SEQUOIA CLUB How to Make $100,000 a Year as a Blogger

S E Q U O I A C L U B

How to Make $100,000 a Year as

a Blogger

By Paula Pant

2 How to Make $100,000 a Year as a Blogger

Editor’s Note: Paula Pant is a self-described journalist, globetrotter, entrepreneur, and investor. You can find out more about Paula and read her site at http://affordanything.com.

©2013 Great Escape Publishing.All Rights Reserved. Protected by copyright laws of the United States and international treaties. This content may only be used pursuant to the subscription agreement and any reproduction, copying, or redistribution (electronic or otherwise including on the world wide web), in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited without the express written permission of Great Escape Publishing, 245 NE 4th Ave., Suite 102, Delray Beach, FL 33483.

http://affordanything.com

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Table of Contents

Introduction:

Getting Started TODAY with a Six-Figure Income in Mind ................................ 4

Chapter 1:

Your Two-Month Action Plan for Making Six Figures as a Blogger ..................... 5

Chapter 2: A Day in the Life of a Six-Figure Blogger ﹣ An Interview with J. Money ......... 11

Chapter 3:

Meet Bloggers Jeff and Mandy, Masters of the Art of Making Everyday

Life Entertaining ............................................................................................. 18

Chapter 4:

A Blogger Who Quit Her Day Job and Makes Six Figures Writing

about “Fun Stuff” ............................................................................................ 27

Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 30


Introduction:

Getting Started TODAY with a Six-Figure Income in Mind

Welcome!

If you like the idea of earning six figures from anywhere in the world — including your own living room...

... and you’d love to create and fund your own travel or retirement adventure...

... all the while meeting inspiring, like-minded people...

... then blogging is for you.

In this guide you’ll meet a number of successful bloggers who are all earning six figures by putting the techniques you’re about to learn in our Money-Making Travel Blogs course into practice. They each take a different approach to earning money from their blogs — and soon you’ll discover what it is they’re doing that’s working so well.

J. Money gives real-world advice on the topic of money while sharing the up-close-and-personal (and often hilarious) details of his life. His six-figure income comes from a combination of traditional display ads, affiliate marketing, direct advertising sales, and consulting work.

Mandy’s and Jeff’s decision to share their lives with the world has become quite profitable. Their blogs brought in over $115,000 in 2012 from freelance writing, display advertising, direct ad sales, and affiliate marketing.

Crystal’s blogging income comes from brokering advertising deals and “Budgeting in the Fun Stuff.” In only her second year of full-time blogging, she earned $113,500.

Not sure what affiliate marketing and direct advertising sales are, or how to take advantage of them? Don’t worry. We’ll give you step-by-step advice and strategies for making your own blog thrive.

When you get to the section in the Money-Making Travel Blogs course on monetizing your blog, pay close attention. As you’ll see from the examples here, there are lots of ways to do it — you just need to figure out which ones work best for you.

Procrastination is your biggest enemy. The best advice we can give you is to start TODAY.

Chapter 1 of this guide will help you do just that. Print out the Action Plan, put it on your fridge, and commit to following it. It’s the best and surest plan for success.


Chapter 1:

Your Two-Month Action Plan for Making Six Figures as a Blogger

Ready for the recipe to earn six figures as a blogger? Your ingredient list is pretty simple. You’ll need:

‣ A reliable internet connection

‣ A computer

‣ A love for writing and/or photography (depending on whether you want to have a written blog or a photo blog)

‣ A love for chatting with other bloggers and readers online (through emails, forums, and social media platforms like Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook)

‣ Patience and a smile!

That’s it. Anyone can blog — the barriers to entry are virtually nonexistent. The biggest barrier, honestly, is your own passion. Do you love writing and/or photography? Do you have the dedication to stick with your blog for months — even when you’re “not in the mood” to blog? If so, then you’ve got what it takes.

Here’s your two-month action plan, below. It’s a broad overview of what to do ﹣ a plan that’s at a bird’s-eye level.

Within the Money-Making Travel Blogs course, we explain the details of various monetizing strategies (affiliate marketing, advertising networks, etc.). We’re not going to explain the nitty-gritty of advertising placement here. Instead, we’ll give you a framework for creating your business plan.

Place a check mark next to each action item as it’s completed.


8-Week Checklist

Week 1: Read and watch the material in the Money-Making Blogs course. Don’t skip this step! This is critical to learning how the blogging industry works.

Start reflecting on the medium, tone, & topic you want your blog to cover (Chapter 2 of the Money-Making Blogs course).

Set an intention about how you hope to monetize. You’ll have learned about the various monetizing techniques within the course. Some of these include:

‣ Direct advertising sales‣ Affiliate marketing

‣ Advertising networks such as Google AdSense, Media.net, and LinkWorth

‣ Using your blog as a “jump-start” platform for other opportunities, such as:

‣ Freelance writing

‣ Freelance photography

‣ Blog consulting

‣ Consulting about the topic you blog about (cooking, training dogs, accumulating frequent-flyer miles, etc.)

‣ Ebook or traditional book publishing & sales

‣ Using your blog as a “jump-start” platform to offer services to other bloggers, such as:

‣ Freelance writing‣ Blog commenting

‣ Technical support

‣ Web hosting

‣ Website design

‣ Social media management‣ Blog editing

‣ SEO management

Remember: you don’t have to map out exactly how you’ll monetize. And the answer will probably change over time. But it’s important to set an intention during your first week. This helps point you in a direction — even if that direction changes as new opportunities emerge.


Week 2:Create an “elevator pitch.” Be able to describe exactly what you blog about,

and how you plan to monetize. Be able to state this clearly and concisely, within

30 seconds or less. This will help you clarify your thinking.

Choose a domain name, hosting

platform, and site design template. (The details of how to make these choices are

covered in the course.) Purchase your domain and your hosting, and set up

your site.

