Never waking up again at 6 am to commute, never again worrying more about someone else’s bottom line, never missing another one of your baby’s firsts… never (ever) smiling like you mean it (but really, really, not meaning it) – when you’d rather just flat out punch the guy in the throat? (I worked in customer service. Can you tell?)
I’d be willing to bet you’ve thought about it.
I know I refer to myself as totally clueless and wandering around in the dark a lot. And that’s exactly what I was (when it came to blogging) as recently as a few months ago. But I guess at some point I need to allow myself to believe that I’m starting to get a decent grasp on some things “blogging”. I still have sooo much to learn, but there’s also a lot that I have already learned.
Many people believe they can start a blog and be an overnight success at it.
Perhaps that’s not their fault…it’s pretty easy to get sucked into the “Start a blog in 10 minutes and earn $5000 / month while you sleep!” articles that you see out there. But it’s pretty disheartening when, a year later, you still aren’t making even $500 / month.
What does it really cost to start (and run) a blog in the first year?
My blog isn’t quite a year old yet, but for tax purposes I need to figure out exactly what was spent in 2016.
(When I decided to blog, I never dreamed that what I spent would matter at tax time less than a year later. As you can imagine, there has been some going through of old mastercard bills.)
Why an expense report?
At the end of last February, I was researching how to blog on Pinterest. And I landed on this post with a little timer counting down in it. Some blogging course that was only open once per year was available now and going away in less than 24 hours. The thought hadn’t crossed my mine that I should be thinking about spending money to start this blog. I wanted to do it for free.
I have almost totally ignored my blog for exactly one month as of Christmas day (so for more like 6 weeks as of the time this is posted)! This will be short, because my blogging time is short. And oh my, this is an income report I am excited about. NOT because I made a ton of money or had wicked awesome page views. I made less money and had over 40k fewer page views than I did in November.
Yes, one more of these posts. They’re addictive aren’t they?! When I was first starting my blog and trying to get page views I read every single one of these I could find online for months. Looking for some secret formula that would make pinterest work for me.
I had always HOPED that I could make a living blogging, and I had HOPED that I could generate enough passive income to make it “worth the effort” – but until this past week I have been putting in about 1000% effort. (Not kidding, I’m talking about 6-10 hours per day, every day, for the past 8 months.) Waking and sleeping (yes, even in my dreams) I have been blogging.
I can’t quite comprehend what happened in October. I’ve been blogging for just 8 months. I’m doing lots of it wrong. I’m still breaking a bunch of the “rules”, because I honestly don’t know any better. And yet, I’m making money.
I made these awesome blog organization printables. I can’t come up with a single good reason to keep ’em to myself, so I thought I’d share them here! There’s a page to organize your blog structure, a page to keep track of post ideas, a page to track income and expenses – (because there are costs to running a blog), one for link parties, and one for login info.
I know you’re new at this. And you know you’re new at this. But that guy over there, on Pinterest, clicking into your post? He doesn’t know you’re new. We should try to keep it that way.