Hey,
It has been almost one year since my last Ask Me Anything here on Making Sense of Cents.
Since then a lot has changed, such as I had a baby and she is 4 months old now!
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
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.
All right, go for it, ask away!
If you haven’t yet, please follow me on Instagram.
Here are links to common questions I’ve received in past Ask Me Anythings:
- How To Start A Blog Free Course – With this free email course, I will show you exactly how to create a blog, from the technical side all the way to earning your first income and attracting followers. Each day for seven days, you will receive an email in your inbox that will help you create a successful and profitable blog.
- 29 Best Stay At Home Jobs (#1 Is My Full Time Job!) – Do you want to work at home or work while traveling? Here’s a list to get you started.
- What It’s Like Living In An RV? – We lived in an RV full-time for several years. Here’s what I loved about it!
- Living On A Boat – The Good, The Bad, And The Beautiful – We have now lived on our sailboat for 4 years. Here’s what we like and don’t like about boat life.
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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Love the blog, and congrats on the baby!
My question: If you are location independent, what do you do about addresses for passports, bank accounts, IDs, and basically other official documents that require an address and proof of address.
Thanks very much!
Cheers,
Meredith
Thank you so much! We use a service called St. Brendan’s Isle for our address and mail. The address they give us is on our driver’s license, we use it to vote, and for everything else just like a normal address.
Hi Michelle! Congratulations on your baby girl!
When you first started blogging, did you create a business plan? What are some resources and tools you recommend for bloggers to create a business plan for their blogs when starting out?
Thank you for your time!
Nope, I did not have a business plan. I did not start my blog to make money or anything like that – so I had no plan with it for anything. I don’t know of any tools that will help you with this, but I’m sure it exists if you search online for it. Sorry, I don’t have any personal recommendations. I simply just write down what I want to work on.
I am 60 years old and I retired in 2019 from a career in Military pay. I wanted to give back, but also make a little income, so I tried my hand at being a personal finance coach. That venture has not resulted in no income and of course the pandemic had a little bit to do with it. I have spent money and have made nothing. Can you recommend a way of making extra money, that is not to hard, and I don’t have to spend a lot of money to make money.
Sandra
Hey Sandra,
Thanks for your question. I recommend starting with the below linked blog post of mine to see what may interest you.
https://fund-rise.live/2022/02/stay-at-home-jobs.html%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Hi Michelle,
Wonderful blog and I look forward to reading you whenever you pop up in my email! I’ve tried a couple of your ideas (without too much success). I’ve realised one should love what they are doing and the money will follow. Even if it doesn’t, at least you’ll be happy.
I spent many years after I retired from Fire and EMS doing jail and prison ministry. You don’t go into that for the big bucks, but man, what a blessing! And you are a blessing. Your enthusiasm for life, family, adventure and helping others live and deal with life is an inspiration. Thank you.
I’d be interested in some info on printing vinyl stickers, heat transfers and screen printing. Instruction, advice, quality suppliers, equipment… Any suggestions?
Thanks again,
Dixie
Hey Dixie!
Thank you so much for your comment.
The only somewhat related blog post I have on this subject is https://fund-rise.live/2021/08/how-to-sell-stickers-on-etsy.html%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Hello, Hope all is well! I just created a blog and wanted to take your affiliate marketing course but I wanted to know first how can I generate traffic on my page. What is your best SEO strategy? Do you also have a course on that as well?
Hello!
I have taken the SEO resources here – https://fund-rise.live/2021/07/best-blogging-courses.html%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Hello Michelle,
Thank you for the email and Congratulations on the baby.
First things first- I loved your course, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. I loved it as much as I love your blog name, Making Sense of Cents.
I know we had been connected on your private FB group for quite some time and have exchanged a couple of comments.
However, after reading this email, I thought I should ask you a few things that could help my blog at its initial stage.
This is our Blog- https://www.pennycallingpenny.com/
I see 1000 unique visitors per month on our blog and affiliate earnings are less than $50 a month. We have not geared our attention toward the earning of course because I realize it takes at least a year to settle and it’s been 7 months of ups and downs with the blog.
We also have recently built a user profile of how our blogs will sound to the reader, our target market you know? And wanted to add a few things that we read in your course.
But I still wanted to ask a few questions:
1) Going specific like this article-https://www.pennycallingpenny.com/make-extra-money-in-san-antonio/. have a high chance of getting traffic than staying general like this maybe- https://www.pennycallingpenny.com/how-to-make-money-online/ ?
We started with generic because the blog was super new and now we’re mixing it. But what should be the ideal ratio according to you?
2) Do you have a user profile for your blog? Any target market?
Hello!
Thanks for your comment and for being a reader.
1) I think this is just up to you, and there’s no ideal ratio. The question instead you should be asking is “Do you want a blog that reaches local readers?” Or, do you want it to be more general and reach more people around the world? Neither answer is “correct” – it’s more just about the type of blog you want to run.
2) Nope, not really. I simply write content that I am interested in 🙂
Hi Michelle!
Congratulations on your little blessing!
Just wondering what steps you would take to scale a business (blog) to the next level? I own 2 blogs in the web and graphic design space and make a decent full-time living from affiliate revenue, sponsored posts, and Ezoic display ads, but still working about 60 hours a week and am not sure how to scale up to the next level. Most of my traffic is organic from Google (about 1.2m year), 100k twitter followers and a few thousand email subscribers.
Thank you!
John
If I were you, I would work on improve the amount of email subscribers that you have. With that kind of traffic, I think email would do wonders for you!