Create a “blog” account with Facebook, Twitter, and any other social media

platform that appeals to you (such as StumbleUpon, Pinterest, reddit, etc.). At

a bare minimum, you should have Facebook and Twitter accounts that are

specifically for your blog — different from your personal account. Remember,

this is a business and it needs its own brand!

Set up Google Analytics on your site, so

that you can study reader traffic and patterns.

Write at least three articles. (If you’re a

photographer, create at least three photo-driven blog posts.) Before you begin

promoting your site, you should put a “trove” of content on the blog.

Week 3:Write at least five more articles — one per day. By the end of this week, you’ll

have enough content on your site (eight articles) that your visitors will have

plenty of material to read through or photos to view.

Promote ONE of your blog posts. Post it

on your blog’s Facebook wall. Tweet it. Promote it on reddit, StumbleUpon, and

any other social media site you’ve joined. This will help you learn how to

promote blog posts via social media.

Start reading at least 10 to 20 blogs. These should be a combination of blogs within

your niche, blogs about how to blog, and general successful, popular blogs that you

enjoy. Subscribe to these through an RSS reader or via email. Analyze these blogs,

searching for things like:

‣ How often does the author post?‣ Is this blog single-author or multi-

author?‣ What’s the tone? (Humorous? Serious?)

‣ How niche or how broad is the content?

‣ How do they write headlines?

The more you study successful blogs, the more you’ll start picking up on successful

blogging patterns that meld with your own personal style, flair, and goals.


Week 4:Begin commenting on blogs. Leave comments on the blogs you signed up to read last week. And don’t write something generic like “great post.” Write something insightful or funny. Refer to yourself as “Name @ My Blog” (I call myself “Paula @ Afford Anything”) so that people recognize your brand, and enter the URL to your blog’s homepage within the comment’s name/ identification system so that people can click on your name and get taken back to your site.

Start a file of “future blog post ideas.” This can come in the form of a file folder on your desktop, a Google Docs document, a folder within your email system, an idea-capturing app like Evernote, or a traditional notebook and pen. Regardless of how you capture ideas, the important thing is to capture them. This will help you in the coming months, as your initial enthusiasm ebbs and flows (which is normal) and you need help generating topic ideas.

Create a posting schedule. Now that you have a trove of 10 articles on your site, create a schedule going forward. Perhaps you’ll post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday by 12 noon Eastern Time. Or perhaps you’ll post every Tuesday and Thursday by 8 a.m. Pacific. When you post doesn’t matter, as long as you have some schedule and you’re posting a minimum of one to two times per week.

Network with other bloggers on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites.

Follow bloggers within your niche. Send them a message that tells them how much you like their work. Participate in TweetChats and other outreach endeavors.

Remember: the best way to promote yourself is by promoting others. So retweet the articles that your favorite bloggers are tweeting about. “Like” their articles on Facebook. Repin their photos on Pinterest.

Week 5: Set up a Google “alert” for your name and your blog’s name. This way, whenever anyone writes about you or your blog, you’ll get an email alerting you about it.

Interact with your readers! By now, your first few readers should have left comments on your blog. Reply to their comments, or send them a quick email thanking them for coming to your site. (You can also use a WordPress plugin that automatically generates a thank-you email to your new commenters, but wait until you have too many comments to do this manually.)

Link to other blogs. If you read an article that you love, write a post that links to it. The other blogger will see that you’ve done so (they’ll get an alert in WordPress or via Google Alerts) and might reciprocate, either by linking to your blog posts, tweeting your articles, or just plain reading your site.

Continue leaving comments on other blogs and networking with people on social media.


Week 6:Time to start writing guest posts! Email some of the bloggers whose sites you’ve

been commenting on, and ask if they’re willing to accept a guest post. Guest

posting is the single best way to promote your blog.

(Hint: BEFORE you do this, search their

site to see if they host guest posts. If they don’t host very many, or if they haven’t

hosted any recently, then move on to another site that does! There’s plenty of

information about how to score great guest post opportunities in the Money-

Making Blogs course.)

Continue commenting and networking on social media. Promote your own posts

on social media, but also promote and interact with other people, as well.

Check your Google Analytics account.

By this time, Analytics has been running for four weeks — enough time to give you

decent data about where your readers are coming from, what keywords they’re

using, and what posts they’re reading. Formulate your strategy based on the

data you see in Analytics. If most readers are coming from Twitter, for example,

spend more of your time there. If most readers come from certain search

keywords, write more posts about that topic.

Week 7:Interlink your posts. By now, you have a pretty solid array of content on your site.

Go back through your old posts and link between them, so that readers can flow

from one page to another. Highlight key phrases within your text (“anchor text”)

and link to relevant blog posts on your own site.

Ask your readers a question. Get more

people to interact with your site by posing a question within one of your

blog posts and seeing reader replies in the comments. Worried you don’t have

enough readers? Try this on social media. It can help you expand your

network.

Keep guest posting, commenting, and promoting your work on social media!


Week 8:Become a media resource. By this point, you’ve been blogging long enough that you can start offering yourself to the media and to other resources (schools, magazines, etc.) as a resource within your topic area. So become a resource! Offer to speak at local workshops or classes. Sign up for HARO. (We cover this in the Money-Making Travel Blogs course.) Become a known resource for your topic area.

Analyze your traffic (again). It’s been two weeks since you last checked your traffic. How has your change in direction affected your traffic? Are people coming to your site in other ways? Are they staying on your page longer? From this point forward, check Analytics every two weeks and adjust accordingly.

Keep guest posting, commenting, and promoting your work on social media! I can’t emphasize this point enough.

There are two aspects to blogging —

1) creating awesome content

2) promoting the heck out of it

So keep doing these two things forever.

You’ll notice in Chapter 2 that six-figure blogger J. Money does these two primary things: He writes blog posts and he promotes his site (through activities like media interviews, answering reader emails, and responding to blog comments). Even at his level of success, at which he doesn’t need to leave comments on other blogs anymore, he’s still promoting his site daily.


