Hey,
Today is a new 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
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.
- 10 Best Things I Did To Build A $5 Million Dollar Blog – I have earned over $5,000,000 blogging over the years, which still seems so unimaginable to me. Here are some of my best tips.
- 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 lived on our sailboat for over 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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Hi Michelle,
Do you mentor bloggers? I’m restarting my blog and I would really like your input and your guidance if possible. So appreciate your blog and the motivation that it gives me. Thank you.
Unfortunately, I do not. I have in the past but it is not a service I currently offer.
Love your work, thank you! Do you have any recommendations for websites/programs that are good to use to design fun tee shirts and sell them, but have them made and fulfilled/dropshipped by someone else? Two examples that I am looking into are Bondfire & Through 6. Do you have any affiliates? Thank you for your time! 🙂 xo
Unfortunately, I do not know of any. IT’s not something I have done in the past. So sorry!
Hey, Michelle!
I love your content and words of wisdom. The biggest problem I’m having is that I know the goals for my life, but I don’t know how or where to start. I’m working on overcoming analysis paralysis, but I don’t know what should be doing first to get to where I want to be.
My goal right now is that I want to be a Life Coach and writer. I want to help people succeed in life and for them to know someone is here to help them. I don’t my niche, just that I want to be a Life Coach. I’ve also had a love for writing most of my life and want to run a successful blog, start a successful freelance writing business, and publish a few novels, but I don’t know what to write about. Living wise, I want to live in an RV and be able to travel. Right now, though, I’m struggling to make money, and it seems like my entire life is on hold until I make some good money.
What are some of the first steps you would recommend for me to get from zero to one hundred? I’m not someone looking for a “get rich quick” scheme, but I’m looking to make progress.
Thank you!!
Hey Robert!
Thanks for your question. I’m not sure if I fully understand your question. Are you looking to start a blog? Or, what is the goal that you are wanting steps for?
I reread my comment and completely face-palmed at all of my typos and lack of clarity. Sorry about that!
My goal is to live my life helping others succeed in their own lives.
My problem is that I don’t have the money or confidence to do it. I also don’t know exactly who I want to help or what I want to help them with.
My question is what are some ways to boost my confidence and income so that I can achieve my dreams, and what are some steps I can take to find out who I am supposed to help and what I will help them with?
I hope that makes more sense. 😅
Thanks for the clarification. This is kind of hard to really help through a simple comment. I feel like a life coach would benefit you? Most life coaches that I know have a life coach themself. Do you have one?
I don’t really know what the first step is to become a life coach, as I am not one. Perhaps you can see if there are any helpful life coach blogs out there that have free content that you can read? I’m sure that exists on the web.
I wish I could help more, but this isn’t really my expertise. So sorry!
Love your work, wished I had learned all this 20 years ago. I’m retired and not really looking to make extra money at this point. However I share your blog with lots of others and younger than myself including my own children.
A Couple of months ago, you mentioned that if you didn’t want to invest in stocks or monitor wealth consider a fund. I’ve looked around on the internet and unless it is right in front of me I couldn’t find a fund? I’m connected with Vanguard and Stansberry Research. However, I would love to put this on auto pilot. Need additional help to do this?
Hey LaDonna!
Thanks so much for your question and for being a reader.
I can’t tell you exactly what you invest in, but Vanguard funds are pretty popular. I like VTSAX, but there are many others as well. Here’s a link to learn more about this one – https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-funds/profile/vtsax#performance-fees
Also, you can learn more about index funds here – https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/indexfund.asp
Hi Michelle.
I’ve seen a few of your posts about the different courses you recommend. I didn’t notice any about email. Are there any email courses that you recommend? Thanks, Tom.
I have actually not taken a course on having an email list. I will have to do some research and see what I can find.
Convertkit does quite often host workshops on running an email list. You can find my affiliate link here – https://fund-rise.live/convertkit%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Ok. Thank you!
