Blog Archives - Page 28 of 30 - Making Sense Of Cents

How To Make Money Blogging

Last Updated: May 16, 2022 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 138 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Today’s post is the one that many of you have been waiting for. I don’t think a single day goes by without me receiving an e-mail regarding how a person can make money blogging online and/or how to make money online.

If you are interested in starting a blog of your own, I created a tutorial that will help you start a blog of your own for cheap, starting at only $3.49 per month (this low price is only through my link) for blog hosting. In addition to the low pricing, you will receive a free blog domain (a $15 value) through my Bluehost link if you purchase at least 12 months of blog hosting. FYI, you want to be self-hosted. This is essential if you want to monetize your blog as you will appear more professional and this will help you monetize your blog tremendously.

Sometimes it’s bloggers who e-mail me, but half the time the e-mails are from readers who do not have a blog but are interested in starting a money making blog.

As most of you have seen, a big bulk of my income every month comes from my blog in some form (I made over $320,000 online in 2015): advertising, affiliate income, consulting and so on. This How To Make Money Blogging post will be all about various ways that you can make money blogging.

When I started my blog in August of 2011, I never thought I’d be where I am at today. Now, I blog full-time, earn a great income, and I travel full-time, as you can see from my monthly online income report updates.

My extra income from my blog started slow, but within the past couple of months it has jumped significantly. I spend all of my extra time on finding extra income methods, and it definitely seems to be working.

[Read more…]

I Need More Time – Things I Would Do

Last Updated: December 8, 2014 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 64 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Last year in Kauai

Lately, I’ve been feeling like I’m constantly looking for time. Okay I just lied, I have been feeling like this for many years now. I always have so many things on my to do list, so many goals that I want to accomplish, and so many new things that I would like to learn or do.

Back in February, Young Adult Money made a post about things he wish he had more time for. That post was my main inspiration for updating the post that I made a little over a year ago about the endless list of things that I want to do. There are so many more things that I want to do, but this list covers the major areas.

Also, I know I promised everyone a post on my schedule and time management, but that post is still in the works. Today, you’ll just have to sit back and try and think of ways that I can fit all of these new things into my to do list while still having a good work-life balance.

Start working more on my new business

Some of you might have noticed/guessed, but my new business plan is definitely at a stand still right now. I have absolutely no time to work on it, and am waiting until I have some more free time. I haven’t put any real thought into it for awhile. [Read more…]

$7,862 in March Extra Income and Goals

Last Updated: August 3, 2017 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 91 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Happy Monday and happy April everyone! March was another awesome month. I made a lot of extra income with all of my side hustles, and mainly life has just been going great. We bought our new car and decided that we also don’t want to sell our house anytime this year. We are pretty positive that we are going to wait to do this. Also, today’s post is SUPER long. I am very sorry. Would you guys rather have me split this into multiple posts, or is one long post just fine?

I’m not sure if any of you remember, but me and W paid for a vacation for his parents to take. They left on Wednesday and will be coming home late tonight. I’m so happy that we were able to do this for them (because who doesn’t need an awesome Caribbean vacation?!) and without my extra income side hustles, I don’t know if it would have been possible. This is why I started doing all of the things that I do for extra income. Why not be super productive with my time after I leave the office?

In March, I made $7,862 in extra income, after most expenses. In case you are new to my blog, “Extra Income” consists of all income that I make that does not include my salaried job that I have in the financial services industry. Extra income also does not include any money that W makes, as he doesn’t do anything for extra income and is mostly commission at his work (so it fluctuates every month anyways).

I will say that this is not all super easy. None of it is. I spend enough time to make this a full-time job on top of my already full-time job. Luckily, I do enjoy what I’m doing so it’s not like I’m dreading anything. My goals that I have are also a great motivator. I just keep thinking about how badly I want my student loans gone, and also how badly we want a new house next year. Read further on my Extra Income page.

This is for the month of March and after most fees and expenses (expenses were a little over $900 and include payments for staff writing on my blog and work with FITnancials, PayPal fees, etc.) being taken out. March’s number above includes rent.

March was an AWESOME month and I hope everything only keeps increasing. Affiliate income has been going awesome and I’m glad that I started focusing on that more. Also, check out The Happy Homeowner’s blog if you want to read about how another blogger is being awesome and increasing her extra income by a lot.

[Read more…]

Tips For Beginner Bloggers Part 1 – The Basics

Last Updated: August 3, 2017 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 127 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Last month, I published my post on How To Start a Blog – Tips for a Beginner. Don’t get the titles confused, they are extremely similar because I lack any creativity. My other post was mainly about how to get going with your blog, and what companies to use to use to actually create your blog (domain, hosting, WordPress, etc.). But what about after you already create your blog and want to get going? What tips should beginner bloggers know about?

I haven’t been blogging for a very long time, and this August will be two years. I’m not sure if that’s a long or short time in blog-land, but I’ll take it. I have definitely made a ton of mistakes (maybe I should make a post about all of the blog mistakes that I made) and I have learned a lot.