Chapter 2:

A Day in the Life of a Six-Figure Blogger

An Interview with J. Money

J. Money won’t tell you his real name — that’s a pseudonym — but he will tell you all kinds of details about his personal life.

Like, for example, he’ll confess that he refers to pop singer Justin Bieber as “Biebs,” despite the fact that he, J. Money, is a 33-year-old married father.

He enjoys getting the mail. A LOT. He says that going to his post office box is one of the highlights of his day. Yes, he realizes that’s weird. No, he doesn’t care.

He used to drive a Cadillac, but it got “totaled” in a recent accident — meaning the total value of the damage exceeded the car’s value. That wasn’t too hard to achieve, given that the car was only worth $2,000 according to Kelley Blue Book. He still possesses it, though, and plans on fixing it up. That old Cadillac is his baby, after all!

In the five years he’s been writing his blog, Budgets Are Sexy, he’s garnered more than five million pageviews. Yes, five million!

His blog has collected more than 50,000 comments (that means his comment rate equals one percent of his pageviews, for those of you who enjoy quantitative data), and he’s written more than 1,850 articles. (That’s an average of more than one article per day, 365 days per year, for five years.)

He’s been featured on NBC and CBS, and in Time, U.S. News, MSN Money, Lifehacker, theL.A. Times, and Kiplinger.

He also makes more than $100,000 annually. Blogging has been his full-time career since 2010. By late 2012, he started bringing in roughly $125,000 annually through his online work.

That’s impressive, especially given that he blogs anonymously — a rarity among people with his level of success and fame.

What makes J. Money so successful?


A huge part of J. Money’s appeal is that he’s not afraid to share intimate details of his life. He notes that his wife spent 27 hours in labor. And that his son weighed 7 lbs., 5 ounces at birth. And that the bills associated with his son’s birth totaled more than $8,000, excluding the $25 worth of Vaseline they had to buy because of their son’s circumcision. (Okay, maybe he shares a little too much information.)

His personal net worth is currently $379,397.06. (Like Jeff and Mandy Rose, whom you’ll meet in the next chapter, he reports his finances down to the cent.) He writes monthly net worth updates on his blog, showing people how the value of his home increased or decreased, how the cash in his accounts has fared, and the remaining balance on his mortgage.

Of course, sharing the up-close-and-personal details of his life isn’t the only reason his blog is such a big hit. He’s also hilarious. (You’ll notice that this is a common thread among successful bloggers.) His writing overflows with character and personality.

We don’t know his real name, but we do know that J. Money sports a mohawk. And we know that occasionally, when he gives his baby boy a bath, he likes to play with wisps of his newborn’s hair to see if he can create a little baby mohawk.

When his readers voted his site Blog of the Year for The 3rd Annual Plutus Awards — the nation’s premiere personal finance blog award — he wrote in appreciation: “I owe you like 10,000 beers.”

How did J. Money become a blogger?

Let’s start at the beginning. His first job, at age 13, was babysitting for $5 per hour. (Are we starting further back than you expected? That’s classic J. Money storytelling style.) He held that gig until he turned 17, despite the fact that — in his own words — “I didn’t have a CLUE about watching babies.”

He also mowed lawns for $5 to $20 per lawn. And walked dogs for $10 per day. And worked as a summer camp counselor for $4.75 an hour, followed by day-care associate ($6/hour) and bagel maker ($6.25/hour). He quit the bagel shop when they asked him to work a shift that began at 4 a.m. Then he became a prep cook for an Italian restaurant for $7 per hour. (More importantly, he earned the nickname “Breadstick Boy” among his friends.)

I’ve skipped a bowling-alley job or two in there, but you get the idea.

During his college years, he worked as everything from a guy who hauls trash away from construction sites ($6 to $12 per hour) to a sales representative for a time-share company ($400 to $800 per sale).


He made sandwiches at 7-Eleven. He worked on an assembly line that made U.S. postal stamps. He took a job at his college bookstore for the express purpose of flirting with girls.

There’s a reason why I’m reporting his work background with this level of detail. I’m illustrating the key trait that makes J. Money so successful. He’s interesting. He’s forthright, detailed, and funny.

He’s intentionally “unprofessional.” When you ask him about his work history, he doesn’t recite the type of biography you’d read on a resume.

In fact, he glosses over his professional accomplishments — his college degree in multimedia design, his minor in advertising, his long career working as a graphic designer who commanded a nearly $80,000 yearly salary.

No, he won’t tell you about any of his professional accomplishments.

Instead, he tells you about the time he walked into a store at the mall called Gadzooks, an accessories shop for goth/punk teenagers, and got hired on the spot “because you look like you do drugs,” the manager said, looking at his blue mohawk.

(In case you’re curious, he has never touched a drug in his life, other than caffeine and alcohol. And no, he never imagined that looking like a junkie would help him get a job.)

His mohawk, his casual presentation, his put-you-at-ease attitude — these traits have done more than help him land a $6.75 hourly job at the shopping mall. They’ve helped him create a blog that garners an average of one million page-views every year.

J. Money got fired in December 2010. He had been with the same company for five years, earning $78,000 plus benefits as a graphic designer.

He announced it on his blog in a post that was titled, simply, “I Got Fired.” The first lines read:

There — I said it out loud. I got fired.And just like that I’m a full-time blogger :)

Three years earlier, in 2007, he had launched his blog. Its readership — and, correspondingly, its income — had grown substantially over the span of those three years.

In fact, J. Money had hatched a plan to quit his job in January 2011 in order to dedicate himself to full-time blogging. He wanted to save $50,000 in cash to serve as a “cushion” before he quit his job.


But his boss had other ideas. J. Money got laid off one month before he planned on quitting.

In some ways, he felt ready. He had $46,000 in the bank — just shy of his $50,000-before-quitting goal. He had been preparing for this transition for a long time. His readership and blogging income were already strong. His wife still worked. He didn’t have any dependent children yet.