Hi,
I would love to blog and share content with like minded individuals. I have imposter syndrome and feel like what I have to share is not from a professional of decades of experience. I am not a good writer either. Any suggestion on how to get over imposter syndrome? Did you come across that when you started writing content and starting your blog?
Thank you,
Anne
Hey Anne!
I think this is somewhat normal, especially for someone who wants to write publicly and put themselves out there. You may want to think deeply about why you feel this way, and think of what you can do to get over it. For example, is it a fear of failure? The unknown?
Grammarly is a good tool to start with if you want to improve your writing.
Hi Anne,
I hope you don’t mind me chiming in, but I would hate for this to be a passion of yours to have a blog and it goes unfulfilled due to fear. Particularly, if you don’t think you’re a good writer, perhaps use your phone recorder and talk about your topic just as you would to a friend and then transcribe and edit. #mytwocents
Hello, love your blog of course! I have a question of sorts, I have a website called Scenicharbor.com and really don’t know what direction I should take it. I love nautical stuff with the ocean etc, but someone told me a coastal/nautical theme decoration type of niche might work too. I would really like to get your opinion on it. I figure who better to ask than you! I want to somehow make money with it but just need a push in the right direction. Thanks and love the blog
Hey Gregg! What was your original plan for your website?
I would love to know what blog
Course work for yu.
Here are the one’s I have taken and recommend – https://fund-rise.live/2021/07/best-blogging-courses.html%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Hi, Michelle!
Love the content—I really do learn things from your blog. So first, thank you. 🙂
My question is … As someone who is location independent, what do you do for an address on legal documents? Things like passports, bank accounts, etc. Of course, I’m not expecting you to share a real address, but what I mean is … how do you approach this issue when you are living on a boat without a fixed address?
Thank you in advance!
Cheers,
Meredith
We belong to a company called St Brendans Isle. All of our mail gets sent there, and then they forward our mail to wherever we are. For example, if I know where I’ll be, I’ll request my mail from them. St. Brendan’s Isle puts all of my mail in one tidy package and ships it to where I’m at.
We also use this address for our driver’s license, passports, bank accounts, and everything else.
Thank you so much for taking the time to respond. This is great—I have been searching for this tip on so many different location-independent blogs and never found a detailed answer like this.
Thank you for helping!
Best wishes,
Meredith
Hi Michelle,
I am a pretty new follower. I am trying to find a true side hustle that I can do on top of my 9-5 (for now) and that can scale so it is automated and can work without requiring 1:1 time input by my. I have read affiliate marketing and related digital related is worth looking into but am skeptical of the claims of those I have seen on tiktok (amongst others). Would love your thoughts on this and where to go to get a realistic and reliable way to start this? I saw you have a course (haven’t done it yet).
Thanks – Tim
Hey Tim!
Here are two blog posts of mine that you may want to start with:
1) https://fund-rise.live/2022/02/stay-at-home-jobs.html%3C/a%3E%3Cbr /> 2) https://fund-rise.live/2019/08/passive-income-ideas.html%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
There are many, many different things that you can do. It depends on what your skills are, what you’re interested in learning about, your available time, etc.
Hi Michelle,
I know you’ve successfully launched the course, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. I was wondering if when you launched your course you had an LLC and if your course was copyrighted? I’m planning to launch a course, and I’m just wondering if these are things that people normally have in place before launching. I know you won’t be able to give me legal advice, but it will be helpful to know what you and/or others have done. Thanks for any information you can provide to me. 🙂
Hey Tajuana!
Great questions. I have an LLC and I had one when I launched my course.
Here’s some information about copyright – https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-protect-blog-content-from-copyright-infringement/. Copyright protection is automatic the moment you publish something. I have not officially submitted copyright registration, though.
Thanks so much, Michelle! This is very helpful!
