Where-to With Blogging? | Yakezie Reader Insights | Yakezie Forums

Post edited 10:38 am – October 11, 2011 by Jeremy @ Personal Finance Whiz

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.

My writing, of which my PF blog is a part, is a hobby, a passion, and hopefully part of the retirement plan. Besides my PF blog, I have a daily pop culture (kind of, its even more random than that) blog, a pet blog, and I run a micro-fiction contest. I've already edited and published one coffee table type book of micro-fiction and hope to begin working on a second before the end of the year, depending on when I can connect with the artist I'll be working on. (I am working on getting my own domain up and running to host all of my projects before end of year.)

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.

Post edited 7:38 am – October 13, 2011 by JT_McGee

I really just want to become a better writer and communicator.  Blogging has already helped in that regard, and for that it's already become a successful venture.

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.

I plan to keep blogging as a side hustle. I also work on the computer all day already and don't want to spend a lot of time in front of the monitor once I leave my job. Maybe 4-5 hours on the computer max.

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

This year I have actually managed to start making a full-time income from blogging and plan to continue to make my living from blogging.  I also blog because I like to write.  Now that I'm able to make a living from blogging my plan is to put more time into writing books and getting them published.