But he also had a huge knot in his stomach.

“What do you say when that happens to you?” he wrote. “When you’re drafting a (blog) post one minute titled ‘Designing Your Own Lifestyle,’ and then seconds later it becomes a reality? Is that fate? Luck?”

He gave himself a one-year deadline. No looking for other jobs. No attempting anything else. He was going to devote a full year to blogging. His goal was to match his previous income.

Little did he know that he’d exceed his previous income. By a lot.

Previously, he earned $78,000 and his wife earned about $50,000, resulting in a combined household income of $128,000.

These days, he makes roughly that much money alone — without his wife’s income. His $50,000 “raise” has given his wife the freedom to quit her job in order to pursue a Ph.D. and look after their occasionally-mohawk-haired newborn.

What does J. Money blog about? Anything! He blogged about a Justin Bieber video. He blogged about his Cadillac getting totaled. He’s blogged about getting new hardwood floors installed at his house, about living with his mother-in-law, and about that time his wife lost a $350 check, which sat undeposited for years.

Sometimes, if he doesn’t have anecdotes, he’ll blog out a question for his readers — “Would you be willing to take a 10 percent pay cut in exchange for 10 percent fewer working hours?” — and invite them to answer. His comment stream becomes the blog entry, of sorts, for the day.

There are two commonalities to his blog posts: They have to relate to the topic of money, however tangentially, and they have to be interesting, funny, and entertaining.

Budgets Are Sexy isn’t his only blog, although it is his “main” website — the one he devotes the most time and energy toward.

He and a business partner co-founded a website called TakeOurStuff.com, which gives away random goodies such as an empty time capsule. Their giveaway items either come from their

http://www.takeourstuff.com



personal belongings or get donated by their readers. Thanks to these giveaways, he and his co-founder have built a solid readership and email distribution list. And in the blogging world, once you have a large subscriber list, there are endless ways to monetize.

J. Money offers one-on-one consulting, he invests in other people’s projects, and he used to run a charity — he’s now retired from it -- that raised more than $90,000 to help people in need. (His charity efforts were purely voluntary; he and his partners chose to forgo any compensation for that work.)

His income comes from a combination of traditional display ads, affiliate marketing, direct advertising sales, and consulting work.

Mixing up his projects with multiple websites and off-line activities like consulting helps him stay interested. He has a short attention span, he says, and blogging is one of the few activities that can actually hold his interest!

I chatted with J. Money about making money as a blogger. Here’s what he had to say:

Where does your income come from?

I own and manage a handful of sites online — mostly personal finance based, but also some other mere fun ones like TakeOurStuff.com, our crazy giveaway site :)

A big chunk of my income comes from (my primary blog) BudgetsAreSexy.com, though. Most comes from advertising networks and affiliate marketing on my main blog, and the rest of my income comes from my other sites and projects.

I also dabble in blog consulting when the opportunity comes up. That’s starting to be one of my favorite new gigs ’cuz I get to talk shop for hours with other bloggers while at the same time helping them out. Who knew there was even such a thing as a “blog consultant”? :)

(Do you notice how he uses words and phrases like “gigs” and “talk shop,” and intentionally writes abbreviations like “’cuz”? That’s how J. Money keeps his tone and style so interesting — which is why his readers keep coming back for more.)

In your opinion, what are the easiest and hardest ways to make money as a blogger?

The easiest way to make money blogging: Freelance your skills to other bloggers. I don’t do it myself, but it’s amazing what kinds of stuff bloggers outsource these days: writing, editing, social


media management, link roundups, and even straight-up commenting on other blogs! This is direct pay for direct work.

The hardest way to make money blogging: Advertising. You need a TON of traffic to make anything even near a part-time job. The only way to make money through advertising is to treat your blog like a business, rather than “just” a blog. That’s the key difference people tend to overlook, and there’s nothing wrong with being on either side of it — it just depends on what your goals are. If you tell me you’re strictly in it for the money, though, I’ll tell you you’re better off looking for a different side hustle ;) You really gotta enjoy it.

Walk me through a “Day in the Life.” What do you spend your time doing?

The first thing I do when I wake up is play with my baby and get him ready for day care. Then I go over my email and see what tasks come from it, off the get-go.

Once I knock some of those things out, I start brewing the coffee so I can make sure I’m ready to write as soon as the coffee touches my lips. I’ve long-ago learned that I’m pretty boring without coffee when I write, so I make sure to use it as efficiently as I can before the high runs off ;)

I’ll write non-stop for the next two hours or so — usually only producing one blog post ’cuz I suck like that — and then the next hour or two will go towards answering emails from readers or doing interviews, which I can get lined up now while I’m still semi-awesome.

The Top Blogging Activity You Must Start Doing Immediately

Regardless of what you blog about – travel, food, culture, or the arts – there’s one activity that’s absolutely critical: you MUST invest time into creating amazing-quality content. In this interview, J. Money tells us that he writes for two hours everyday ... and throws away a lot of his work. He’ll only create one blog post within two hours, sometimes a very short one. It’s because he’s not willing to publish anything that’s “less than” his best.

Mandy Rose (whom you’ll meet in the next chapter), meanwhile, offers beautiful photos and heartfelt writing on her site, House of Rose. She’s honest and forthright about the joys and stresses of motherhood and family life. She’ll alternate between telling stories that are touching and stories that are hilarious. The common thread? Every story, and every photo, is compelling – whether it makes you laugh, cry, or think.


Once the late afternoon hits (say, around 2-3 p.m.), I’ll finally force myself to have lunch, where I’ll then take phone calls. I’ll either have a call with my biz partner Nate St. Pierre (of TakeOurStuff.com) or with other bloggers/clients. We’ll talk about who-knows-what... but usually all fun stuff :)

Then around 4 p.m. I’ll go for a walk or run some errand around town to take advantage of the whole “working at home” situation, and then I’ll pretty much half-ass it for the next hour or so by reading blogs or watching videos or responding to new email that’s come in throughout the day.

