launched my first attempt at a money-making blog.

I’ve always loved writing (I write fiction as well as a lot of blog posts), and I was attracted to blogging by the possibility of building a readership and perhaps eventually making a living (which turned out to happen much sooner than I’d expected).

2. Are you on social media and how can we connect you?

Facebook and Twitter are the best places to connect with me, at facebook.com/aliventures and twitter.com/aliventures

3. Do you offer any services to your readers?

I used to work with readers one-on-one through Skype coaching, but I no longer do that as it wasn’t affordable for the majority of my readers.

Instead, I offer a range of very reasonably priced online courses (which you can find at www.aliventures.com/courses) as well as my Blogger’s Guides ebooks (at www.bloggers-guides.com), which come with various extras.

4. What is one strategy that worked well for you viz a viz getting more traffic to your blog?

Definitely guest posting: I did a lot of guest posting in the early years of Aliventures (from 2009 – 2011) and every guest post brought in a spike of traffic and subscribers.

Over the long term, simply writing lots of posts have helped, as I now get a significant amount of my traffic from search engines.

5. Can you share the name of the premium tools or plugins you use?

The one outstanding one I can recommend is Divi from Elegant Themes — it’s an amazing theme where you can create a blog that looks however you want.

I’m currently redesigning the Aliventures site from the ground up to use Divi, as I’ve had such a good experience with it on my other sites.

6. How much time do you spend on blogging and do you enough time to spend with your family?

In terms of writing content for my blog and doing blog related admin, it’s normally about 2 hours per week! Most of my work time goes on my freelancing, my ecourses/ebooks, and my fiction-writing.

I have two young children (age 5 and 3) and my husband is taking a full-time PhD so the last few years have definitely skewed towards family rather than work for me!

We’re finally at the stage where I’m returning to working more like a 40 hour week, so look out for tons of posts from me in 2019… 😉

7. How do you plan on improving your blog in the coming year?

I’m in the middle of a redesign right now, which is very exciting — I love how it’s shaping up. Design definitely isn’t my strong suit, and it takes me a long time (compared with writing, which comes easily to me).

But I’m having a lot of fun putting the blog together exactly how I want it.

Over the next year, I’m going to be launching several new online courses plus a book, and writing a lot of blog posts all over the place. It looks set to be a busy but very exciting time!

8. Can you name your greatest failure in blogging or life and the lesson you learned out of it?

My first two blogs were “failures” in the sense that I didn’t build much of an audience and didn’t make much money — at least initially.

But they were great learning experiences: I got to grips with all the technicalities of blogging, plus honed my blog post writing … and took on some great freelancing gigs.

(Both also ended up bringing in advertising income for me for several years, which was very handy!)

9. Can you share your biggest achievement in blogging?

Probably speaking at New Media Expo (then BlogWorld) back in 2011 about ebooks — not only was it great to speak at a major conference, it also landed me a book deal with Wiley for Publishing E-Books for Dummies.

It was very much a place of being in the right place at the right time … but there was a lot of work in the previous three years that got me to that point.

10. Who is your blogging hero and why?

Darren Rowse from ProBlogger. I read pretty much the entire ProBlogger archives back in 2007 (obviously there’s quite a bit more material there now) and getting to guest post on ProBlogger for the first time was a great moment.

I’m now a regular writer there (in fact, I’m their “subject matter expert” on writing blog content) and I find Darren’s gentle, generous approach to blogging very encouraging and inspiring.

11. What are your motivations when it comes to blogging?

Now I’ve been doing it for so many years, I can’t imagine stopping — I don’t want to lose what I’ve built!

I love the topics I write about too — I’d happily talk about them all day. I do take breaks from blogging, though, and I think that helps me stay enthusiastic.

12. Any advice for the new bloggers to become successful?

Don’t choose a topic because you think it’ll make money. Choose something that you’re really interested in and passionate about: something that’s really you.

Blogging is definitely not a “get rich quick” scheme! And if your first blog doesn’t work out, start a different one (most of the successful bloggers I know went through several blogs, or several versions of their blog, before finding their groove).

I hope you enjoyed her interview as much as I did. Please feel free to write what you enjoyed the most in the comment section below 🙂