This blog post is blatantly inspired by Jacq of Single Mom Rich Mom who writes so eloquently:
Without a goal, a blog is a huge time suck. And blogging is not a goal – or a means to a goal for 99.9% of people.
I worry for people who do spend a huge amount of time on their blogs but it’s not moving them further towards their goals, particularly financial goals.
I know that if I was working full-time there’s no way I’d spend more than 15 minutes a day on blogging related stuff. Maybe I only have that perspective because I have no advertising, don’t even know how many readers I have, and basically just do this for fun. I would probably be a better writer and blogger if I did have goals, but it’s kind of nice to not have them for hobbies, isn’t it?
Is a blog a good investment of time for most bloggers? Do other bloggers have a desire to become the next Get Rich Slowly or The Simple Dollar?
DON’T BLOG ONLY TO MAKE MONEY
Everyone talks about blogging as a great way to make side money, which I have repeated over and over again is NOT REALISTIC.
You cannot make money blogging if you aren’t serious about it as a real side venture, and it is not any easier or less time-consuming than just getting a part-time job. Frankly, it probably doesn’t even pay as much.
It has taken me 5 years to get to this point, and I could have made more in one year slinging coffee part-time at Starbucks than what I’ve made so far from my two blogs.
However making money with this blog is not my goal, has never been my goal and will never be my goal.
Honestly, I make more money with my day job, and I find my day job both interesting and challenging.
It is not even close to what I consider to be true passive income because this is such a huge time suck.
MY GOAL FOR BLOGGING: FUN, FREE & EASY
What it is to me is a fun, free hobby. I like rambling, and I don’t consider myself a particularly polished or good writer, but I do enjoy writing to some extent.
Originally, I started getting into blogging as a way to chronicle my journey out of debt, and now that I’m debt-free, the blog has been less money-centered and more life-centered with a hint of money talk.
I have no stress whatsoever with my blogs (www.EverydayMinimalist.com is my other one), because my posts are scheduled 1 – 2 years in advance, blogging 3 times a week on each blog, which is 6 posts a week in theory, for a year or so.
Total posts written? 312 so far between my two blogs (by a rough estimate, I think it’s more 400), and I have hundreds of ideas in my iPod touch I have to get around cleaning out by turning them into posts.
When I blog on impulse, it is to respond to bloggers or readers and write posts that are of the moment, like this post.
If I have no ideas for 3 months, or I am too busy/lazy (?) to write, I don’t force myself to write or feel guilty.
The day that these blogs stop becoming fun or free, is the day I will quit. 🙂 I don’t want to put unnecessary stress on myself. It’s not worth it.
I will let the blogs run out of their posts and then say a heartfelt goodbye. It’s what I did with my now defunct style blog Style on a String.
That third blog I started, was too time consuming with all the photos I had to take, the planning, the searching, and so on. It was far more time intensive than these two blogs combined, and it stopped being FUN.
Let’s see what happens when I have kids. 🙂 I wouldn’t choose to blog instead of spending time with my future children.
Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver.
I cleared $60,000 in 18 months earning $65,000 gross/year.
Now I am self-employed, and you can read more about 
You just hit a bull eye. This is exactly what I aiming with my blog – just a collaboration media, to find like minded people and discuss my ideas and share the results towards financial independence.
I would be quite happy if blog would just pay for itself – domain name & hosting. My time is not free, but I do it purely because I enjoy doing it.
I could invest this time into working / developing myself towards career progression. But I want learn more about personal finances and economics, because it is fun!
I completely agree with your point. I’ve only ever kept a blog as an online diary, nothing more. The satisfaction of blogging, for me, comes from having an outlet to vent honestly to when I feel like I can’t do so in real life (without consequences anyway), and from meeting like-minded individuals who can relate to me. Perhaps I’m still stuck in blogging 1.1 and haven’t moved on to the more modern uses yet, nonetheless it’s sufficient for me.
I don’t really think about keeping a schedule with my blog. Like you, if I don’t have anything to blog about for a few weeks or months, I wouldn’t force myself to update for the sake of updating. On the other hand, I think one of the inherit requirements for this strategy to succeed while still keeping an audience is that you do need to have a relatively eventful life, which I have been very fortunate with.
One of the benefits I’ve realized from blogging though, is that I’ve become a much better writer than before. It was an implicit “practice makes perfect” exercise that I didn’t consciously realize, but has been personally rewarding.
