I had a fan of the blog reach out for some advice on starting a blog – him and his wife were interested in starting a blog of their own. I’ve gotten this question a few times and got into some of the details on this post – but that post was more focused on how I actually run the blog and what tools I use to maintain it. A question I often get asked is, “so do you actually make money running this blog?” and “how much money could I be making doing it?” I thought it’d be cool to look under the hood of YoungMoneyFinance once again, this time from the lens of the business side of the blog!

Let’s go ahead and burst your dream here

Life is full of get rich quick schemes and only a few steps that will change the way you run your side hustle and short video series on how this one person did it and how you can do it too. Back in 2013 when I started this blog, I took bought into that mantra and I had low-key goals of turning this blog into a full-time gig. I bought the $5.99 Kindle books (How to Make Money Blogging, 8 Simple Steps to get to 100,000 Blog Visitors) and I tried all the steps. I had views, I had likes, I had guest posts, I guest posted and even one day I had a guest post hit and I got like 7,500 visitors in one day. All that I’ve done (or done and then stopped doing) and I’ve still averaging about 30 views per day. In my humble opinion I put out pretty good articles, but do I not make them click-baity enough? Do I not churn out enough medium quality articles to get eyeballs? In the 10 years I’ve been running this blog I’ve tried a lot of different strategies!

All that to say; a blog will probably not make you rich. But then again, you probably deep down new that, and really nothing in life will make you super rich super quick super easily. A blog can take up a lot of time, require a lot of work and require a bit of luck too. To be honest I’ve not found HUGE success financially speaking, but I’ve tried to reflect that I am a HUGE success in my blog. I’ve written hundreds of articles, I’ve heard from people first hand that a certain article (or two) was helpful and I’ve continued to consistently bring in 30 views or so on average per day. On top of all that – I make enough money to keep the lights on and I have a little extra mad money to spend each month. Not saying you might not have a different outcome, just sharing what my experience has been!

Where the money comes from (and where it doesn’t)

I started this blog with noble visions of essentially starting a personal finance advice coaching business using the blog as a way to attract customers and build a brand (not at all an uncommon strategy). I actually had a few friends sit take me up on that offer and we had some good 1:1 sessions! Those fizzled out unfortunately and instead I turned to the idea of writing and offering financial guides. You’ll likely see this if you hang on this page for more than 20 seconds or so and scroll a bit – a pop-up will display asking you to check them out! My hunch was that there is so much information on the internet that it’s hard to know what’s quality vs what’s just some rando’s thoughts and for every article you find that says one thing you can find another saying the opposite. My thinking was that perhaps for bigger life decisions (buying a house, picking employer benefits, investing) that something more than an article but less than a book would be cool. I priced them out at a few dollars – so less than the Kindle books I was buying to learn how to grow the blog – and eventually dropped the price down to $0.99 with add-ons of $10 or $24.01 for email or video chat follow-ups. I wrote a few of these and wah-wah made very little headway selling them.

Then one day I got an email from an advertising company asking if I accepted sponsored posts. Ironically enough the name was the same as a good buddy of mine from high school so I did a double take thinking it was my old friend! I had given thought but never wanted to move forward with the pay-per-click ads that Google (or others) would place on my site. Those seemed to me to lower the quality of the blog and it felt gimmicky. But a sponsored post – that was interesting. I wrestled over it for a while but finally decided that assuming I could edit the article to ensure it made sense for my audience (i.e. still fit in terms of being quality advice), then I would be ok with it. From time to time I do reject articles for having links to not so great financial things – I stick with my mission of offering quality financial articles to young professionals.

Funny enough this is what’s stuck the most and a few times a month I’ll get a sponsored post in my email, I’ll edit the content to make sure it’s quality and post it up. I do call out if I am receiving compensation at the bottom of the post – that’s a FTC requirement. I don’t love that this is how this blog is making money but that’s life – you make plans, set goals, life gives you curveballs and you figure out how to make it work!

What my earnings look like and what I’m ok with it

No millions of eye balls with hundreds of thousands of dollars rolling into my bank account here! As a reminder, I do about 30 views per day, which I still think of as being pretty cool – that’s 30 people EVERY DAY stopping by to see what I have to say about personal finance.

Funny story – my all time biggest hit is “Excuses to get out of yet another dinner with friends” – if you google something to that affect I’ll show up first. Apparently a fair amount of people are trying to get out of dinner with their friends and come to my blog for excuses! I had written this article in a light-hearted spirit to help budget conscious people say ‘no’ to eating out as that’s often a huge expense item for many young professionals.

So, I’m not getting paid per click, I’m not getting 1:1 sessions and my guides aren’t very popular so really the only way I make money is through sponsored posts. I get a handful each month – maybe one or two per week and the pay isn’t super great ($14-$25 per post). I’m told I could be making a lot more but I also recognize my blog doesn’t have the traffic that others do! So that’s how I make my money – and it all comes in via PayPal!

What my expenses look like

My main expenses are the hosting and the domain. I use Bluehost and it costs me I around $18/month – I pay probably more than I should for a PRO account which allows me to have more than one domain – over the past few years I’ve tried my hand at starting a new blog – a reward credit card one and a crypto one. The domain is just under $20/year. Those are my only main expenses. I found a way to redirect and then send my YMF email to my personal gmail and it doesn’t have that annoying “sent on behalf of _____” that I think look tacky so my email is free and I keep my articles saved in Word so I don’t need a business Google docs or anything!

Outside of that I’ve tried my hand at some Facebook/Instagram advertising and that yielded no real results for me aside from a few very heated messages saying “don’t advertise at me….”. Thankfully it’s a pretty affordable endeavor!

Why I love it

Over the past few years I came to peace with the fact that this blog won’t blow up, it won’t make me millions or retire me early. But I realized it will give me some good mad money that I can spend each month on top of letting me write articles which I love doing. I’m not sure at this point in my life if I’d keep this blog up for free (i.e. no money coming in) but for many years I would have (2 kids will slow you down!). I have randomly had a few offers to buy the blog but haven’t seriously explored that option. All in all I really enjoy my little side hustle – it brings me joy, helps me learn, allows me to write and on top of that brings in a little money!

Best of luck if you are looking to start your own blog! Please do feel free to reach out – I love chatting about this stuff and happy to share more on my experience!