Can your blog make more money than your gambling?

Blogging is very popular lately while online gambling has always been popular. Quite a few gamblers write in their own gambling blogs nowadays judging by the emails I receive daily. A gambling blog may also provide additional income to its owner although it will take time until it becomes significant. There may be times though when a gambler turns to his blog for peace of mind and a less stressful occupation, which might actually make more money than his gambling activities. Let us compare the blogging business with the gambling business.

In November 2009, that is last month, I played online poker 28 days for 6 hours per day average according to my Pokertracker database. Admittedly that was somehow more workload than an average job (22 days of 8 hours), considering the fact that in order to play 6 hours in a day, you need to sit at your desk for more than these hours. Anyway, my total playing time for that month was almost 180 hours while I was making $200 per hour. If I also take into account the additional poker bonuses I earned during November, the amount of money is somewhat more. For the sake of calculations I'll assume I worked 200 hours and made $200 per hour.

If I was blogging instead of playing poker or betting or trading or doing some other online gambling activity (add your own), I expect to have been able to write 1 blog post per hour average. That would mean I could publish 200 articles during the past month. Apart from not knowing if I could actually manage that, I really don't know how much money those articles could make me. Surely they could increase my blog's traffic, attract more readers and bump up my blog's search engine rankings. That would obviously get the attention of more advertisers leading to more front page advertising deals with higher revenue. But for the time being I will neglect that result.

Remember, we are comparing blogging with online gambling. So, if I am to quit online gambling and turn to blogging for a living, I'd be happy if I could replace my poker's winrate with my articles' revenue. To do that, I'd need to make $200 per article. Of course, that is impossible even if I was blogging for the biggest publication firm. However things aren't that bad as they appear.

Assuming I could sell a text ad link in each article for $10 per month (quite likely since that price is towards the bottom of advertisers' budgets), each article could have made me $120 per year, since most advertising deals last at least for 12 months. Additionally a couple of advertising banners would be included in each article, which might make more money from revenue shares, CPA deals etc. So, in total I will assume each blog post could return $200 the first year.

Comparing that to my actual winrate in poker tables, I understand that although $200 were available instantly at my poker account, I could also have them added to my account 12 months later if I blogged instead of gambling. Ok, I made quite a few assumptions and obviously I am not at all sure if I could sell one text ad link per post. On the other hand though, the blog articles may make money for more years to come, they wouldn't be as stressful as playing online poker and coin flipping with AK vs QQ, and let's admit it: It's much more creative to write than playing poker!

This 600-word article was written in half an hour so the blogging stuff looks rather promising.

Blogging - Make Money Blogging