It is amazing that you have that many blog posts already written!! Wow!
augh! My goal is to post once a day. That’s about it. The thing started out as a hobby. Morphed mysteriously into an enterprise. Made some dollars. Stopped making as many dollars. Then made some more dollars and attracted various unsavory suitors. Now makes fewer dollars again.
If you calculated how much I earn per hour on this thing, it would be in the double digits…with a decimal point in front of them. I’ve stopped thinking of it as a money-making enterprise. It’s just an outlet and an idle amusement.
This is timely, as I’ve just started work on my own blog (not yet published). I don’t know if what I have to say on any subject is particularly fascinating or unique, but it seems like an interesting way to purge all the things that roll around my head. I’m not sure how I will feel if I don’t get any readers, as that will confirm I’m as boring as I thought!
I hope you won’t mind me linking to this article in my initial musings… when I finally finish.
Right now blogging is free for me. I get to express myself creatively, and I get to interact with such an awesome community.
I’m not sure if I could make money off my blog or if I would be ready to take on the work required to do what it takes to make a successful blog.
I never really had any goals about my blog. I just wanted to get to writing more, so I started doing it as a hobby. I hope to use my writing there to leverage some paying gigs with other publications, but I don’t really have any grand plans to use the blog itself as an income-earning vehicle.
I knew from the get go that blogging for money wasn’t really an option for me. I don’t have the time to put into writing and marketing a blog as a business. My goal for my blog is just to simply put my thoughts into mostly cohesive sentences and try to hold myself accountable for my actions. I find blogging helps exercise my brain and challenges me to write in a style different from how i have to write at work. I love the community i’ve found through blogging too, and all that makes my blogventure worth it.
I LOVE blogging! I think it’s worth it just for fun. I have had offers to advertise, but so far the deals haven’t been very good or it’s been for places I don’t support (National Payday Loans actually made pretty good offer, but I was like, are you kidding me??). I make $0 from my blog, but I still love it and the time I put into it. Granted, since getting my new job I can only blog 3-4 times per week instead of 5 but I’m definitely not going to go down to 1 or 2 just because I’m not making money doing it.
Part of Jacq’s comment that strikes with me is there is an assumption that PF blog’s goal is to make money and that it consumes time. Firstly, that may not be the goal or the intent of a PF blog at all. Or any blog in fact. For example, I blog for interest. For community. For a hobby. For fun. For own self-growth and accountability. Secondly, time consumption is relative. It may take time for some people but not neccessarily all people. And some people have time to posts as well so future scheduling makes sense. Scheduling doesn’t have to be for a job. That’s an assumption too. It can be solely because of desire for other reasons.
Personally, I know some people do it for money or for glory. But I’ve never done it for that reason. My blog is not crawlable. All my readers are referrals or people who’ve stumbled in by themselves. I have no advertising and reject any offers to even hold contests. For my own purposes, it’s for a sense of community and self-growth and accountability.
AP – In the context of my original post, there was a blogger I was referring to (who was not a personal finance blogger) who spent 25 hours a week for a year who had a full-time job, family, etc. – who was trying to (eventually I guess?) make money off his site and had made nothing. 750+ hours a year for 0 return spent on a business is a lot – IF one of your goals is to make money off that business – which his was. It’s the whole premise of his site in fact.
I couldn’t justify to myself spending that much less time with my children in order to make connections with internet strangers without a serious attempt to make some money at it so I would have more time to spend with my family hopefully later on. That’s exactly what I did in fact in working two jobs (at the expense of my personal hobbies, not my family – well, maybe a bit). To be honest, it boggles my mind that someone would even do that.
It also occurred to me after I commented that Fab is just far more prolific than most and that’s why she schedules posts.
I blog to share my experiences in PF and life in general, to vent, to keep myself accountable for my goals, and to learn from other bloggers. I’m so techologically unsavvy that it’d probably take me a lot of time to start and maintain kind of successful, money-making blog. Even then, I would probably make more money from working at starbucks. I know that I’m not intuitively a good writer, some of my ideas don’t translate well onto paper, and sometimes I have nothing “blogworthy” to share for weeks on end. For me, this casual blogging without monetary goals in mind is working out perfectly. Even though I have made 0 dollars since starting my blog, I feel that the amount that I have learned from others and about myself through blogging is worth the time and energy I have devoted to the blog.
Another question then – if blogging really is just a fun hobby that serves your life (not your life serving it) – then why do things like schedule posts ahead etc.? If you’re off, you’re off. You’re out living your life in real time. Scheduling is the kind of thing you’d do for a job, not a hobby. I can’t think of any other kind of hobby that one would do that for. Not criticizing your m.o. – I actually admire your awesome organizational skillz, I just don’t know why. The only reason why I can see to do it is to keep traffic up.