EDIT July, 2016: I recommend checking out my online course for bloggers, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. I earn over $50,000 a month through affiliate marketing and I share my exact strategy and tips in this very informative online course. If you’re a blogger (even if you’re a new blogger!), then you NEED this course.

Lately I have been receiving many e-mails asking for blog tips. I’m going to guess that a lot of it is because many think that they will get rich blogging, but I’ll save that for a whale post in the future. I will definitely say that I am not an expert, and that I still don’t understand everything. [Read more…]

No New House For Now and $2,323 in Extra Income

Last Updated: July 18, 2020 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 60 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend and enjoyed St. Patty’s Day. I’ve decided to start combining my Saturday and Monday life posts together. I figure most of you probably don’t want to hear about my life twice a week. And I’m not that interesting… 😛 Anyways, it was a pretty relaxing and boring weekend, especially since W was sick the entire time.

I think we’ve decided to wait until next year to buy our next house. We’re not ready to sell just yet, and honestly, we still love our house. Getting rid of it so soon, especially when we haven’t found anything that we liked more to justify the cost, just seems stupid. Unless something 100% perfect comes along, then I don’t think we plan on buying this year at all. We really don’t want to buy something that we only kind of like and then end up buying another house quickly after again.

Next year is not out of the question though. It will most likely be next year when we buy, so hopefully something perfect comes up by then. I’m sure it will, but for now we’re just going to continue enjoying where we live. Lifestyle inflation has definitely been catching up with me, but we should be trying to save so that maybe we can buy the next house with cash or at least a majority of it with cash.

What made you decide to buy your second house? Was it lifestyle inflation, or you just grew out of your current house? For us it’s a mixture of both. Something with a bigger yard would be nice, and so would more than just a 1-car garage (check out my “Spending” section below for an idea about why).

For everyone who is switching over to Bloglovin after the whole Google Reader death, please click on this button if you would like to follow me via Bloglovin.

Spending

Hmmm some major spending in the past week, that is for another post though. Lets just say we bought a new car but it hasn’t been delivered yet…

Target also had almost its WHOLE Home section on sale at two Targets near my house. Let’s just say that I went to Target a total of 3 times this weekend and spent a little over $300 redoing the home decor in our living and dining room. I bought tons of things and love it all! Now I just need a new side table in the living room and I think we’ll be done (except for the fact that we still need to install carpet in the living room).

As most of you know, me and W have lived together for nearly 6 years and up until recently, never really decorated our house. Yes we have furniture and things on the wall, but nothing matches and it just looks like a disaster. Now that we have time (and more money to spend), we have decided to start decorating more. There are TONS of things that we still want to do, and I have a whole post dedicated to that and it will be published in the near future.

Extra Income (does not include income from our main jobs)

I received approximately $2,323 in payments in the past week. It was a good week and I would love it if it just stayed this way forever. As most of you know, extra income does not include any salary or income that we make from our jobs (I’m an analyst and he’s a car salesman). A lot of you have wondered about my schedule and how I make time for everything. Were there any specifics you wanted to know or maybe I should just make a whole post on it? Such as with my daily schedule, everything that I do, etc. Please let me know if this sounds really boring or like something you would read.

Affiliate income is still going great and I’m glad I started working on this. I do have bigger plans for this and hope to see this area of my extra income to continually increase. I’m also starting to think more about passive income. What do you do for passive income?

Me and my friend are still stuck on a name for our business. Some of you said to just think of something and change it later, but with what we want to do, the name is an important part of the business. We can’t really do much else until we start thinking of our “brand” and the name.

[Read more…]

#Tag: Getting to Know the “Person” Behind the Personal Finance Blog

Last Updated: October 1, 2014 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 69 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Hey everyone! To the left you can see yet another one of my pictures of me from far away. I like to tease you all with these. I mean, come on, I am still semi-anonymous! At some point though I will run out of far away pictures and be forced to share an up-close picture with you all.

Girl Meets Debt made a fun questionnaire so that everyone could get to know each other a little better. Cait, Tonya, and Krystal all took part and now of course I want to take part.

I know, I know, I talk about myself a ton on my blog. Oh well, it’s my blog and I’ll blog about whatever my heart desires. I always enjoy reading personal posts on blogs so I am hoping you all enjoy this. I tag all of you!

I haven’t really talked a whole lot about my blog and why I started it, so hopefully you learn something interesting today. So many things have changed since the day I started my blog back in August of 2011. When I go back and read those posts from before, I can’t help but laugh. My writing style and blog have changed tremendously, and so have I.

1) How did you come up with your blog name?

I don’t even remember how I came up with it. I will say that I kind of regret it and wish I came up with something fun and interesting, and possibly not so long! I had a ton of ideas but everything seemed taken. Have you ever had name regret? Or am I alone on this?

2) Which bloggers inspired you when you first started writing?

