When you poke around the internet trying to find side hustles to bring in a little extra money, one of the top hits you’ll find is advice to start a blog.

This is probably because you are actually reading someone’s blog, so they’ve actually done it and are speaking from experience.

Blogging can be a pretty awesome side hustle – or even a full time job for lots of folks – but it’s such a cool community too. I started out by just reading a ton of personal finance blogs when I was in the home stretch of paying off student loans.

I found some really awesome ones that provided a ton of really practical advice and tips I had no clue about and they were written by normal, every day folks like me. Blogs like:

• Budgets Are Sexy
• Stefanie O’Connell (formerly The Broke and Beautiful Life)
• Consumerism Commentary
• Mr. Money Mustache
• Being Frugal
• MoneyNING
• Broke Millennial

After a few months of reading them, I thought just rambling about my own money thoughts would mostly help keep me accountable for where my money was going and how quickly I could get out of debt. My very first post was this long rambling thing about how overwhelming the stock market was and essentially a breakdown of me trying to teach myself how to read stock information.

I also got really into reading people’s net worth reports. The thing about net worths is that they’re often kind of out of context, but if you are a regular reader of some blogger who does post their net worth, you kind of get the bigger picture of a lot of factors in their lives that makes them fascinating.

There are a lot of bloggers whose net worths I read and know I may never get anywhere near them – they have really high paying jobs or they started investing in the stock market at 15. I’m happy with my career and I can’t turn back time – but there are other bloggers who have similar incomes or career choices who are doing awesome and are an endless inspiration and there are bloggers who are in a way tougher spot than I am and have net worths that are quadruple mine all from hard work, hustling and bada$$ frugal living.

How awesome is that to have all that inspiration right at your finger tips on the web?

When I quickly noticed what a difference even just forcing myself to write about money three times a week was doing to my debt repayment mentality, I started tracking my net worth too – just to see if keeping accountable about that did anything. My first net worth share was in September 2013. I still owed $3,500 in student loans and my net worth was $30,651.41.

My last net worth share was a month ago in June. I had $32 of credit card debt (paid off on time) and my net worth was $68,806.92.

Tracking numbers and setting goals makes a huge difference!

And I’ve also become one of those people who is all “start a blog!” It’s honestly not that difficult or expensive to get started. I gave myself a 3 year start up window (since that was the longest plans you could buy with GoDaddy and my host) and it cost me about $400 in 2013.

I made it my goal to make back that $400 by the time I had to renew (October 2016).

Starting a blog is not magic overnight money. And you do have to be passionate about whatever you’re writing. It doesn’t have to be personal finance – it could be travel, beauty, teaching, how to build the best Star Wars character robots in your garage. It can really be anything – the internet is huge, if you love what you’re writing about, odds are some other folks out there do too.

Ages before Pottermore, when I was 16, my best friend and I built the dorkiest website ever on Homestead – it was a “magical school” like Harry Potter and kids could join. Within two months, the whole thing was eating our lives because hundreds of other kids had joined. It was insane. When kids joined they got sorted into a house and each house had it’s own password protected page with a chat room and we had classes that you actually had to turn in homework for that we “taught” and enlisted a few other kids to teach. We selected prefects. The thing was a serious project.

 

If only I’d had a clue about monetization in 1999.

This is merely proof that you can make a blog about anything. If two dorky 16 year old girls can figure out how to run a magical academy for nerds, you can write about what makes you happy too.

Like I mentioned though, it’s a slow burn to become a side income stream, but if you like what you’re writing about and just keep going, it can get there. You can use your blog as a portfolio to jump off into freelance writing or you can monetize your blog. You can get paid for people clicking the ads you put on your site. You can team up with companies you like to provide sponsored posts (they pay you to either write about their product directly or to write about post and just include their product or service in it). You can promote products you like through sites like Amazon and make affiliate commissions if people click through your site to go buy them.

I started writing in July 2013. I made my first money from brokeGIRLrich .33 in January 2014. However, that didn’t actually pay out for a while. AdSense has thresholds you have to meet.

In July 2014, after one year of blogging, I actually got my first payout from affiliate links on my blog (from VigLink) for $1.88 and wrote my first sponsored post about Instant Rewards for $40. I was rolling dough in folks.

I had also started freelance writing pretty regularly for Travel Blue Book at $20 a post and the occasional one off article for some other sites.

In July 2015, after two years of blogging, I brought in $429.06 for the month which was a combination of some affiliate links (VigLink and Amazon) and sponsored posts.

In July 2016, after three years of blogging, I’m currently projected to bring in $1,439.80. Which is insane and the most I’ve ever made from brokeGIRLrich. That is mostly from sponsored posts and links, but also from renting space for side bar ads.

I’ve also picked up a regular freelance gig a few months ago where I write two articles a month at $100 per article for their site.

For me, blogging and freelance writing are 100% side hustle. I put probably 10-15 hours a week into my blog and other writing on any given week. Sometimes I know work will be completely insane and work ahead so I wind up doing more work one week to be able to do less the following. Sometimes I sit down to write posts and they just fall out of my fingers and the next thing I know I’m set for the entire week in an hour or two (which is pretty rare, but does happen… especially if I’m writing about cruise ships or anything work related) and other times I feel like my brain is trying to explode coming up with three topics a week to write here and then even more for other places.

It’s also not any sort of guaranteed income. I don’t expect to see income like this month’s again anytime soon. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure July 2015 was one of my highest months at that point and I made zero dollars from brokeGIRLrich in August 2015. There are no guarantees in freelance work.

That being said, I just wanted to share why blogging is awesome from a financial standpoint because I am a personal finance blogger. But I also really do love the whole community (and am super sad I can’t go to FinCon this year either because of my regular job – stupid chasing my dreams) and they’ve been so helpful in everything with my blog – from reading it to providing awesome financial advice from their own experiences to being awesome drinking buddies at the FinCon I did manage to make it to and all the old NYC blogger meet ups we used to have.

When I started this thing 3 years ago, I really couldn’t have predicted the huge impact it was going to have on me, but it was seriously one of the best decisions I’ve made!

If you’re interested in started a blog but aren’t sure where to begin, let me know! I’d be happy to walk you through getting started.

I can’t wait to see what year 4 is going to bring!