How Much Money Can You Make Blogging?

My sister is looking to supplement her income when she retires from the Navy and did some research to get an idea of how much she could make from blogging. She is letting me post her results here.

Realistic Income Expectations:

Months 0-12: Anywhere from 65 cents to up to maybe 20ish bucks/month.

Months 12-24: Now that you’re a little more experienced and know how to work the various ads, affiliates, attract customers, etc, you can reasonably anticipate making in the $200-$600/month range.

2-5 years: Even more experienced, with a solid following. You may well still only bring in the $200-600 you did during years 1-2. However, at least now that you have years of experience behind you, you’re probably not working as many hours on your blog as you initially did.

However, it’s not completely uncommon to near or surpass the $1k/month milestone during years 2-5. It’s even possible to surpass the $1k/month milestone, but bloggers in this range seem to be pretty darn happy if they’re regularly pulling in 1-2k/month.

Realistic Expectation of Hours Worked:

Months 0-12: Expect to put in at least 4-6 hours/day. Some report putting in less, but many report putting in more than full time work during this stage. So, 20-60 hours a week to earn that whopping 65 cent paycheck! woohoo!

Months 12-24: Expected working hours in this range can really vary. Basically, it appears one of two things usually happen at this point. One, you’ve developed a good following and have worked out how to get money through Adsense, affiliates, etc. and now your work load has evened out a bit, still averaging working 2-6 hours/day.

Or, the other thing that could happen, is, now that you’re more experienced, you’re starting to really get a feel with how to maximize your profits, and you now spend a few MORE hours per day/week, working all the angles to really get your blog/website going where you want it to go. If this is where you’re at at this stage, you can reasonably expect to put in anywhere from 6 to 10 hours/day.

Years 2-5: If you haven’t given up yet, once you reach this stage, you’ve probably figured out how to maximize your profits while minimizing your workload. You’re probably still working 2-4 hours per day to maintain your regularly monthly income flow or perhaps modestly increase it. Be warned though, just because you know what to do to maximize profits while minimizing workload, doesn’t mean you’ll be able to actually do those things. Many perfectionists will burn themselves out.

It seems that most bloggers who manage to pull in a significant income (1-3k/month is my personal definition of ‘significant income’) seem to do one of two things, listed below.

One, is that they have a good niche. Their target audience is well defined enough that they don’t have to compete with as many people, and thereby make more profit. However, their target audience is still broad enough to attract enough readership to pull in those profits.

The second thing I noticed that those ‘significant income’ earners did, was they sold an actual product or service that they made/invented themselves via their blog (or at least linked their product/service website to their blog and used their blog as one means of attracting customers to their product).

So, that’s it. Bottom line, if you have a good idea for an online business, and are willing to put in 20-60 hours per week, and willing to wait/work for pennies for a few months to a few years, you can probably realistically expect to make $200-$600/month from it. If you have a good idea, plus a good niche, plus an actual product/service, then you can somewhat realistically expect to earn $1-2k/month, after a few years of growing your business.

These number seem fairly accurate to me. What do you think?

October Income -$2836.39

Here is a breakdown of my income for October.

Online Income

$1586.09

Interest

$0.15

Dividends

$30.92

Cash Back

$29.31

Mystery Shopping

$103

Jobs

$1061.92

Bank Bonus

$25.00

Total

$2836.39

My income was up sharply in October. Since I started a new part-time job as an attorney and continued my other part-time job an increase was to be expected.  My online income was up sharply as well and was more than my two jobs combined.  That isn’t really a fair comparison though because the job totals are after tax and the online biz total is before tax.  It is very hard to predict what my online business income will be.  I made most of October’s money in about a five day span and not much happened the rest of the month.  It is nice to see that even with all the time I’m spending working at my jobs the online income is still going strong.

I only received one paycheck from my law job and it didn’t even include my normal number of days.  Due to the way my paydays fall I will have three paychecks from my law job in November.  My job income should be up quite a bit this month.

My other sources of passive and alternative income aren’t too significant, but they are nice to have.  I got $28.79 from Mr. Rebates which was almost all from my referrals’ purchases. It is nice to have the residual income coming in without any more effort needed on my part.

I hope that I will make at least as much this month as in October.

 

October Expenses – $2198.16

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for October.

Household

$124.84

Entertainment

$48.77

Transportation

$503.68

Food

$96.81

Van Payment $1275
Debt $5.00
Phone

$26.81

Health

$117.25

Total

$2198.16

My expenses were up a bit in October.  A big chunk of the increase was from paying off my van.  I won’t have a van payment this month which should result in much lower overall expenses.  If I do end up buying a new car then that could change.

My other big expenses was transportation. I spent just over $500 on gas in October, which is about what  I thought I’d spend after I took the law job.  I’m hoping to reduce that expense this month.  If I buy a more fuel-efficient vehicle that will help.  If not the lower gas prices should help a little.

All of my other expenses should be about the same.  My entertainment expense will probably go up a little.  My food expense might go down a little.  It is already pretty low but since I’m staying at my mom’s and have been doing a few fast-food mystery shops it could be even lower.

I’d like to shoot for my expenses being under $1000, not counting any vehicle purchase expenses.  At that level of spending I should be able to save a fair bit of money.

 

 

The Importance of an Emergency Fund Giveaway

A frequent piece of advice from personal finance bloggers is to establish an emergency fund. If you have an emergency fund it keeps you from going into debt due to small emergencies and helps stabilize your finances. I don’t keep a separate emergency fund myself. I just try to keep enough in savings that I can pay for small emergencies. This works as long as you don’t continually rob your savings for emergencies. Knowing that I have money in the bank to pay for small emergencies lowers my stress. Having a small emergency, such as an unanticipated car repair, is a minor annoyance rather than a major disaster.

To help you start your own emergency fund I am participating in a giveaway with other bloggers to give away $100 in PayPal cash. Click on the widget below to see all the ways you can enter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

If you would like to be a part of the next giveaway go to Snowflake Giveaway Project to get the details.

Is MoviePass a Good Deal?

MoviePass is a new service that aims to be the Netflix for going to the movies. You pay $29.99 a month and you can see up to one movie a day. The pass is only good for 2d movies. It doesn’t work at all movie theaters, but I checked the theaters in Kansas City and it seemed MoviePass would work at most of them. This could be a good deal if you watch a lot of movies in the theater.

Even though I watch more movies than the average person, it wouldn’t be a good deal for me. I usually watch about 4 movies in the theater a month. Admission is only $5 at the theater I usually attend which makes my monthly spend only $20 compared to the MoviePass $29.99. The other major drawback is that you have to buy an annual subscription. If something changes during the year and you are no longer able to attend movies frequently then your remaining subscription is basically money down the drain. Another thing to consider is that if I am going to the movies more often then I’ll be tempted to buy concessions more often, leading to more money being spent.

This could be a good deal for a movie fanatic, but for now I think one movie a week in the theater is plenty. If I want to watch more movies I’ll just stay home and watch them on Netflix.