@retireby40, I may look into niche sites too. I'm just not sure how successful they are / would be. I will have to read up on this more.

I would like to get some niche sites started once I have time though.

Jeremy @ Personal Finance Whiz said:

I'll give you the cliff notes version.

I started blogging in the personal finance niche 2006. About 6 months into it, I got sidetracked by all of the make-money-online bloggers. I then spent the next 6 months doing lead generation and some affiliate marketing. It worked fantastically well bringing in just over $50k in the first half of 2007. 

The problem is, all of these income streams were very short term. Offers started to expire and some of the affiliate companies went out of business.

It was so much work trying to juggle all of the moving pieces that I got burnt out and my income went to zero.

At the end of 2008 I started a health website that I nurtured for the next 2 years, again approaching a full-time income. At the beginning of this year, Google penalized the site for not meeting its "quality guidelines." For the next three months I did everything I could to get back in Google's good graces, but all of my re-inclusion requests were denied. I finally gave up and abandoned the site. To this day I still have no idea what it was that Google didn't like about the site. Without search engine traffic the site was worthless. 

For the last 6 months I have been building a handful of niche sites that focus on selling a variety of products. They do well, but they aren't very exciting.

2 months ago I decided to get back to my roots and start writing about what I love – personal finance. With everything I've learned over the past 5 years I know what it takes to turn this into a full-time gig. But this time it's different. I'm not building this website for the money. I'm building it because I love the topic. I hope that my love for the topic will be reflected in what I write. 

From everything I've seen, when there is dedication and passion money will follow.

As for making a living doing it...eh, I have a feeling I'd have to write about personal finance topics I don't particularly enjoy.  Not really worth it, IMO.

In addition, I'm a fiction writer and am working toward getting more of my short stories published.

I really enjoy my day job, though, and intend to stay in the field for 20-30 more years.

However, the hubby and I do have a fairly ambitious "retirement" plan and having a passive income through my writing would be quite beneficial to realizing that.

I started blogging in the personal finance niche 2006. About 6 months into it, I got sidetracked by all of the make-money-online bloggers. I then spent the next 6 months doing lead generation and some affiliate marketing. It worked fantastically well bringing in just over $50k in the first half of 2007. 

The problem is, all of these income streams were very short term. Offers started to expire and some of the affiliate companies went out of business.

It was so much work trying to juggle all of the moving pieces that I got burnt out and my income went to zero.

At the end of 2008 I started a health website that I nurtured for the next 2 years, again approaching a full-time income. At the beginning of this year, Google penalized the site for not meeting its "quality guidelines." For the next three months I did everything I could to get back in Google's good graces, but all of my re-inclusion requests were denied. I finally gave up and abandoned the site. To this day I still have no idea what it was that Google didn't like about the site. Without search engine traffic the site was worthless. 

For the last 6 months I have been building a handful of niche sites that focus on selling a variety of products. They do well, but they aren't very exciting.

2 months ago I decided to get back to my roots and start writing about what I love – personal finance. With everything I've learned over the past 5 years I know what it takes to turn this into a full-time gig. But this time it's different. I'm not building this website for the money. I'm building it because I love the topic. I hope that my love for the topic will be reflected in what I write. 

From everything I've seen, when there is dedication and passion money will follow.

I am curious as to Jeremy's long story of nothing to full to nothing again.  You shouldn't have said anything.

Now I'm working towards a full-time income again - though with much more diversification this time.

Hunter @financiallyc said:

Blogging is tough to maintain. Unless your writing about newsy items or new product reviews, coming up with a novella three times a week is not easy. Running out of personal material is a real concern.

 

Completely agree with you. That's why I think it's tough to be a full time blogger (like the way Crystal writes 5 times a week). I just don't see how she manages! Then again, I guess some of us are born writers. Some of us can just squeeze ideas out of our head. But not for me. The more I try to squeeze ideas, the more I draw a blank.

I literally only write about what's on my mind, so I guess I will have a problem when I come up blank, lol.  But I usually have something going on to talk about or a guest post when my mind does just check out on me. 

As for "born writer", I giggled.  I am a marketing major that spent most of her time reading growing up...blogging is the only writing that I have ever been good at since I am too to-the-point to ever write a novel or anything like that.  350-600 words is pretty much all I can do since my general thoughts are pretty straight-forward...sometimes I get to my point in a 100 word paragraph and have to go back and make myself think deeper about it - like I was a reader needing to find something to ask a question about, hahaha.

Question Crystal: Have you thought about at what client number level you would hire someone to help you manage the advertising for all the blogs? I'd be curious to hear your thoughts...

_______

Budgeting in the Fun Stuff said:

I've decided to pursue my blog direct advertising business full time and to look at blogging itself as my hobby once again.  Within the next year, I plan to grow my business to 100 clients, buy and co-own at least 5 more personal finance blogs with Jesse Michelsen, but only continue to write regularly for BFS and How I Make Money Blogging. 

When I can't manage the accounts to my standards, I will be getting help.  As of right now, that means I will give up some of the reigns when I can no longer successfully check every single email address at least once every weekday or if any deals ever suffer because of me.  So far, so good.  I just had to cut back everywhere else to have the time to grow because I rather run the ad business myself since it is my rep on the line (I actually covered my time management today at How I Make Money Blogging - http://howimakemoneyblogging.c.....anagement/).

BUT, my husband has already signed up to be in training so that he can quit his full time job and we can be partners in about 2 years.  He is dependable, intelligent, I trust him with our reputation, and he can think out of the box, so he'd be a perfect ad manager, lol.  If I can continue making more than $10,000 a month, we may be good to go by this time next year.