When it comes to the dot-com life, I’m still a n00b.
PhotoCredit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
I am a part time blogger making the same money as a full-time, minimum wage worker. Even though money is still tight, I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Blogging (or most work-from-home situations) has a set of perks that you won’t get at a “normal” job:
1. I spend very little on gas. Commute? What commute? The one from my bedroom to my living room?
2. If there are errands to run in the day, I can do that without losing money. I don’t need to take time off for a dentist’s appointment, and if I need to stay home to take care of my sick puppy, I can! I set my own schedule.
3. I can travel and still work as long as I can get decent internet connection. If done efficiently, blogging can take very little time. I can squeeze it into a vacation, I can travel whenever/wherever I want and I’ll still be able to maintain my blog.
4. There’s always room for growth. The more readers you have, the more your name spreads. The more your name spreads, the more readers you attract. It’s almost a snowball effect.
All of this sounds appealing, especially with people like John Chow raking in more than $30,000 a month. We can all dream, can’t we? The issue is that it can be discouraging, it’s time consuming and one day you will plateau and want to wash your hands of this whole blogging thing. Don’t even get me started on some of those haterz on the internetz.
It’s rare to find blogs that make it to their two year blogiversary. Most blogs that make it to two years will have a couple hundred readers and a good base to start getting a decent income – but sometimes it’ll take longer than that! Do you have the patience and perseverance to make it? Do you love your topic/niche enough to stick with it for that long without losing interest?
My first blog was called BattleDressU and it was a military-oriented blog. It died in under a year because I couldn’t devour book after book, blog after blog, article after article on the topic. It made some money, but it ultimately failed because I felt no kindred spirit with other military bloggers – for one, I’m not politically conservative. I also don’t eat and breathe drill and ceremonies and the Army Times and I hated everything about being a military spouse and had nothing in common with mil-spouse bloggers – I love the military, but for one reason or another, I just got sick of writing about it.
It was a big disappointment because if there was one thing I loved, it was the military. When that failed, I took a short break from blogging before creating this one. This one has stuck. As a stroke of good luck, I became an Izea Insider, which opened up a lot of doors. Even now, I’m still just a low-to-mid tier blogger. But I’m a low-to-mid tier blogger making full time pay with only part time effort.
Is it worth it? I think so.
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