I actually started by reading DailyWorth. I saw the DailyWorth founder in a magazine (I think it was Cosmo) and looked into the website. I then somehow got hooked on pf blogs and websites when before I barely ever even looked. I found a ton of blogs by looking at the comments on there and it was a long chain effect. Before I knew it I started reading blogs like The Happy Homeowner, Budgeting in the Fun Stuff, Judy’s blog and others and became hooked! These 3 blogs all made me want to continue blogging shortly after I started. What blogs motivated you to blog? Tell me!

I will also say that it was Newlyweds on a Budget who made me look into finding additional income streams. She was making money online from her blog, doing mystery shops, writing for other blogs and so on. She was a huge inspiration and one day I reached out and e-mail her and asked for help with it all. I then of course was also obsessed with Crystal’s blog (BITFS) and everything she was doing. I was HOOKED on blogs that talked about a realistic way to make extra income.

3) Why write about finance?

I actually love writing about finance. I don’t think I’d say I’m strictly a finance blogger, mainly because I try and include everything about my life – family, wedding, friends, travel, and so on. Writing about finance is nice though because I do have a lot of financial goals and it seems easy to talk about.

I also knew that I wanted to be different. I read TONS of lifestyle and fashion blogs, and so many of them were asking me questions about finance. It is nice that people actually ask ME questions 🙂

4a) What do you enjoy most about blogging?

Blogging is great because of the community that it brings. I get so many great emails from readers and other bloggers everyday and it’s just crazy to think about. I started my blog in August of 2011, and before that I never even ONCE thought about blogging or starting a blog. I feel like because of my blog I am able to talk to tons of awesome people every single day, and I have made a lot of new friends. I will say that I am super excited for FinCon13, as it’s my first blog conference EVER.

If it wasn’t for my blog, I don’t think I would be anywhere near where I am today. I most likely would not have even ever thought about extra income, let alone making as much money in extra income as I am now. I also feel like I have improved in nearly every aspect of my life, and I attribute a lot of it to my blog. Having talked to so many awesome people through my blog, I just know that it offers such a great support system.

4b) What do you enjoy least about blogging?

I don’t know if there’s anything that I don’t like. I would say the occasional mean e-mail or mean comment is never great, but I have been doing a lot better with just ignoring things that aren’t true.

5) What’s the most helpful piece of advice you have learned from reading other PF blogs?

Ah! This is such a hard question. There are SO many things that I would say have been helpful. Spend less money than you earn, diversify your income, and make EXTRA INCOME! Also, don’t feel like you constantly need to keep up with the Joneses. Constantly comparing yourself gets you nowhere.

6) In terms of finance, what is your main focus at the moment?

Right now I’m really working on getting rid of all of my student loan debt. Then after that it’ll be saving as much money as we can for my new business venture and also for the down payment on our next house.

7) If you could give your younger self financial advice, what would it be?

There are so many things that I would tell my younger self: Don’t buy so many clothes! You don’t need that. That shirt you are about to buy looks just like the shirt you bought yesterday and the day before. Also, please pay off some of your student loan debt. You have the money to pay it off but instead you don’t.

In all honestly though, I am happy with the way everything in my life has turned out. Yes, at times things felt extremely rocky and scary, but everything that has happened has just made me that more of an awesome person.

8) Who in your real life knows about your blog?

Some people know that I blog (W, my sister, W’s family and 3 friends). No one besides my sister and W know the actual name though. Luckily they don’t read it though!

9) Does your real job have anything to do with finance or money?

I work in the finance industry, but it has nothing to do with personal finance. I know a lot of you want me to blog about my job but not many people do it so I feel like it would just be too easy to search me, and for other people to realize that this is my blog!

10) What’s the first thing you would do if you won a million dollars?

I would pay off my student loans, sell my current house and buy a new and affordable one, travel a tiny bit and save the rest. And lets be honest, I would of course buy some splurge worthy items. I don’t have debt anymore in this scenario, so I think I’m doing pretty well in this dream world.

Do you have any questions for me? Ask below!

Also, I tag ALL of you! Either run and make your own posts or answer some of the questions in the comments below.

Blogger or WordPress – Tips on How to Move

Last Updated: May 24, 2016 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 87 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

After my How to Start a Blog on WordPress post (this post included tips on how to get your domain, self-hosting, etc. and reasons for why you should pay for blog hosting), I received several e-mails on how to switch from Blogger to WordPress, questions about the whole migration process, whether a person should choose Blogger or WordPress, and so on.

A lot of you asked me what is better: Blogger (Blogspot) or WordPress? I’ve also been asked “What will happen if I move my Blogspot blog to self-hosting?”

Let me say that I am definitely no expert in this area and just fiddled around with it just so that I could try and help you guys.

This is a very basic set of instructions. If you don’t have the time to sit down and do this, please, please just pay someone to migrate your blog from Blogger to WordPress for you.

Some of the tips in this blog post will be a repeat of the How to Start a WordPress Blog post, as I’m trying to help each individual person instead of having someone having to flip back and forth between the two blog posts for the basics.

If you sign up for Bluehost through my link and purchase at least 12 months of blog hosting, then you will get your domain for FREE plus receive discounted pricing! [Read more…]