Then it’s break time to spend a couple of hours with the baby and wife, and around 8 p.m. or so I’m back online doing a few more things to feel productive until calling it a day (calling it a night?).

At least, that’s how my dream days go :) Other days, I’m working until 3 a.m. and then waking up a few hours later to do it all over again, haha...

(Notice how he freely admits to “half-assing” parts of his workday? That’s what makes J. Money so awesome.)

What goals, metrics, deadlines would you suggest to new bloggers?

The first and main thing I say to all new bloggers is to just write, write, and write some more. That’s really the essence of what blogging is, and if you can’t get that part down, then the rest really doesn’t matter.

I usually advise getting on a schedule to keep yourself — and your readers — on track. Try a Mon./Wed./Fri. blog posting schedule, or a Mon./Thurs. posting schedule.

Once you’ve got the writing down and you are *being yourself* (an important one ’cuz that’s how you’ll differentiate yourself from the next blogger in town!), I’d then start concentrating on networking to better help grow your site and make some cool friends. Nothing’s more boring than being behind a computer for hours talking to no one. Spend some time emailing/tweeting/facebooking other bloggers that you enjoy or relate to, and have some fun! :)

As for goals or metrics/deadlines, I’m not so good with those. The only one I have is to write my blog posts and to answer my comments — that’s it. I figure as long as I’m doing a great job at those two, the rest of what I want (growth, money, opportunities) will follow. So far, so good, after five and a half years now — woo!!

You can follow J. Money’s adventures at BudgetsAreSexy.com and TakeOurStuff.com.



http://www.budgetsaresexy.com

http://www.budgetsaresexy.com




Chapter 3:

Meet Bloggers Jeff and Mandy, Masters of

the Art of Making Everyday Life Entertaining

At first glance, Jeff and Mandy Rose seem like an average, ordinary couple. They live in a beautiful home in Illinois with three adorable sons. Jeff works in finance, Mandy works from

home. They attend church and bake gluten-free pizzas and throw children’s birthday parties. What could be more normal than that?

Peek below the surface, though, and you’ll find why the Roses are so unique: They’re willing to

share intimate details of their lives with millions of people, and they do so in a manner that is — in my opinion — absolutely hilarious, incredibly memorable, and often touching.

And their decision to share their lives with the world has become profitable.

Jeff and Mandy present their lives — their stories, their photos — in a way that makes you laugh.

This family has figured out how to make buying life insurance entertaining. I mean, who else could possibly make a discussion about life insurance amusing? While many bloggers bore you

with stories about holiday dinners and 401k contribution limits, the Roses have mastered the art of making everyday life entertaining. They share pictures, they offer practical advice through

tutorials, and they greet the world with joy and optimism that shines through in their blog.

And that’s why the Roses have become a blogging power couple, pulling in $115,000 in blogging income in 2012.

So let’s meet the Roses, shall we?

Jeff and Mandy met in college. How do I know that? Mandy blogged about it. In fact, I read her

story several months ago and — because it was so funny — I never forgot it. Jeff was her neighbor in apartment B2, and one evening he showed up at her front door without a shirt on

(who does that??), asking if he could borrow a jar of peanut butter.

“To say that my roommate and I weren’t all like, ‘Heyyyyy hot new neighbor boy’ would be an understatement,” Mandy wrote.


Wait, the story gets better. (Better than a shirtless guy asking for peanut butter?) So Jeff and Mandy began dating, but one teeny-tiny little event was looming on the horizon: Jeff was about

to get deployed to Iraq.

What? That’s a plot twist.

You see, the year was 2004, and Jeff was in the Army National Guard. One day he got orders to deploy. They had already planned on getting engaged, but — with deployment on the horizon

— they decided to, um, expedite the process. They didn’t have time to pick bridesmaid dresses and floral centerpieces and quibble about whether or not they should hire a DJ. They wanted to

get married immediately.

So they eloped to Vegas.

Mandy wore jeans and a white tank top that, in retrospect, looks a little too much like a lingerie top. Jeff wore a sporty jacket. The whole thing took seven minutes.

And that was how the Rose family began.

Fast-forward four years. It’s now 2008. Jeff has returned from Iraq and the young couple has

settled down in Mandy’s hometown in Illinois.

Jeff, who majored in finance in college, became a Certified Financial Planner. If you’re not familiar with that lingo, it basically means that Jeff carries a license to help people plan their

finances. Some CFPs work for wealth management companies, but many choose to become small business owners. Jeff falls into the latter category. In December 2007, he and three

partners launched an investment planning group.

Like most small business owners, Jeff needed to find clients. But he didn’t exactly have a Merrill Lynch-sized advertising budget. So he decided to hop onto this newfangled fad called

“blogging.” In July 2008, he launched a blog called Good Financial Cents.

Just one problem: he didn’t know anything about blogging. And he certainly never imagined that

the blog itself would make money. He simply hoped that it would lead clients to his practice.

He didn’t know a lot about search-engine optimization, or SEO. There are some SEO aficionados (is that the right word?) who obsess over every detail about site speed and

backlinks and web crawlers. Jeff didn’t have time to mess with all of that. He boiled his strategy down to one tactic: guest posting.


First he asked himself: What search term do I want to be known for? Then he wrote guest posts for a huge swath of blogs, linking that keyword phrase back to his site.

What does that mean?

Jeff wanted people who were searching for the term “Illinois Certified Financial Planner” to find

his website... because, obviously, he’s a CFP living in Illinois, and because he started a blog for the sake of getting new clients.

So he created a page on his blog with the following URL:http://www.goodfinancialcents.com/

certified-financial-planner-il-illinois/

Notice how the URL includes his keyword phrase — Certified Financial Planner Illinois — plus the additional “IL,” the state abbreviation for Illinois, because many people will (probably)

abbreviate the state name when they search for that term.

