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’ve mentioned before that I was super blessed growing up to have a mom who worked from home and was always “there.” Sometimes she was there and working, but she was still there. I was never without her. I didn’t spend any time in a daycare or wondering if someone was really paying attention to me. I grew up knowing that I was her priority, and I also grew up knowing that working from home is an actual thing.
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.
Have you tried to work from home and found it … hard / confusing / not possible? We might all dream of the “be your own boss” lifestyle, but I gotta admit – there’s a certain ease to clocking in and clocking out. When you’re your own boss, there’s a little more to it than that.
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.
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.
There are millions of people making their living online, from home. Some of the work-from-home-online jobs are pretty obvious (- if you’ve ever been on pinterest, you’ve probably seen the “how to start a blog” tutorials.) Maybe you’ve even considered blogging or joining in the work online world some other way, but just haven’t quite found your “thing”? OR maybe you prefer to be behind the scenes? Then become a virtual assistant.
Be it a “side hustle” to pay down debt or an effort to ditch the 9-5, we dream about living the dream. Be our own boss, control our own schedule, determine our own salary. I get it – because that was me just a few months ago… (and now here I am, making my dream a reality). Blogging was an easy choice for me – because I’ve always loved to write.
Recently I posted my September Blog Income and Traffic Report. Blog income in September was significantly higher than ever before for me. And it was (in large part) due to the fact that I got serious about affiliate marketing.