Can you make money from blogging?

For me personally, up to now the answer has been no. 

That's not a surprised to me, as I know I haven't been putting in the hours that some people do. I am not expecting to make megabucks, or become famous, or anything like that, though a bit of pocket money would be nice.  This blog was set up to see how far it would reach, because my elder daughter wants to blog and vlog when she is older.

As expected, my main audience is in the UK and USA, and I know I have a friend in Australia who checks in.  What has surprised me is the size of the audience I have in France, Germany and India! Bonjour, Guten Tag and Apologies to any Indian followers that I do not know how to speak, let alone write, any of the languages from India.

One of my friends, who admittedly works harder than I do, started a blog at a similar time to me.  Rather than be anonymous, she regularly shares with all her friends, and has lots of followers both on the blog itself and on her Facebook Page.  I, on the other hand, have many fewer*: Follow this Blog, Like my Page and share with your friends!

*Is it Much Fewer, Many Fewer, Much Less or Many Less?  I feel it could be any of them except many less.  Fewer is for discrete objects, and people are discrete rather than continuous - I hope I don't come across half a person, for example! 

Anyway, back to my friend.  She gets sent products to review and keep - why haven't I thought of that!?! So any authors out there, who want me to review your book, I would be delighted to read and review them.  Any writers (cooks/chefs/other) of cookery books, especially ones purporting to aide weight loss, healthy eating, low carb etc I will definitely like to review and try out some of the recipes.  And anyone else who wants me to review anything, please get in touch, or I might have to do it the hard way, and actually write to publishers, manufacturers, and promoters myself.

It has sparked a thought, that I have had in the past, before I even started up my blog, about joining Amazon Associates.  It is actually much easier than I thought, and I can now say "As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases".  I just need to go back through my blog, updating everywhere I have linked to an Amazon book.