Kate Humble breaks down on GMTV: ‘It’s true, I was born half fish’

How to make a five-figure monthly salary blogging about birds

Everyone has a blog. Some people have two. Everyone has a Facebook account. Twitter. Other stuff. Social media and everything. And everyone wants to get rich from blogging. But can it be done with a bird blog? The answer is very simple:

NO

I mean YES. Yes you can make millions from a bird blog. I first started blogging in July 2005, and within a month I was earning a five-figure monthly salary. After a year my earnings from blogging alone increased to a comfortable seven-figure annual salary. Five years on and I’m now listed as the seventh richest person in the world. Eight of the top ten richest people on the planet are bird bloggers, and include household names like Louise Phlegm and Ricky Ponting.

The internet is saturated with blogs and websites offering tips to improve your success as a blogger and to make you the richest person in the world, but are any of them any good? The answer is very simple:

NO

And this time I mean NO. They’re all total bullshit, written by people who use keywords and phrases designed to drag in the feckless who are Googling terms such as get rich quick from blogging and how your blog can get you your very own eighty bedroom palace in the Maldives. The people who write these blogs are full of shit, whereas I’m the seventh richest person in the world, so suck my balls! Here are my own top ten tips to help you realise your dream of giving up your mind-numbing job at the tinned meat factory sticking labels on tins of processed pork, and becoming a sickeningly wealthy bird blogger just like me.

Good luck!

1) Do lots of birdwatching

People who read bird blogs like to read about birdwatching – logical! All you have to do is go out birdwatching and then write about what you did and the birds you saw. Make sure you learn how to spell difficult words like melon, robot and rhaphanidosis, otherwise your readers will think you’re a bit thick and won’t click on the Google adverts, and then you won’t earn much money.

But what if you don’t get the chance to do lots of birdwatching? This is a common problem in the blogosphere, but here’s a really easy way around it:

2) Lie a lot

Lying is allegedly bad for your health, but then again so is eating broken glass, so don’t listen to every old wife’s tale you hear. If you haven’t had the chance to go out birdspotting then just make up a story. Something like this:

Today I went out birding in London and saw the Slaty-backed Gull. Unfortunately my dog ate my camera and my psychotic sister-in-law stole my notebook and ate it and then sent me a Youtube link showing her eating it. So unfortunately I couldn’t get any proof of my record. I do so hope that nobody on Birdforum slags me off and calls me a lying shitbag.

3) Realise your potential

This is the most important step on your route to becoming a rich blogger. The UN recently published figures suggesting that there are now a staggering 3 million people living on our planet, and 250,000 of them speak English. This is your target audience (unless you speak one of those other made up silly languages that isn’t English). So just think about it, if you only get 125,000 readers visiting your blog every day and say only 100,000 of them click on Google adverts, that will still make you £15,000 per day! So you’re still thinking of going back to work at the abattoir tomorrow? Didn’t think so!

4) Murder an elderly family member and blame it on your brother

Not really! We should cherish the elderly (until you’ve saved up enough money to send them to Dignitas). No, the purpose of tip number 4 is to highlight the power of shock tactics in your blog title. KAPOW! Try and captivate your readers by bewildering them with some unintelligible nonsense. BANG! Here’s some of my own blog titles which all still receive well over 700,000 hits per day:

Ivory-billed Woodpeckers wanted for abducting children

RSPB condemns Gap for trousers made out of Nightjar eyeballs

Ornithologists stunned by flying feathered crabs found in unemployed man’s dishwasher

Kate Humble admits that she had corrective surgery to remove her mermaid lower half

5) Promote your brilliance

This is a great and really easy way to pull in readers. All you do is simply buy a street and then name it after your blog. Easy! So you call the street Birdingblogs.com Street, and then everyone who drives down the street will be curious about the origin of the name and visit your blog. Hey presto, another £7,000 per day!

6) Stop eating Thai food

It’s not big and it’s not clever. Saying that you love Thai food immediately marks you out as somebody requiring a fork lodged in the side of your head. Lemongrass tastes of soap and should be made illegal, and coconut milk is proven to give you CJD. None of the top ten richest bird bloggers ever eat Thai food – so you go do the math! By the way, Tampopo noodle bar does a Thai dish call Tom Wan-kah, which I think is very funny.

7) Swear a lot

Use words like bum, boobs and torn rectal membrane in order to engage with youth culture. All the kiddz swear, and young birderz are forever going on and on about this F-ing invisible Slaty-backed Gull and that C-ing invisible Slaty-backed Gull. Engaging with youth culture is an excellent way of nurturing a new generation of foul mouthed bird bloggers, and also a great way to make you very rich.

8 ) Watch Superman 2 whilst you’re writing your blog posts

Studies have shown that watching terrible Sunday afternoon films on Channel 5 increases your brain power by a factor of 12. That means your blog posts will be 12X better than if you weren’t watching a terrible Sunday afternoon film on Channel 5. I’m currently watching Superman 2 and I’m sure you’ll agree that this post is 12X better than usual. Back to the Future 3 is also a good one to watch.

9) Believe your own hype

Tell everyone about your blog and tell them it’s really good. Whatever you do, don’t tell them that your blog is actually a load of dogshit with content so tepid that it’s likely to induce a coma, otherwise people won’t visit. Get T-shirts made with your bird blog name on and distribute your T-shirts amongst high profile birding colleagues. Wear a badge with your name on when out birding so that people can easily identify you and say, “Hey – are you that person who has that blog all about watching birds? Can you please autograph my wife’s breasts?” But if you’re a somewhat controversial blogger, it’s probably best not to wear a name tag in case someone decides to throw a large brick at you!

10) Form your own cult

Self-explanatory. But remember that however tempting it may seem, proclaiming the end of civilisation and having multiple wives purely to get a few more hits on your blog is very definitely illegal.

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Tagged as: blogging, get rich blogging, kate humble, mermaids, slaty-backed gull, tom mckinney