The Wayward Home Podcast
The Wayward Home Podcast
39: From Debt to Blogging Mogul: How Van Lifer and Sailor Michelle Schroeder-Gardner Has Made Millions Blogging
Imagine living a life completely free from debt, traveling the world in a motorhome, a campervan and a sailboat, and making a living off your passion for blogging. Sounds like a dream, right? Well, for Michelle Schroeder-Gardner, the creator of the successful personal finance blog, Making Sense of Sense, this dream is her reality. Join us as we chat with Michelle about her incredible journey, how she conquered her $40,000 student loan debt in just seven months, and the different ways to grow a blog today.
Michelle opens up about her strategies for maintaining a work-life balance and how she managed to reduce her work hours over time by outsourcing tasks and working with virtual assistants. She reveals her secret sauce to building a successful blog, including selecting a profitable niche, writing effective blog posts, and investing in self-hosting on WordPress and owning your own domain name. Trust us, you don't want to miss these invaluable insights from a true blogging hero.
If you've been itching to learn how to make money blogging or just need some motivation to take your passion to the next level, this episode is for you. So, buckle up and get ready for a wild ride as we explore Michelle Schroeder-Gardner's inspiring story and her mastery of making a living through her love for writing and sharing her knowledge. And who knows? Maybe this conversation will spark the fire you need to start your own blogging success story.
Michelle's FREE blogging course.
Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course
Making Sense of Sponsored Posts Course
Michelle's website, Making Sense of Cents
Michelle's Instagram
Or join my brand new course on profitable blogging, called Niche Sites Made Easy.
Connect with Kristin Hanes and The Wayward Home!
In 2017, one year after I was laid off as a radio news reporter in San Francisco, i started the blog, which you probably follow now, called TheWaywardHomecom. Back then, i knew absolutely nothing about the business of blogging, only that I'd read this amazing article about a woman who lived full-time in an RV and made $100,000 per month with her personal finance blog called Making Sense of Sense. At the time, i was living on our sailboat in the San Francisco Bay Area and my only source of income was unemployment checks and some random voiceover work. I was desperate to figure out a way to make money that would allow me to travel full-time, but I had no idea how to do that. I was enthralled by the article about Michelle Schroeder-Gardner and how she blogged and made a huge income while traveling in her motorhome. I wanted to do the exact same thing as her. Michelle was my very first blogging hero and the entire inspiration for my site, thewaywardhome.
Speaker 1:On this episode of TheWaywardHome podcast, i'm just thrilled that Michelle Schroeder-Gardner, my original blogging hero, is coming on the podcast with me to tell me all about her journey to creating a successful, profitable blog and her tips for beginners. You won't want to miss this if you're curious about how to make money blogging. Let's go. Welcome to TheWaywardHome podcast, all about van life, boat life and nomadic living. We'll bring you tips, interviews and stories from the road and on the water.
Speaker 1:Now here's your host, Kristen Haynes. Hey there, i'm Kristen Haynes with TheWaywardHomecom, and I spend half the year in my camper van and half on my sailboat. I hope to help you achieve your nomadic living dreams. So one big question I always get from people is how to make money to support their traveling dreams. I often tell people my story of how I went from knowing nothing about blogging or online business to creating a successful niche website called TheWaywardHome, which is all about van life, rving, sailboats and tiny homes.
Speaker 1:Blogs, which are sometimes called niche websites, have the power to create passive income so you can make money whether you're actively working, hiking, sleeping or traveling. It's my very favorite way to make money online and I think it's really the best way for a nomad to make an income. Before we get into this episode with Michelle Schroeder Gardner, i just wanted to remind you that I have a brand new profitable blogging course called Niche Sites Made Easy. In this course, you'll learn exactly how to select a profitable niche, how to find topics people will read, how to write blog posts, how to scale your website and even more. I'm getting great feedback so far from my students and I'd love for you to also be part of this course. If you'd like to check it out, just go to TheWaywardHomecom forward slash course.
Speaker 1:So now let's get into the interview with Michelle Schroeder Gardner which first appeared on the Van Life Virtual Summit which I threw with Project Van Life. So, michelle, first I wanted to talk to you a little bit about your variety of tiny homes over the years. If you could tell us about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've had a few different small homes. We started out with a in a Tesca Viva back in 2015. That was our first RV and that kind of like launched us into the whole RV world And then we realized we wanted something bigger, so we wanted a full time. We have two dogs. One was almost 100 pounds, so we got a class A RV. Sorry, this is like numerous years So and lots of no RVs. Eventually we got a diesel pusher and now we have a camper van, because we also live on a sailboat as well. So we have a sailboat and a camper van. We have a Winnebago rubble right now And that's where we spend our time when we're not on the boat.
