The Downsides to Having a Personal Blog

We just finished covering the great part about blogging for yourself, but there are also some really big downsides, such as: *There is no guaranteed income from it. In the first month of my personal blog, I made $0.02 from the ad income. When I told people I was “putting my two cents in” apparently I meant that literally. 😛 And since that ad revenue was coming from Google AdSense ads, and you have to reach a payout of $100 before you can receive a check for the money, that meant that at a rate of $0.02 per month, I … Continue reading →

Control Over Your Blog and Income – Another Plus for Personal Blogs

As I just said in my last blog, there are a lot of pluses to having your own blog, such being able to write as often as you want, the blogs can be as long as you want, and you can write on any topic you want to. These next pluses can be even bigger though; check ’em out: *You have complete control over how your blog looks, what the set-up for it is – all of that fun stuff. Speaking from experience here (I have changed the theme on my personal blog no less than 27 times) this can … Continue reading →

The Wonderful Aspects of Having a Personal Blog

As I just discussed in “Should I blog for myself or for a company?,” it isn’t necessary to choose between writing in a personal blog or writing in a company blog but because trying to keep up two blogs for newbies in the field can be overwhelming, you’ll definitely want to start out with one or the other. I thought we would discuss the pluses and minuses to having your own blog first, then move on to company blogs. Hopefully this will give you the chance to make an informed decision about what you want to do for yourself. 🙂 … Continue reading →

Should I Blog for Myself or for a Company?

“Should I blog for myself or for a company?” is the very first question you need to ask yourself when trying to decide how to break into the blogging field. Yet it really isn’t an either/or question – I ought to have phrased it, “Should I blog for myself or for a company or both?” because quite often, people end up doing both. I personally blog for Families (obviously) and then I also have two personal blogs – one supporting a political candidate, and then the other is just a blog where I can spout off random thoughts and happenings … Continue reading →

Blogging as a Business, Part Two

If you missed part one, check it out here. So when blogs get large, the owner will bring on guest bloggers and will also intersperse their own blogs throughout, so that the content of the blog isn’t entirely written by someone else. Once a blog has grown even more and is too large for one person to handle, the owner will usually take on a manager or a partner and split the ad revenues with that person, to help handle the amount of work it takes to keep it going. Don’t worry about that just yet – you’ve got a … Continue reading →

Blogging as a Business, Part One

I’ve talked about blogging as a hobby and blogging as a job, and now I wanted to talk about blogging as a business. Yes, there is a difference between blogging as a business and blogging as a job, although I certainly didn’t know the difference when I first started out. As I said before, when you blog as a job, the amount of income that you make directly corresponds with the amount of blogging that you do. If you stopped blogging on your personal blog today, your income would dry up because Google would eventually stop sending traffic your way, … Continue reading →

Blogging as a Job

In my last blog, I laid out the criteria for what constitutes a hobby blog. Now I wanted to talk about what criteria makes a blog a job. If you blog as a job, you can work for a company (like I work for Families) or you can write your own blog. When you write for a company (and this can be different depending on the circumstances but I’ll get into that later) you are getting paid per blog. The amount of money you make equals the amount of blogs you write. You may make extra depending on how many … Continue reading →

What Kind of Blogger are You?

I wanted to talk a bit about the different types of bloggers out there, because it seems like a lot of people get this mixed up. When I tell people that I blog for a living, they think that I’m writing up blogs about what my cat ate for breakfast this morning (which since I don’t have a cat, would make for an incredibly boring blog) or whatever other random thought pops into my head. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that my blogs on here tend to be a little bit random at times, but they do at … Continue reading →

Blogging for Pay

Since I have come home to work, I have done a variety of jobs, and the steadiest income from those jobs has been from blogging. There are a lot of people who make a heck of a lot more than I do from blogging (think six figures here) but although I may not make the most, I think I still have lots to share with anyone who is looking into getting into the blogging business themselves. The more I learn, the more surprised I am at how much I didn’t know when I first got started. I stumbled around pretty … Continue reading →

Change is in the Air

As many of you may already know, Lisa Pietsch is no longer the manager over the blogs portion of Families. She has changed to another website and will be managing blogs at that website from here forward. We will really miss Lisa here at Families–she has been the backbone to this community for a long time, and I have learned a lot from her. I have enjoyed working with her immensely, and I will miss that relationship that we have developed. I want to wish Lisa all the best at the new website, and also remind her to not be … Continue reading →