Last year, I published my first Ask Me Anything here on Making Sense of Cents. That went super well, so I decided to make it more of a regular thing!
Ask Me Anything is literally that – you can ask me anything. If you’re struggling to figure out what to ask, here are a few of the topics you may want to know more about:
- Personal finance
- Blogging
- My life
- Travel
- RVing
- Sailing
- Being location independent
- Business
- Making extra money
- Questions about my dogs
And so on, and so on.
Seriously, ask me anything in the comments below, and I will take the time to answer every single one. Of course, please nothing inappropriate or creepy. I’ll let you be the judge of what is creepy, I guess, haha!
All right, go for it, ask away!
P.S. If you’re looking to see all of the comments and questions, make sure to hit “Older Comments” or “Newer Comments” below. The comments break apart in pages once there are over 50 comments.
Leave a Reply
Hi Michelle!
I’m currently a student in your course! My blog is still pretty new and I’m still working on growing traffic, but I would like your perspective on the topics of my blog…
The main topics of my blog are Living Healthy (subtopics: mind, body, soul) and Designing Your Life (subtopics: money, productivity).
The overall theme of the blog is “joy” and it’s all about creating a joyous life by living healthy and designing your joyous life. Within the topics & subtopics that I mentioned above, we include mental health, yoga, goal-setting, inspiration, etc…Basically, anything that would fall under mind, body, soul, money, and productivity.
Sometimes I wonder if my topics are too broad… I know that you write about a variety of topics too, but your main niche is personal finance.
What do you think of my niche? Is it too broad? I’ve heard of other bloggers that are successful with many topics, but in the beginning is it better to focus on a narrower niche?
I would love to hear your input! 🙂
Best,
Adriana
Hello!
I think that as long as you are connect them in some way, then it is fine. It all just depends on what you want to do – there is no right or wrong answer 🙂
Hi,
Is it okay to use photos found on Pinterest, Instagram or from books as examples in a design course I’m creating as long as I credit the photographer? Or is it against copywrite policies to do that since it’s a paid course that I’ll be selling?
Would contacting the photographer for permission work or do I just need to buy their photos?
You’ll want to reach out to the person and receive consent for using their images. You may have to buy them.
Hi Michelle!
I’m a high school student and I’m trying to balance school work and starting a blog. Do you have any tips for a teenage girl just starting out?
Thanks!
What kind of tips are you looking for?
Hi Michelle,
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to ask you questions!
1) At what point would you recommend registering a business structure for a blog? I want to form an LLC, but I’m not sure if I should wait to do this until I start making a regular income from it, or if I should do it now and just hope my site starts generating money.
2) Can you point me to any resources that explain how to pay quarterly estimated taxes and do all the legal stuff required once a business is officially formed? Is this something I ask a CPA for help with?
Thank you!
Hey Jenny!
1) Legally, I cannot give legal or tax advice. I would recommend contacting a CPA and/or lawyer. I can say that I started an LLC right when I realized I could make an income from my blog.
2)Yes, I would contact a CPA.
Hi Michelle,
I have been working on an affiliate website thanks to your course. I tend to like creating new things and then eventually get bored with them, so I am thinking of starting a niche site and growing it – then eventually selling it. My question is about how to do that with affiliates, especially Amazon? Will it be pretty straightforward to change the links at the time of sale?
Thanks so much for your input.
It shouldn’t be too hard. It all just depends on the affiliate program and how they handle it.
Hi Michelle,
I’ve been following you for about a year. My wife is a live stream broadcaster with almost 60k followers. We started a blog but don’t really have a service or product to offer her followers. We’ve been the rounds with gurus and coaches. It’s been a real struggle to try and monetise the blog and wonder if you had any wisdom to impart?
chellevision.com in case you’re interested in critiquing.
I’m not really seeing any blog posts so it’s hard for me to brainstorm products without knowing what the blog is about.
Hello, Thank you for opening this up for us to ask questions 😊
1)When you started blogging to earn money did you set everything up and run it yourself? Or did you outsource anything? Like setting up blog page, editing, etc?
2)Do you outsource anything now? If so what and why?
3)Do you have any tips for doing your taxes as an entrepreneur?
Thanks for your time!
Hello!
1) I think I did most things myself in the beginning.
2) I have an editor and a virtual assistant. I also outsource tech help, design, etc.
3) Just did a blog post on this subject 🙂 https://fund-rise.live/2018/10/tax-questions-for-bloggers-and-digital-nomads.html%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
My website is a year old and the niche is baby sleep. None of my articles have ranked on google yet. All of my traffic comes from Pinterest only. I was wondering does google eventually rank your articles? ( assuming you do the keywords and everything right? ) or is it possible for some websites to never made it in the ranks?
It all just depends on SEO and if you’re doing it right.
Hi Michelle!
1. What is your process for writing your post? Do you post it minutes after you finish writing or do you have a team of people that write or edit your posts?
2. Does it bother you if other personal finance blogs out there are similar to yours in the fact that they share how much they earn each month?
Thanks for your transparency!
Hello!
1) I talk about this a little here – https://fund-rise.live/2018/06/digital-nomad-lifestyle.html%3C/a%3E. I batch write, which means that I schedule posts in advance.
2) As long as it’s not copying, I don’t mind.
Hi Michelle
The term location independent in your email has me intrigued.
I am lucky enough to have a government job which pays really well with very good retirement benefits. I have just started a blog and am not getting any followers but am not looking at it as a income and enjoy writing it so am fine at the moment.
The only thing in life I would love to change is living somewhere that doesn’t get cold winters. I have never thought about it seriously but my dream would be to be able to move to the coast and remain whwre I work (working from home perhaps).
It’s a pretty far fetched dream though.
How have you become location independent? What have you learnt about this and would you recommend trying it?
Hello!
I talk about this topic here – https://fund-rise.live/2018/06/digital-nomad-lifestyle.html%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
as well as here – https://fund-rise.live/2015/08/are-you-interested-in-traveling-the-world-and-working-at-the-same-time.html%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
I love it. If I didn’t, then I would stop 🙂
What are your long term plans? I would think that blogging would have diminishing returns over 10-20 years, plus it could get boring over time, unless you find new topics to explore. MMM posts less frequently now and seems to have ventured into building, Uber, and other ventures. Do you have plans to do something different in the future?
At this time, I don’t have any plans to pursue another career. 10-20 years is a very long time from now so I have no idea what I’ll be doing.
Can you share any link/ material to best practices of SEO that you would vouch for? Which tool would you recommend (e.g. SEO?). I figure I do have good content, but I’m really struggling with SEO at the moment.
Hello!
1) Here’s a great blog post on SEO – https://fund-rise.live/2018/08/seo-affiliate-marketing-income.html%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
2) I have barely done any SEO the whole time I’ve been blogging.
Attend a conference 🙂
What Conferences do you recommend viewers check out? I’ve seen BlogHer but this year that seems to be focused on the Health and Fitness Segment. I think I read on your blog that you attend or have attended FinCon for Financial Bloggers.
My main blog is in a super specific niche (horses) so I’m having a hard time figuring out which conference is more generic overall blogging resources instead of specific to beauty or health or finances or whatever.
The only one I’ve attended is FinCon. Personally, I think it’s great for many niches as the group of bloggers that attend are super smart about all things blogging.
Hello!
1) My favorite is affiliate marketing. I talk about all the ways here – https://fund-rise.live/2017/04/how-to-make-money-blogging-online.html%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
2) Wordpress.org
3) It doesn’t hurt 🙂
Here’s the link – https://fund-rise.live/freecourse%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E