He added a photo of himself to the page and repeated those keywords on the page several times. And then he took his most important step: He wrote guest posts.

Like, a lot of guest posts.

Really, a LOT.

During his first year blogging, Jeff wrote 30 guest posts. In almost every post, he included a

short bio that described him as an “Illinois Certified Financial Planner,” with a link that highlighted those four words (his keyword phrase) and linked those words back to that URL on

his blog.

Within less than two months, he started appearing in the Google search for the phrase “Financial Planner Illinois.” Victory!

In April 2009 — roughly one year after he launched his blog — he landed his first new client as

a result of that search engine traffic. That client’s financials were so impressive, “it was all I could do to not let my eyes pop out of my head,” he wrote. That one client alone ended up

generating $30,000 annually in fees for his firm.

These days, he gets between 110,000 and 120,000 visitors every month on his website, and SEO accounts for a “huge component” of that traffic, he says.

http://www.goodfinancialcents.com/certified-financial-planner-il-illinois/





(You can read his story about SEO here: http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/desire-taking-action-and-getting-results/... fittingly, he wrote it as a guest post!)

But this story isn’t really about how to find new clients for your financial planning firm. This is

a story about how to earn six figures as a blogger.

So let me take a moment here to describe Mandy, who writes a blog that’s far more visually appealing and entertaining than her husband’s website. (Sorry, Jeff!)

Mandy was actually the first in the duo to begin blogging. She launched a blog on the

blogspot.com platform earlier in 2008, though she migrated to her own domain (getting rid of the blogspot platform) in 2009.

Mandy’s blog documents life in their household (http://houseofroseblog.com). She’s the mom of

three boys, all of whom are currently ages six and under. She and Jeff are in the process of adopting baby number four.

When Mandy launched her blog, she wasn’t canvassing for clients. She wanted to talk about

baseball games and church and birthday parties, to reflect on afternoons spent at the park with her sons. She wanted to share tips about decorating and do-it-yourself projects. And later, when

she and Jeff decided to adopt their fourth child, a baby from the Philippines, she expanded her site to include a trove of information and personal stories about the international adoption

process, as well.

Now, the next thing I’m going to say might sound a little incongruous: Mandy is competing in a crowded market.

I know, I know. Most people don’t think of “market share” when they create a blog that

discusses toilet training. But there are a lot of mothers who blog about domestic life. It’s tough to achieve recognition in such a crowded field.

Yet Mandy’s blog exploded in popularity. She — in my opinion — writes one of the best blogs

about motherhood and American family life. Her blog has become so popular that she even hosts regular contributors, other women who routinely guest post for her site.

Mandy spends a lot of time promoting her site (well, as much time as a mom of three can find,

that is). But unlike Jeff, she doesn’t concentrate on SEO. Instead, she focuses on social media, and she particularly uses the website Pinterest to generate traffic.

http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/desire-taking-action-and-getting-results/




http://www.blogspot.com

http://www.blogspot.com

http://houseofroseblog.com

http://houseofroseblog.com


Pinterest is a site on which people share, or “pin,” photographs. The pictures can display anything — Thai curry, jogging, photos of your bathroom.

A photo of Thai curry might link to a culinary blog that shares the recipe. The photo of jogging

might link to an exercise blog that motivates people to reach their fitness goals. The bathroom photo might link to a decorating blog that describes how to pick a color palette or hang wall

sconces.

If you want to see an awesome example of how to use Pinterest to promote your blog, check out Mandy’s board: http://pinterest.com/houseofrose

You’ll notice that in her header, she introduces herself as Mandy @ HouseofRoseBlog.com.

Immediately, you know that Mandy has a blog. You know the URL of that website. And if the photos on her Pinterest board intrigue you, then you might visit that blog to learn more.

But wait — that’s not all.

At the bottom of most photos, there’s a little line that says: “Pinned from

HouseofRoseBlog.com.” Click on that wording. You’ll be taken to a Pinterest board that shows all the photos that share that same source information — all the pictures pinned from her blog.

(The direct URL for this is http://pinterest.com/source/houseofroseblog.com. The word “source” in the URL indicates that the House of Rose blog is the “source” of all these photos.)

Near the header of that source page, in the top left-hand corner, there’s a little button that says

houseofroseblog.com. If you click on it, you’ll be transported to her website.

Here’s the thing: A LOT of people click on that link. And a lot of other people type her URL into their browser bars, directly visiting her site. And a lot of those same people “repin” (share)

her photos on Pinterest, promoting her work, generating even more traffic for her site.

The result is a Pinterest-fueled traffic explosion that makes her site incredibly popular. Of course, Pinterest isn’t the only social media platform that Mandy has aced. She also has 2,361

Twitter followers and 7,100 Facebook “likes.”

Yes, I said 7,100. That’s not a typo.

Mandy is a rock star.

But hold on.

http://pinterest.com/houseofrose

http://pinterest.com/houseofrose

http://www.houseofroseblog.com

http://www.houseofroseblog.com

http://pinterest.com/source/houseofroseblog.com

http://pinterest.com/source/houseofroseblog.com


SEO and social media can get people to land on a site. But compelling content is what makes them STAY there.

Jeff and Mandy use different techniques to promote their blogs. And they blog about VERY different subjects.

But both of them reward their visitors with content that’s so refreshing, so entertaining, that it inspires people to keep coming back.

I mentioned adoption, right? Some people don’t discuss adoption at all. Others only show you the rosy side: We adopted our baby and she’s so cute!

But Mandy is different. She’s not afraid to be honest and vulnerable on her blog, to discuss ethical dilemmas and tough choices and emotional consequences. Last year, she wrote an incredible post about whether or not the Rose family should take on a “high-risk” child — one with HIV or Hepatitis B or Down Syndrome.

