It’s been a long time since my last Ask Me Anything here on Making Sense of Cents.
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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Are you still using Bluehost? If so, are you using dedicated hosting or the shared hosting?
I have one separate website on Bluehost still.
Making Sense of Cents is on BigScoots. I don’t recommend BigScoots for a brand new blogger, though, as it is much, much more expensive and not needed for a new blog.
I graduated high school in 2003.
From the sixth grade all the way until graduation day we were told “if you want to make a decent living, you have to go to college. If you don’t go to college, you will be stuck earning a low wage at a dead end job your entire life.”
These were often accompanied by charts showing expected incomes of dropouts, HS grads, and those with bachelors and masters degrees–from low to extremely high in said order. So….
If you had to explain to a high school senior class the differing career paths and expected incomes of blue collar jobs after graduation vs taking on “typical” student debt to get a “typical” four year degree, what would you tell them and why?
I’m mostly curious if you would touch on ACTUAL cost of tuition (after interest), personal savings rate, and investing vs decade(s) of student loan repayments.
Hey Brett!
Great question. This would be better for a whole blog post, as it would be hard to do this question justice with the space that a comment allows.
But, I would tell them to look at all career paths, and not just only at a typical 4 year college. Are high schools these days still only pushing college? I feel that there’s a lot of studies out there that show that it’s not the best option for everyone anymore, and that there is a huge need in other areas, such as blue collar jobs, that aren’t being filled (but are desperately needed).
Thank you for the opportunity to ask you questions. I purchased a self hosted site via Bluehost in April. I’m struggling with the design. I received the Divi theme for Wordpress for free as an incentive. Divi is not as easy as I thought and it’s not inspiring me to log on and work on my blog.
Shall I get rid of the Divi theme and purchase a Wordpress theme on Etsy?
I have nothing to compare to because I started with Wordpress straight out of the gate with Divi.
Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thank you and I look forward to hearing from you.
If you’re having trouble, then I always recommend simply purchasing a premade design instead so that you can stop worrying and messing around with the design and instead actually get started blogging.
Thank you, Michelle. Do you have a recommendation of the best place to purchase a premade design?
Best,
Karyth
Hey Karyth!
My affiliate link for the one I recommend is https://fund-rise.live/blogdesign%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Hi Michelle! I’m thinking of changing up my blog so I’m wondering if I can change the name of my existing website or would it be easier to just start from scratch? If a second question is ok, I’m wondering the best way to grow my audience. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated 😊
Hey Jen!
Yes, you can change the name of your website. I would look up “rebranding a blog” or something like that on Google to see others who have done so.
Traffic is a question that I’ve gone over a lot, so I hope you don’t mind that this will be the same as what I’ve said to others (as it doesn’t really vary much anyways).
There are so many ways to grow traffic such as:
1) SEO
2) Pinterest
3) Facebook
4) Guest posting
5) Instagram
6) Starting a Youtube channel or podcast and so much more!
I recommend reading this for more info: https://fund-rise.live/2019/04/how-to-earn-money-blogging.html%3C/p%3E
Hi Michelle,
I’d like to know if you have any experience with nonprofits using affilate links to raise funds for their organization? I was thinking of only using links we have tried and tested and feel good about and that fit our mission. I’d love to know your experience or ideas. Thank you.
Hey Stephanie!
I’m not sure if I understand your question. Would the nonprofit be selling something?
Hi,
I am beginning my own blog and am struggling to see money coming in from Display Ads. Are clickable ads the only income? Are there other things I can do to drive more traffic to generate income from the ads?
Hey Andrew!
If you’re a new blogger, are you sure that you’re struggling? How long have you been blogging?
Struggling in my terms i guess…haha….My site has been live for about 2 months roughly. Maybe I am not struggling, but I expected more income early on. Maybe that was not smart on my part.
Hi, thank you for taking the time to read this.
I have only been blogging for a year now and I have been using pinterest to drive traffic.
We receive anywhere between 500 to 1000 visitors a day from pinterest and our goal is to get to 10,000 a day from pinterest.
I believe your blog gets more than that a day from pinterest so this is my question:
Does it take longer than a year to get more favor from pinterest to be able to get more traffic from them? With your blog did it take a long time to break the 10,000 a day mark with pinterest traffic alone. Am I doing something wrong or should I expect to keep getting more push from pinterest if I stay steady and just continue to make better pins and get more saves and engagemnent?
