How My Blog Has Become a Small Business

It’s wedding season, so over the past few weeks we have been attending more social events than we usually would. The question, “What do you do?” always comes up.

For the past 5 and a half years I’ve answered that question by saying, “I’m a stay-at-home mom.”

That’s still true in that I am at home and I am a full-time mom, but the whole truth is that I’m now a small business owner.

So I started answering, “I’m a blogger.”

That answer brings a lot of questions. My personal favorite was the slightly tipsy wedding guest who responded, “Wait, a blogger? Like for a living?! That is the s***!”

Yes, it is.

I was also featured recently in our local paper and a local magazine (it was the same article, they just ran it in two different places). So friends and acquaintances have been asking a lot more questions since they have read those articles. I thought I would use this post to answer some of them.

I don’t have hundreds of thousands of followers or even hundreds of thousands of page views.

But as my awesome and supportive husband likes to remind me, I do have enough people visiting this blog every month that my readership could fill a stadium. That is sort of mind-boggling to me.

I am now making more money off of this blog than I did when I was working part-time outside of the home.

Blogging is not a consistent income, at least not for me. Some months are completely dry, some months bring in enough to pay for groceries and the electric bill, and some months rival my former full-time income.

Some people do not agree that bloggers should be paid for their work. As a matter of fact my good friends just received this comment, “The moment you get paid is the moment you lose credibility. If you get sent something great and choose to blog about it, I will trust that review if I know you haven’t been paid, the moment money exchanges hands you’re nothing but a cheap advert to me. Also, if you choose to blog about everything free you’re sent, then again, you lose credibility. A blog is not a business, it’s a hobby. In my opinion.”

That’s interesting to me. I don’t understand the philosophy that women shouldn’t be paid for their work. I love this blog. I did it as a hobby without being paid a dime for over three years. But guess what? Times are changing. Now brands are willing to pay moms to use products we love and share them with our friends.

For example, I really do use Tide laundry detergent. I have very sensitive skin and it’s the only brand I have found that doesn’t make me break out in hives.

So, when I found out that they were willing to pay me very well to write this post, of course I said yes. Why shouldn’t I? I don’t think I am supposed to share how much I made from that one post, but I can tell you that it was enough to buy our family’s groceries for an entire month.

I also turn down sponsored post opportunities almost every single day. Most recently, I turned down an opportunity to post about chocolate milk. I’m a mom of three and, to be honest, I do give my kids chocolate milk pretty regularly. But I have never bought that brand and didn’t feel comfortable promoting it to you. I only share brands I really do like and products that I actually use.  

I try not to have a ton of ads on this blog, but I do have some. See that one add at the bottom of each post? I don’t make a ton of money from ads because I don’t have a lot of them on this site, but the ones I do have generate enough income to pay our water bill.

I’m also an Amazon affiliate, so sometimes if I link to an Amazon product and you click on the link and decide to make a purchase, I get a very small “finders fee” from your business with Amazon.

A lot of people seem to think that blogging is not a “real job.” I sort of understand this because I was a hobby blogger for such a long time. The thing is, if you put full-time hours into blogging, it can generate full-time income.

But that means spending hours on the phone with PR reps, sending invoices, filling out tax forms, creating and sending press releases, making spreadsheets, and doing other “real job” tasks on top of the actual blogging. 

My blog has become a business because I started treating it like a business.

The Blog University, which is the business I started that will be hosting the first annual BlogU Conference this summer, is even more of a business in the legal sense. It’s registered with the state of Pennsylvania, has contracts with clients, a whole legal team working on it, insurance policies, business accounts, and has generated more gross income than I ever made in any of my years as a classroom teacher.  

I do have a mother’s helper who I hired very recently to help watch my kids for about 12 hours a week, but other than that I do not have staff physically here with me. Other bloggers have generously given their time to help me get BlogU off the ground this year. I am paying some of them for their time, others are just beyond generous in their support of my mission.

I feel very fortunate that being at home for the past several years has afforded me the opportunity to build these businesses. I want to help other women do the same thing. That’s why I started BlogU.

Today is the last day to register. If you are even slightly considering coming, please do. We really can help you turn your hobby into a business that will make you real money and help you to support your family financially by doing what you love to do.

Click here to register.