Her post stayed in my mind for months. I’ll probably never forget it. (Just like I’ll never forget the post about Jeff knocking on her door shirtless, asking for peanut butter.)

Making decisions like those is part of the adoption process, too. And it’s a part of the process that very few people discuss, particularly with the honesty and candor with which Mandy talks about it.

She blogged about experiencing her final mother’s day as a mom of three, anticipating that the fourth

child will arrive within a few months. She blogged about how she’s not sure that she has the

bandwidth for yet another child, but that somehow

How to Promote and Grow your Blog

What’s the secret to blogging success? Write amazing content and then promote, promote, promote!

1) Mandy Rose is a social media rockstar. She created a FREE account on the Pinterest website, taught herself how to use Pinterest, and leveraged that social media platform into lucrative blog traffic.

2) Jeff Rose, on the other hand, mastered the art of writing guest posts. He wrote more than 30 guest posts within his first year as a blogger, many of which appeared on BIG blogs.

3) J. Money is a naturally outgoing person, so he promoted his blog in the manner that came most naturally to him – networking with other bloggers! He chats in forums and he’s active on social media. And now that his blog is well-known, he networks with “traditional” media, too!

4) Crystal Stemberger (you’ll meet her in the next chapter), meanwhile, loves to read other blogs, so she promoted her site by leaving comments on the blogs that she read. And it worked!


she’ll find a way. And she blogged about how her husband embarrassed her by publicly referring to her legs as “sexy” on Facebook.

See? Heartfelt, honest, and humorous.

Sure, Pinterest might get people to land on her site for the first time. But amazing-

quality content is what makes people return.

Okay, so... back to the discussion about money, because blogging is a lot of work and it’s good to know that your efforts are being compensated. And $115,000 a year is pretty decent

compensation.

I’m nosy. If you’re anything like me, you want to know as much as possible about how the Roses attain that much blogging income.

Fortunately, Jeff and Mandy are forthright about the process.

They’ve been publicly disclosing their income since December 2011, which is when they

launched a website, dollarsandroses.com, about their journey toward growing their blogs into a full-fledged business.

Jeff, as you recall, had originally started his blog so that he could gather new clients for his

financial planning firm. But over the years, he began to see that his blog itself could directly make money, independent from client acquisition.

Mandy, meanwhile, decided to quit her job in 2011 so that she could focus full-time on

growing her blog and raising her three boys.

So in December 2011, they began publicly disclosing their monthly blogging income. They made $3,798.15 in the first month of public reporting (yes, down to the cent). Of that money,

$500 came from online financial planning fees, $200 came from freelance writing opportunities that resulted from the attention they received from their blogs, and the other

$3,100 came from a traditional combination of Google AdSense, affiliate marketing, and direct advertising.

The following month, January 2012, their blogging income shot up to $6,878.52. Again, $500

came from online financial planning (I mention that because it’s not an applicable monetization strategy for most people), $200 came from freelance writing, and the other


roughly $6,100 came from a combination of AdSense, affiliate marketing, and direct

advertising deals.

Throughout the first half of 2012, their

blogging income ranged from a low of $3,120.93 to a high of $9,000.03.

Financial planning fees hovered between

$250 and $500 most months, with the other roughly $3,000 to $8,750 coming

from more applicable blog monetizing methods: freelance writing, display

advertising, direct ad sales, and affiliate marketing.

I know, I know — that’s quite a range. But

it’s nothing compared to what awaited them in the late summer of 2012.

Their monthly income climbed to

$10,562. Then it topped $12,000. By the end of 2012, their blogging income

climbed to $18,572. Sounds like a great December, right?

Actually, their entire year in 2012 was

pretty awesome: They earned a total of $115,289.16 in blogging income that

year.

And 2013 is proving even bigger. March 2013 was the first month in which their blogging income broke the $20,000-per-month barrier. Roughly $8,000 of that income came from Jeff’s

blog, while Mandy’s blog — although it had more readers — earned $3,100. Their niche site brought in another $8,500.

At this point, Jeff hired someone full-time to work as an editor for his personal finance blog,

Good Financial Cents.

I should add that, in addition to the House of Rose blog and the Good Financial Cents blog, Jeff and Mandy also operate other “niche” websites. A niche website is a site that’s optimized for a very specific readership, like aspiring security guards. It’s easier to corner the market in a very specific niche, like “security guard training,” than it is to grab market share for something general, like “lose weight.”

They won’t disclose the names/URLs of these websites, and there’s a good reason behind that. When famous blogger Pat Flynn disclosed the names/URLs of one of his niche websites, a huge spate of copycat websites sprung up overnight, decimating the results of his work. Now it’s considered prudent to shield the identity of your niche websites, especially if you disclose the amount you earn, for the sake of warding off copycat competitors.)


“It’s hard to believe that my blog has grown to a point of needing someone to come on full-time, but that’s the reality of where my site is now,” he wrote on Dollars and Roses. “Crazy!”

Their blog traffic is through the roof. In March, Mandy had 190,000 visitors to the House of

Rose blog, while Jeff brought 155,000 visitors to his blog.

Their total income for the first quarter of 2013 was $54,391.64. If they can replicate that income through all four quarters of 2013, they’ll end the year with about $216,000 in gross

income — a full $100,000 more than the previous year.

Of course, no one knows what the future will hold. Will they earn more? Less? The same? You’ll have to keep reading their monthly income reports to find out.

Follow their journey at dollarsandroses.com and watch for Jeff’s new book, Soldier of Finance,

which will be hitting bookstores soon! (Oh yeah, did I mention that in the midst of all of this, Jeff snagged a book deal?)

http://www.dollarsandroses.com

http://www.dollarsandroses.com


Chapter 4:

A Day A Blogger Who Quit Her Day Job

and Makes Six Figures Writing about “Fun Stuff”

In Money-Making Travel Blogs, I interviewed Crystal Stemberger and she told us how she went from earning $35,500 in her old job to six-figures as a blogger within two

years. I’m calling attention to her again here because her story could easily be yours.