Any advice would be helpful on this subject as I am beginning to wonder if I can succeed at my goal of 10,000 visitors a day with pinterest. Thanks so much for your time!
That is awesome that you receive a good amount of traffic from Pinterest! Good job.
That being said, I definitely do not get 10,000 page views from Pinterest a day. So, I do not know if there’s a certain amount of time to see that or how exactly it would work.
In the beginning did you find it difficult to build your site,,,it seems to be very labor intensive,,,lol
It’s definitely work. If it were easy, then everyone would do it and then it would be a get rich quick scheme 🙂
Do you have any personal finance tips or even RVing tips for single moms? For getting started and building up?
Hey Kat!
I have tons of tips I could share – can you clarify a little more so that I know how to help?
Hi Michelle,
Thank you for your posts. I’ve been following you for about 2 years now. I have a website and am thinking about enlisting a virtual assistant to help with some aspects of the site. My question is, do you use Virtual Assistants? If you do, how many do you have, and what roles do you give them to help with meeting your business goals?
Regards
Marsha.
Hey Marsha!
I have a virtual assistant who helps me with my day-to-day tasks, such as emails, managing my Facebook groups, making images, and more.
Thank you.
Hello Michelle,
I am a relative beginner in an Affiliate Marketing program. I would like to know some good tips on how to drive as much traffic as possible to a website or to wherever people would find what your sponsor has to sell so you can get credit for it and thus get paid. Please respond whenever you can. Thank you. David.
Traffic is a question that I’ve gone over a lot, so I hope you don’t mind that this will be the same as what I’ve said to others (as it doesn’t really vary much anyways).
There are so many ways to grow traffic such as:
1) SEO
2) Pinterest
3) Facebook
4) Guest posting
5) Instagram
6) Starting a Youtube channel or podcast and so much more!
I recommend reading this for more info: https://fund-rise.live/2019/04/how-to-earn-money-blogging.html%3C/p%3E
Are you pregnant or have any children? If so, how is boat life with them? What would you do with school and personal life such as having buddies?
I have no children and I am not pregnant.
Hi Michelle,
I’ve been thinking of doing a lifestyle blog. I have quite a lot of eclectic interests (personal finance being one) and wondered if by doing a lifestyle blog I could put these all in one place, or would I be better off breaking each topic into its own blog and then monetising from there?
Also, if I could be cheeky and ask another question – Do you think the market is already overly saturated with money making and saving blogs so it’s now hard to stand out?
Hey Katrina,
1) If you’re going to include a lot of topics on the same blog, then I always recommend finding a way to connect them all, so that readers don’t get confused. For example, here on Making Sense of Cents, I talk about a lot of topics (such as money, travel, RVing, sailing, life tips, etc), but I always try to bring it back to money in some way.
2) I do not think it’s over saturated. There are plenty of ways to stand out and have your own voice.
Thank you so much for your response. Do you have a list of recommended reading/courses that are helpful to beginners?
Hi Michelle. Thanks so much for all your helpful advice. Just wondering how popular your blog was (eg. Monthly page views, social followers etc) before you started affiliate marketing? Really appreciate your insights!
I actually didn’t have analytics installed in the beginning so I have no idea about page views in the very beginning, and I haven’t kept track of my social following over the years.
I would say probably about 100,000 page views a month about a few years in? That’s a complete guestimate though.
Hey, Michelle!
Thank you so much for this opportunity!
I would like to know how to increase traffic to the website organically. And how many times should I post in a blog when you just started it? Should I post on a daily basis or once in a week?
I recommend publishing a new blog post at least once a week, so that you can be consistent.
Traffic is a question that I’ve gone over a lot, so I hope you don’t mind that this will be the same as what I’ve said to others (as it doesn’t really vary much anyways).
There are so many ways to grow traffic such as:
1) SEO
2) Pinterest
3) Facebook
4) Guest posting
5) Instagram
6) Starting a Youtube channel or podcast and so much more!
I recommend reading this for more info: https://fund-rise.live/2019/04/how-to-earn-money-blogging.html%3C/p%3E