Speaker 1:Awesome, great. So, yeah, a lot of people are curious about how to make money to support the traveling lifestyle which both of us do, and blogging is such a huge part of making a remote income. It's pretty much it's life changing and I encourage people to try it. I know you do too, so I wanted to talk to you a little bit about your story. You started your blog a long time ago. Tell me a little bit about your origin story of making sense of sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I started making sense of sense back in 2011. And at that time I didn't know anything about blogs. I didn't know that they can make money or anything like that. It was just so that I could talk about my personal finance progress and just how I wanted to pay off my student loans as quickly as I could. And it was around, i want to say, one year is when I started really making a decent amount of money for my blog. It took me six months to make my first $100.
Speaker 2:Around one year. I was making around one to $5,000 a month, and then that was around the time when I realized that I could start blogging full time and leave my day job as an analyst, and so I started to give myself goals, and one goal was to pay off my student loans as quickly as I could. I was able to pay off my $40,000 student loan debt in just seven months, and then I also built up an emergency fund And I just tried to build up my making sense of sense income as much as I could so that I could blog full time and still have a very stable and comfortable income. And then it was in the fall of 2013 when I left my day job to blog full time, and I've been doing it ever since.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, and so you started out more as a personal blog, like how blogs used to be, where you're writing about your own journey. right, that's how you started. How did you make your first $100 in those first six months, so in?
Speaker 2:the first six months I was, i had like a lot of smaller blogging friends, people who were blogging just like me, were just blogging fun, really didn't know what we were doing. And one of my blogging friends had connected with an advertiser and they placed a sponsored post on their blog And this blogger emailed me and asked me if I wanted to partner with that company as well. I'm always asked like who that was, like what company that was, and honestly, it's so long ago I can't remember who the company was. But it was how I made my first $100 and it was through a review on making sense of sense, and once I realized that bots could make money, it like, just like, kept the wheel started turning, like, oh, I can make money doing something that I really love, and it all just quickly grew from there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and how did you? because I know this was you know back in 2011,. I feel like back then there probably weren't as many blogging courses as there are now not as many people doing it. How did you find out about money making opportunities for blogging back then?
Speaker 2:It was mainly through, like income reports on some other blogs and talking to other bloggers, just being able to see that other people were making money through their blogs as well, that just kind of made me think about how I can make money as well. If I mean, if other people can do it, look, why can't I give it a shot as well? And once I just gave it a little bit of effort I realized that I could do it too, and it just all just continued from there.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. So you did the sponsored posts, and what monetization strategies do you think you pursued after that?
Speaker 2:So around the time when I started doing sponsored posts, i was probably doing display advertising too, which is like AdSense, mediavine, ad Thrive, and that's when you have like a banner ad or whatever picture ad on your blog or in a blog post or on your sidebar, and I was definitely doing those. And then affiliate marketing, of course, as well, which is my favorite way to make money blogging, and I think I started that around maybe like 2014 or 2015. So a little bit after I started blogging full time.
Speaker 1:So for people who don't know what it is. What is affiliate marketing and how do you make money in that way?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So affiliate marketing is when you place a link to a product or a company on your website or your social media account. This might be like a review, or maybe on your social media account, you on Instagram, you say like oh, today I used so-and-so product And then you earn money when a follower purchases the product through your affiliate link. This can be a great way to make money blogging, especially if you're traveling full time or traveling part time. That's because you can make money while you're sleeping, while you're out on a hike or something like that, and money you can earn money while you're not actively working, which so I call it semi passive income. It's not entirely passive, because you do have to work, but money can come in without you having to constantly be like at your laptop.
Speaker 1:Right, and how did you figure out which affiliate companies to work with in the beginning?
Speaker 2:So there's many different ways that you can choose affiliate companies. For me I started out with, and I still do. If I use a company, I usually try to see if they have an affiliate program. So if I like it, I'm sure other people would too. And then there's other ways as well. Like I receive a lot of reader questions And if I see like a lot of the same questions, I will see if there's like a solution to their problem, And if there is, I then I'll see if there's an affiliate program. So if I'm already promoting the product, why not promoted as an affiliate link as well?
Speaker 1:Gotcha, so you? so the next thing you did was you just started writing affiliate articles, basically to grow your income.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was. It's pretty easy. Once you have a blog and you have readers, i mean, you're already talking about stuff. Affiliate marketing is just like the next logical step for most bloggers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and why is that your favorite over other types of making money blogging?