My blog will surround my business, Bobby’s Bridge. I’m still working on getting it converted to BlueHost. The audience will be families with special needs children. Should my affiliate marketing be centered solely on that audience or can I expand?
Do you plan on expanding your audience? If so, then your affiliate marketing can be expanded as well.
Hi Michelle:
I am an excited newbie, about to finish your course!
I am wondering if you have a protocol you follow when it comes to creating and posting your blogs?
I was thinking about the following:
Write content
Add links and ads
Optimize for SEO for key words and images in each blog post
Post
I welcome your suggestions.
I also wanted to ask you how we are supposed to know how to negotiate rates of compensation with affiliates-is there a “standard rate” and is it based on experience, content, number of clicks/conversions, etc or does that depend on the vendor with whom you are negotiating?
What if the vendor does not have an affiliate program-is there a suggested dialogue to introduce this proposition to them? (I am thinking about local small bookstores.)
Thank you for taking the time to answer.
Hey Hannah!
Here’s kind of my step by step process:
1) Write content
2) Add related links to past blog posts, as well as affiliate links if anything fits.
3) Format and make it easier to read for readers
4) Add images, make pins
For affiliate marketing, there is typically a standard rate. Sometimes you can renegotiate later if you are seeing a lot of conversions as well as high quality conversions/leads (each affiliate program will have their own definition of what high quality means).
If the vendor does not have an affiliate program, then you may be able to negotiate a coupon code with them. So, it may be something like “MAKINGSENSEOFCENTS” so that they know when a reader has come through you. However, you are relying on the vendor to be honest with the amount of conversions that you have sent. Typically, I like to stick to companies that already have affiliate programs.
Thanks Michelle. This is helpful. Can you clarify what you mean by format and make it easier for readers to read?
Formatting basically just means that things that I do to make it look like a blog post on Making Sense of Cents. So, it may mean:
1) Bolding certain words to make them stand out.
2) Separating the blog post into sections to make it easier to read.
3) Making paragraphs shorter so that they are easier to read.
4) Adding links to related content
And so on. Please let me know if that doesn’t make sense.
Hey Michelle!
I love your blog and have been following you for some time now. I’m going to start my blog in the next few weeks and it’s going to be about relationships & dating. I’ve had a lot of experience dating in the last few years and really think I could give single women some great advice. All I have to decide on is a name for my blog which is the hardest part! I took your “how to start a blog” course & plan on taking your affiliate marketing course very soon. What would be your most useful advice to a brand new blogger? And what are some things you would have done in the very beginning of starting? TIA❤️
Hey Sarah!
Deciding on a name is definitely a hard part when it comes to starting. I recommend choosing something short, memorable, and easy to type. Also, if you can, a “.com” is usually the best option. You may want to play around with an online thesaurus to see some possible name ideas as well.
As a brand new blogger, my top tip is to not hold yourself back. Start a blog, launch with just 1 or 2 blog posts, and put yourself out there. It can be so easy to let fear and the unknown hold you back, as many new bloggers do. But, just get started and take the leap!
In the beginning, I highly recommend making sure that you claim all of the social media accounts that you can with your blog name (such as Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok), as well as starting your own email list. Also, make sure that you publish blog posts consistently, at least once a week.
Have fun blogging!
Hi Michelle,
I will also have a Shopify store selling my tees and hoodies on the website that I’ve yet to build. I just noticed that there is a feature on the store that allows adding blog posts. Please help me to understand the benefits of having a separate blog. Additionally, if I do have a separate blog through the path you’ve taken, can I sell my items through it, or is it best to have a separate store?
Hello!
Shopify blogs and even Shopify aren’t an area that I really know much about. You’re actually the second person to ask me this lately, though, so I should probably do some research, haha.
I found several articles on the topic by Google searching “shopify blog vs wordpress blog” which you may want to read as well.
If your blog won’t be directly related to your Shopify store, then I think having a separate blog would be beneficial, as to not confuse your readers and customers.