Don’t get me wrong – I totally believe that writing is great – communicating is great. Lots of times I think people discover more about themselves and the world by writing about it. It forces you to put your life under a microscope and analyze it. To be introspective – and to get feedback – and that’s a good thing (sometimes in limited amounts – I can and have driven myself crazy by over-thinking things too). 😉
I started because I was at a transition and didn’t know which way to go: To retire? Or what? All of the early retirement blogs and forums said the retirement lifestyle was all fuzzy bunnies and pink unicorns. Then why was I feeling so lost without work? Where is the next place to go from here?
I still don’t know. 😉
I like reading blogs that have a predictable schedule, so that’s what we want for our readers too. Also, just because we may write 6 posts on a Sunday, for example, doesn’t mean posting 6 posts on a Sunday is going to make for very interesting conversation on any of them.
I guess since I was never much of a blog reader, the thought doesn’t occur to me to write daily. I used to dread it when I used to subscribe years ago to TSD and he would write daily and I’d just have to hit delete 98% of the time.
Your range of topics is SO much wider than most though GR. That must make it easier to write. I try to stick to PF (for the most part) on my site – but it’s not something I’m learning about anymore – or even have that many opinions on. I’m at that point I guess where I just don’t think about money as an issue, just like I don’t think about child rearing as an issue – it’s just something I keep on doing the way that works for me. So it’s actually difficult for me to even think up topics to write on that I find interesting.
On my other site, I easily post 3 times as often, almost daily – because I think about the topic every single day. I could never be as prolific as 6 posts in a day though. The thought crosses my mind that I should only run one blog and write what comes to mind as you guys do – and FAB does.
Yet I don’t know that people want to hear me opine on tangential topics. I just don’t know.
I started bloggging for personal therapy. My blogging grew so now I’ve discovered that I’m able to help and teach a little through the medium. I make some money through book sales but a lot of my readers discover my ebooks first, not the blog. Advertising doesn’t pay much at all.
I blog because I enjoy it, not because I make money. Like you, when it gets to be a chore I will probably quit.
Peace,
Annie from Annienygma.com
Noooo you’re not allowed to say a heartfelt goodbye!
Back on topic… I didn’t *start* blogging for money. However, I’m now rollin’ in it. Okay, not rich-like, but consider this – last month, just from one blog, that I probably don’t do as much work as I should for, I made half of what I did busting my ass in a warehouse for 50+ hours a week all month. So, I figure all I have to do is double that, and I can quit my miserable job.
So now, I am *kind of* blogging for money. I am working on starting a few more blogs in different niches, but they’re niches that I’m super interested in and write about sometimes anyway (one being scooters, the other being anime and general Japan-ness). I learned pretty quickly that I can’t start a blog in a niche I don’t care about (can’t write that stuff), or even on the “other side” of the personal finance niche (the “what’s a 401k” side) (can’t write that stuff either because I hate reading it myself).
So, in summation… it’ll still be fun, but I am definitely hoping for bigger things.
I hope you make tons of money soon 🙂
Catharsis….self expression…community…
Should I lose my job, I’d come out proper and turn my blog into a blog/portfolio. (I already have a few other somewhat abandoned blogs, a couple of which also meant to serve as portfolios). I gotta say, as more and more people I know IRL catch onto blogging, it’s tempting, but because I write for a living, having somewhere that’s private and just for me is too good to give up right now.
I thought about saying something to people that I blog but ultimately, I am either not ready or not interested. Probably the latter.
To me, the primary purpose of blogging was never meant to be a major source of money. A blog filled with advertisements and sponsored posts almost becomes unreadable. A blog is a good way to help you make money in some other way, such as by posting news updates to readers.
My blog is just a personal blog that doesn’t have much of a topic except that it’s about me. It allows me to connect to many other people through the Internet and to learn a lot about other people. Yeah, it’s a huge time sink, and I could get a lot of sleep, but not only will it be a good record in the future, I learn so much from it!
Hence why I basically put ads on the page to cover my costs (web hosting, paying people to fix #$*#&% site when it goes down, design, etc).
I’ve given up on sponsored posts — I reluctantly don’t find them interesting, even as a reader and I can’t justify putting y’all through that.
I do hope I’ve struck a balance between ads/no ads. I like a clean uncluttered look and I think I might be at my sweet spot.
I like reading about you though.. and people in general. More fun than 401ks.