As someone who’s been blogging since 2009, I can say it’s one of my favorite side hustles, and I’ve certainly learned a lot about it during that time.
For one, I’ve found the writing to be a great creative outlet and a powerful medium to reach a wide audience. (Although the podcast has grown much faster.)
But it was a loooooong time before my blog made any real money, and one of the mistakes I made was not having a focus. I would write about whatever came into my head; current events, our travels, our dog, and occasionally I might throw in something about business or marketing.
There was no coherent theme or really any reason for someone to stick around unless they were interested in me personally. In 2013, I narrowed the focus of my writing to be about side businesses, and that’s when the site traffic started to grow.
If you want to start a blog of your own, check out my free 6-part video tutorial series that walks you through:
I had a lot of fun creating the free “how to start a blog” course and hope you enjoy it too!
Whether you already have a blog or are looking to start one, here are some of the best blogging-related articles and podcast episodes from the archives:
I compiled a binge-worthy selection of blogging podcast episodes from The Side Hustle Show into this playlist. I think you’ll like it!
Enjoy!
A small blog doesn’t have to mean a small income. By helping a specific group of people solve their problems, Carol Tice has attracted more than 1500 members — at $25 a month — to join her community. Carol went from working as a freelance writer, to coaching others how to become freelance writers, to … Read more
Now that I’ve been an ActiveCampaign customer for over a year, I wanted to share a review of my experience so far.
In this post, I’ll go through why I made the change from AWeber, and in-depth look at the pros and cons of Active Campaign.
Kimberly Gauthier has been running KeepTheTailWagging.com since 2011, but things really started to take off when she niched down her focus to raw feeding for dogs.
Raw feeding is basically the paleo diet for dogs — attempting to mimic their ancestral diet.
Her blog had than 2 million page views last year — almost entirely from organic search in Google, and she’s monetized the traffic with a few different income streams.
A few years ago, a side hustler named Brock McGoff reached out to me with a guest post pitch.
The post detailed how he was making, at that time, $4,000 a month, from his blog about men’s fashion, on the side from his day job.
Since then, Brock has turned TheModestMan.com into his full-time focus, into a 6-figure income, and into a media empire that expands well beyond the blog itself.
Marc Andre made over $1.1 million dollars from his photography hobby.
But what’s interesting is that he never got paid to take pictures, he never sold any of his photos, and he never held any photography workshops.
So, what did he do instead?
With 250 million active users Pinterest is a social media platform every blogger and business owner should be spending some time on.
I’ve been using the Pinterest tactics shared on this podcast in late 2015 by Rosemarie Groner and they’ve proven to be extremely effective … for a while.
“Everyone needs it, people tend not to get enough of it – so that’s how the site came about,” said Kieran.
Kieran MacRae is talking about sleep.
The site he started is called TheDozyOwl.co.uk, a UK-based site that Kieran has taken from $0 to $2.5k a month in revenue in its 12 months.
Jodi Carlson has been running her blog LeaderConnectingLeaders.com part-time since 2014 and has slowly built it up to $5-6k a month in revenue.
The earnings come from a combination of mostly digital product sales, as well as advertising, and affiliate relationships.
The surprising thing – to me at least – is that she’s done this in a niche that theoretically doesn’t have any money.
“I feel like this is the most important project I’ve ever worked on,” Mike said about his blog YoungArchitect.com.
Mike Riscica runs a blog, podcast, and has built a thriving community for young professionals in the architecture field.
You’ve got less than 3 seconds to make a first impression online.
Is your website turning would-be customers away without you even knowing it?
Your site and the words you use — your copy — could either be making you money or costing you big time.
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