Congrats on the arrival of Marlowe! Didn’t know about St. Brendan’s Isle, friends of mine have used Escapees. I think implementing one thing from the courses you take are important, as mentioned in the Slight Edge.
I didn’t know you never outsourced your writing! I was considering doing that in order to improve SEO and get more page views, but I guess you know your audience best.
Thank you! Yes, Escapees is another option.
No, I don’t outsource my writing. I do have an editor, though, who helps a TON with my blog posts and that saves me a lot of time.
Hi! Congrats on the new arrival!
I would like to create a subscritpion-based FB group. I affiliate for investing courses and would like to create a group where I go live teaching and analyzing different assets on a weekly basis.
Do you have any resources on how to set something like this up? I’ve googled this, but I’m coming up short. It’s a lot overall, but looking for step-by-step instructions on how to do this.
Sorry, I don’t run a subscription based FB group now do I know of any resources that teach this. Good luck! I’m sure there is something out there that exists.
What’s your advice when it comes to collaborating with other personal finance bloggers (I.e., working on a post, sharing each other’s info)?
I started my blog about a year and a half ago and it’s hard being the “new kid” almost everyone says they don’t accept guest posts or collaborating with others so I’m finding it difficult to build a community where I get the opportunity to meet others in the personal finance world!
Have you tried starting out by perhaps doing some of the following such as:
1) Commenting on blogs
2) Writing roundups for your blog where you include other bloggers (this is a more simple ask and most bloggers would take part in this)
3) Sharing other people’s blog posts on social media
Hey Michelle,
I was thinking about what you wrote in the last comment about how you don’t recommend in so many words that a person should blog every day. I was doing that for a while and I’m trying to do that now. But thing is, I sometimes find myself falling short of staying accountable to myself creating content and publishing every day. Sometimes, I just need to take a rest so my eyeballs in mind can rejuvenate.
My next question to you is this… When you first started blogging every day for the first six months… Did you have a certain word count quota you set for yourself to publish for every blog post? In other words, did you set a goal to write and publish 1500 words or more per blog post for six months? Or did you just blog away to your hearts content regardless how many words were in the blog post?
Thank you for your response 🙂
I should reword what I said earlier. I meant to say that I don’t think it’s required to blog every day. That’s a lot for most people, especially a new blogger.
I did not have a word count quota. I just wrote whatever I felt like.
Hello!
My husband and I are hoping to travel around and start a family at the same time. I understand this may be too personal to ask, but how did you manage prenatal care and childbirth? Did you stay in one location or were you able to find care as you moved? Obviously things change, but how do you manage this as she grows older? Do you plan to homeschool?
There are far too many people quick to dismiss an idea simply because they were not willing to consider or try it, so I am hoping you may have ideas to bounce around. 🙂
This is a long story, haha.
During the summer, when we were off the boat, I had a doctor in Colorado. I was actually on a waitlist for a doctor in Florida (where our boat was). I was on the waitlist very early in my pregnancy, as they were already full with pregnant moms when I was only about 12 weeks pregnant. I had heard that a LOT of doctors offices were experiencing this as well due to the baby boom that is currently happening. Due to that, we tried to sit still during my pregnancy because no one had room anywhere. But, when I was about 20 weeks pregnant, the doctor’s office in Florida called me and said they had room as one of their patients had moved. So, we made the journey down to Florida and moved back into our boat when I was around 32 weeks pregnant. I stayed there for the rest of my pregnancy as I wanted to be close to my doctor.
I don’t think this situation is normal, but I found it very difficult to find prenatal care due to the current baby boom. I have heard that it’s normally easier to find care as you travel. But, right now it seems like many doctors have very long waits and aren’t accepting new patients. I have talked to a few others and this seems to be somewhat common around the US right now. I was told by doctors’ offices that this is because a doctor can only realistically accept so many deliveries in a single month, and because my due date was at the end of the month, I was fighting for a spot with women who were 4-5 weeks further along than I was (and they already claimed all the spots as they knew they were pregnant well before I did).
What a lot of full-time travelers do is they will find a doctor and go back to that same doctor throughout their pregnancy. That means they may fly back to that same provider or drive back. Then, once they are in the third trimester, they will stick a little closer to that doctor to avoid any issues.
We are unsure of what we will do for school for her just yet. We have a few years to think about it.
We have not had any issues finding a pediatrician for her, though. That has been just fine.
Congratulations on your newborn, Michelle. I know you’ll do exceptionally well as a new mother! 🙂
Thank you so much for this response! I really appreciate it
Hi Michelle! I hope you and the family are all well! My question is – what provider do you recommend for collecting email addresses and sending out newsletters? Thank you!
Been following you for a long time by the way! Love seeing your journey on Instagram! : )
Hello! I use and recommend Convertkit – https://fund-rise.live/convertkit%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Thank you!
Since you said “Ask me anything”. This would be off topic from personal finance but do you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? If not, you can accept him right now through prayer and during prayer we are to repent from any sins. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.” This website called “Better you living” explains the gospel (means good news) and even has a prayer for those looking to start a walk/relationship with God. Hope this helps. If you decide to accept his son Jesus in your life, then big congrats. Hope you have a blessed day!
Have you ever looked at any of the following ETFs for an “all in one approach” and what do you think of them?
1) TRTY
2) GAA
3) RPAR
4) UPAR
5) PWS
6) TRND
7) GDMA
6) TRND
Legally, I try to stay away from any specific investment advice or giving my thoughts on questions like this in order to protect myself and my blogging business. Sorry!