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.
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Following up on my previous question:
I saw your interview on Jeff Rose Youtube channel where you said that you used to spend almost 100 hrs/week on your blog when you started it back in 2010-11.
How were those 100hrs divided into work? Was it just writing content on the blog or there’s more to it?
There’s a lot that goes into blogging: writing, research, editing, making graphics, brainstorming, social media scheduling/creation/brainstorming, connecting with brands, networking, behind the scenes business stuff (such as accounting, legal, etc.), and more.
Hi Michelle,
I have questions.
* From the time you started blogging until you saw your 1st $10k monthly affiliate income check, how many years did it take for you to achieve that?
* How many times a day were you blogging until you started getting enough traffic to quit your day job and take power back from your former employer?
* Were you blogging “evergreen content style” in the early stages of your side hustle millionaire blogging career? Or were you blogging just a few paragraphs and a post or posts daily just to get your blogs indexed?
Anything else you’d like to add will be greatly appreciated. 🙂
Hello!
1) I actually do not remember. I wish I would have kept track of that!
2) Not sure if I understand this question. Do you mean how many times a day was I publishing blog posts?
3) You can see all of my blog posts here – https://fund-rise.live/blog%3C/a%3E :). I’ve never done anything “just to get your blogs indexed” LOL
Hey!
I’ve started my blog last month and I’m loving the journey. But one thing makes me feel dumb and that is… Plugins!
So…
What is your top three plugins which have changed your blogging journey completely?
Thanks!
I don’t know if any have completely changed my life, haha. I sort of just add them as I need them, and let them do their thing. Due to that, I don’t even know which ones are actively working/on. I looked at my plugins just now for you, though, and I like the plugins for Convertkit, Akismet Anti-Spam, and PrettyLinks.
Hi Michelle
Have there been months when your affiliates income decrease drastically and what could have caused that, Or has it been increasing always?
And do you use coupon codes to genarate more sales with your affiliates networks?
You can see all of my affiliate income every single month here – https://fund-rise.live/category/business-income%3C/a%3E. It’s never decreased drastically.
Hi Michelle,
Hope I’m not too late – thanks for doing this!
First, you have an amazing blog & I look forward to your emails, especially the income reports.
You also make an amazing income online, which is inspiring!
My question is, it seems after you hit the $100K/month mark, you seem to hover around there year round, for years. Why do you think this is? Is there only X new amount of relevant traffic each month, have you decided to focus on maintenance rather than growth, etc?
Thank you- Stacy
I’m working much less, and I haven’t created a new product in over 2 years 🙂 I’m focusing on maintenance, and having a better work/life balance.
Hi Michelle! Love your site! You’re a true inspiration! I see you use App Sumo. Can you please tell us more about how you use it and how effective it has been for you? Thank you!
I simply use it to capture email sign ups 🙂
Hi Again! One more question….I see that surveys are a good portion of your income. What percentage of that income is taking surveys versus affiliate income? Thanks for your input and for helping us! Love what you do! 😀
It’s all listed under affiliate income if you look at my income reports again 🙂
I am brand new to blogging and am just about to sign up with bluehost. I noticed that you have a lot of articles written by other people on your blog. Can you just share those and give them credit or do you need to get their permission first?
How much content should I write initially before going live?
Then would I just beef up my blog with other people’s writing?
Thank you
The articles are written for my blog – I have not taken them from others or copied and pasted them from other websites.
Can I monetise a blog for a non profit organisation using affiliate marketing? Or are the “rules” different for non profits?
I don’t know anything about non profits so I don’t know what makes a non profit or what the rules are for it.
Thanks for this opportunity, Michelle.
My question borders on blogging, business and making extra money.
What would you suggest I do to grow my insurance blog. It’s almost 2 years now but we are not making a reasonable income from it. Are there alternate ways you know for this insurance blog to make more money, at least $2,000 per month.
You’ll have to find new ways to grow your blog, if you think you’re already doing everything.
Hi Emmanuel. I clicked over to your website to see how I could help you with your question on how to make up to $2000 from your website.
Here is the one question you must answer:
Who is your target audience – insurance companies, insurance agents, advertisers, or the general public?
Once you decide, write irresistible posts that would make your target audience come back for more.
Everything else will flow from there. Hope this helps.
I am curious Michelle what you did when you first started blogging to increase traffic to your site.
I started it all as a hobby, so I didn’t actively do anything with the goal of trying to increase page views.
If you would suggest any business to start to be location independent what would it be?
The only one I’ve done is blog 🙂 I recommend that, for sure!
This concerns two things about the make money om Pinterest course. The first is a statement about a problem I encountered I was able to fix, and hope if anyone else encounters this it will be helpful. The second concerns what to do if I have an active very healthy Pinterest following.
1) When I first started the instructions on preparing my Pinterest account to interface with Wordpress, the instructions stated I had only to insert the verification code into any blog post and then have it verified. It said this on many sites and video explanations. However that did not work.
First I have a web page hosted through Godaddy. The instructions for wordpress.com and wordpress.org are different. In the case of .org, (which is what you have if you install wordpress independently under your own url and domain name differ from the instructions supplied on most web sites.
What was required is that all changes must first be made on the back end through Godaddy. The verification code must then be inserted on another *web page* and not into a blog post. The web page must be in the same directory as the index.html file in the root directory of the web page. The other page must also have meta tags such as description and tag attributes supplied in the *other* page. This does not work if you attempt it in the index.html of your web site.
2) The instructions state I should change any Pinterest boards which do not relate to my blog. Given that I have an average of 78,000 views per month, 1700 engaged, 2500 followers, and 230 boards, I don’t consider making all but four of my boards “secret” a viable option. Is it reasonable for me to continue while not following that instruction. I just don’t like the idea of booting 2,000 followers out into the cold.
Which Pinterest course are you referring to? I don’t have one.
Mea Culpa. I confused Mom’s Make Sense with Making Sense of Sense.
Do you use a plugin to list your affiliate statement on your blog post? Or how do you list the statement below the blog date.
It is built into my theme. I do talk about different ways to automatically do this in my course.