Crystal Stemberger used to make $33,000 per year in exchange for “doing nothing.” She worked for a large, Texas-based car dealership software company that was going through a

slump in business. She started at $26,500 in 2005 and received a few little pay bumps over the next four years. But then a crash in car sales (no pun intended) took place in 2009.

No car sales meant that no car dealership software was needed. But Crystal’s employer wanted

the department to ride out the slump. Her instructions were to do the two hours of work a day that was required of her, and then pretend to look busy. Occasionally she’d answer an email or

a phone call, but most of the time, she was supposed to occupy herself.

She wasn’t allowed to use Facebook, read celebrity gossip, or visit any other website that would make it obvious that she wasn’t performing actual productive work. What if a customer

walked through the doors and saw her using Facebook? That would be unprofessional. So Crystal needed to occupy herself in other ways.

She entertained herself by reading blogs. And naturally, she began leaving comments on the

blog posts that she read. Her bosses loved it, because she was constantly clacking away at her keyboard, looking busy and important. To an outside observer, she seemed like the hardest-

working person there.

Crystal didn’t realize it at the moment, but as she left comments on other people’s blog posts, she set herself up for a new career that would bring her a six-figure annual income.

However, at the time, she wasn’t intending to develop a lucrative new income stream. She was

just having fun.


Her life shifted when one of her favorite bloggers sent her an email suggesting that she start her own blog.

She had commented on his blog posts many times, he noted, and she always had something funny or insightful to say. He said that if she started a blog, he’d love to read it, and he bet that other people would, too.

So Crystal began a blog called Budgeting in the Fun Stuff. She wrote about managing her household finances. She talked about her goal of paying down her mortgage. She discussed her desire to take vacations, eat at restaurants, and make sure there was always space in her budget for the enjoyable things in life.

The moment she started her site, she instantly had readers. That’s unusual. Most people (myself included) write for an audience of next-to-zero readers for the first few weeks. After we start

promoting our blogs — largely through leaving comments on other bloggers’ sites and writing guest posts — we begin getting traffic. That’s a normal trajectory. Almost everyone experiences

that path.

Not Crystal. She had already been leaving comments on other people’s blogs for several months. By the time she started her site, she was already well-known among a peer group of

bloggers, who flocked to her website to read her first few posts. She quickly established herself among a core group of personal finance and lifestyle bloggers, all of whom privately chat with

each other in forums about the business of blogging.

She launched her blog in February 2010. Within 10 months, by Christmas 2010, she had earned $6,000 as a blogger, mostly through private ad deals. She set a New Year’s resolution to

quit her day job, which — at that point — was paying her $34,500 annually.

The Secrets to Making Six Figures.

Crystal’s secret to success came from three things:

1) Writing on her blog regularly (she posted daily for several years)

2) Promoting her site by commenting on other blogs and networking with other bloggers in internet forums and through social media

3) Spotting a “need” within the blogger marketplace. Crystal figured out how to leverage each contact that she made with an advertiser, so that every new relationship with an advertiser resulted in not just ONE sale, but many sales.


Because Crystal was hobnobbing with a circle of bloggers, she discovered that there was a demand for someone who could broker advertising deals between bloggers and advertisers.

Many bloggers want more private ad deals but don’t know where to look. Or they don’t like

negotiating. Many more don’t have time to search for those ad deals, since they’re already busy balancing blogging with their full-time jobs and family life, Crystal noticed.

So she began taking on “clients”

— bloggers who wanted Crystal to find and broker advertising

deals on their behalf. She works purely on commission: When she

sells an ad for a client, she collects 25 percent and sends the

client the remaining 75 percent. If her client earns $0, then Crystal

also gets paid $0. She’s non-exclusive (a client can work with

as many other brokers as he wants) and doesn’t require any

type of minimum contract or commitment.

She began her business in April

2011, starting with only three clients. Within three short

months, her list had grown to 40 clients, and she was making

enough money to quit her day job. Her final day inside a

cubicle was July 15, 2011.

In her first year of self-employment, July 2011 to June

2012, she earned an astounding $155,700. That was a huge, huge

leap forward from the $34,500 salary Crystal walked away from.

The Best Locations to Place Ads on Your Blog.

1) The top, right-hand sidebar of your website is “prime real estate.” You can command great money for advertising that you place in that area ... although you may or may not WANT to sell that spot. Some bloggers keep that prime spot for themselves and place their “Email Subscription” box there, in order to maximize their number of blog subscribers!

2) Are you familiar with the notion of “Above the Fold?” In a newspaper, “above the fold” was the area that you’d see-at-a-glance when the newspaper was folded in half. Online, that same phrase refers to the area of a website that you see without scrolling down. Advertising that’s placed “above the fold” will generate more money than advertising placed “below the fold.”

3) Crystal has made a lot of money selling “in-content” ads — advertising placed within a blog post, rather than off in a sidebar. She explains this in depth in her interview in the Money-Making Travel Blogs course.


Her husband quit his job in January 2012 so that he could help her, full-time, with her growing business. Advertising deals slowed down the following year (like many industries, blog advertising is cyclical), but Crystal and her husband still earned $113,500 during their second year of full-time blogging, July 2012 to June 2013.

Crystal’s advice to anyone who wants to start a blog? “Just do it!” she says. “I know that’s a Nike slogan. But just do it!”

ConclusionAfter reading these three stories, I hope you’ve discovered just how many directions you can take with your money-making blog. I also hope you’ve found some common ground between yourself

and these bloggers and you’re feeling motivated and inspired to get started as soon as possible.

As you work through the Money-Making Travel Blogs program, keep these stories in mind, and remember that everyone mentioned in this report started out just like you. So print out the

Chapter 1 Action Plan, and get started today.

Good luck, and happy blogging!

Documents

SEQUOIA CLUB How to Make $100,000 a Year as a Blogger