Speaker 2:So I love affiliate marketing for many reasons Being able to earn an income while you're traveling, when your internet might not be the greatest or you're just busy enjoying what you're doing maybe you want to go for a hike, or you want to go paddleboarding or something. Maybe you have a long drive. Being able to earn affiliate marketing income is semi passive income, so I can enjoy my life, have a more flexible schedule, be my own boss And, like I said, it's just like a great way to help your readers. If you're, if you're writing about something on your blog, there's probably tons of things that you can promote. I mean, you are talking about lots of different things on your blog already. You are talking all day long, probably on your blog or on your Instagram, so affiliate marketing just makes a lot of sense. It's just a great way to help your readers.
Speaker 1:Totally. It's a good way of looking at it for helping people and coming up with ideas and reviews that will truly help people. I think that's a really cool way to look at it. Instead of like how's this going to make me money, it's like how's it going to help somebody else. It's like a win-win scenario, exactly Yeah. So you went full time two years after starting your blog. What was it like switching from a full time job? I think you mentioned before you didn't love that job, so what was it like moving into full time blogging?
Speaker 2:for you, it was definitely very scary in the beginning. Even though I didn't like my day job as an analyst, it was still scary to think like, oh, i went to college full time for this. I have three college degrees and none of them are in blogging. They are all in being coming a financial analyst. So it was really scary like actually making that leap. But being able to prepare, such as like paying off my student loans, building an emergency fund and all those other little steps I took like really helped to make it a lot easier, and that's actually one of the top tips I have for someone who is wanting to turn something into their full time income. If you're able to start it on the side of your day job, i think that lowers a lot of the stress so that you're still able to, like keep your stable paycheck and your benefits and stuff And while seeing if your side hustle may work as a full time income for you because maybe you want to pursue something else instead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really good point. Keep money coming in, because blogging does take time to, you know, for people to make money And so, and people who you interact with now and you help teach people how to blog, how long do you think you know? it's hard to generalize, but for someone to actually make money on their blog, what kinds of things are you seeing with your interactions with people?
Speaker 2:So that is a very hard question to answer And I get that all the time And I completely get it. I mean, when you start a business or you start a new job, you definitely want to know how much money you're going to make, and that is just so hard. I feel like if I gave a number, i always tell people, if I gave you like a strict timeline, that would kind of make it like a get rich quick scheme. I mean that would just be too easy.
Speaker 2:So it really depends on the different things that you put into it, like how much time can you put into it? Are you, are you, able to only put five hours a week towards a blog? Are you able to put like 40 to 50 hours a week? Are you willing to take a course? There are tons of free courses, paid courses and that can help you prevent, like, any common mistakes that you may make. And then just other things, are you able to stay consistent with your new blog? Are you able to publish at least once to twice a week, or are you only able to publish maybe once a month? Of course that's going to take a lot longer to start making money blocking. So it really just depends. That's a really hard question to answer. I would love to say like an easy number, but I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't like to do that. That's very true. It seems like it's such an individual process and journey, but so many people do make money on their blogs And that's what people should remember that it can happen It can definitely happen And it can still happen today.
Speaker 2:I know people who started blogs or Instagrams or TikToks just last year and they have tons of followers. I know people who have like over 5 million followers on TikTok And that, so there's definitely ways to start today still.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think people wonder that because people think of me. I think I still get that. People think blogging is like a journal style entry where you're writing about your life That's what people think I do And they're like, oh, you're writing about staying at this place. I'm like no, So people don't understand that it's made a transition. So do you get that question a lot? where is blogging dead? Because they don't really know what blogging is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do hear that a lot. Blogging is definitely not dead. It's just things are constantly changing when it comes to blogging. There's different ways to reach out to new readers, different ways to grow your blog. There's different ways to write different types of blog posts. I mean, back when I first started my blog, pinterest like really wasn't. I don't think Pinterest was around when I first started, and either was TikTok, of course. Instagram wasn't really popular for growing your blog. So you have to think about all the different ways that you can grow a blog today, just how much things are different. And also back then, companies didn't realize how important bloggers and online influencers really were. They didn't really advertise with them very much. In these days, when I buy something new, it's probably because I saw it on a blog or Instagram or a TikTok. It's not because I saw it on TV. So things have definitely really changed over the years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very true. Blogs are very informational, where people learn about products. Same with me. If I go to Google, i look for a blog before I look for CNN or a huge company. So you want to know someone used that or did that, so people should realize that. So when did you start living in your RV? Was that due to your blogging income that you felt comfortable traveling?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we became digital nomads. We still had a house back in 2013, when I was full time, when I started full-time blogging And due to that I realized like, oh, maybe we could RV full-time, maybe we could travel full-time. I mean, we were barely at home, we were constantly traveling. So we decided to sell our house in Missouri And we actually moved to Colorado for the tiniest bit before we realized that we wanted an RV And we have been traveling full-time pretty much ever since. It's been a lot of fun, definitely with all the different RVs and vessels and trying different things over all these many years, and definitely don't see us stopping anytime soon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure It's fun, And so at the beginning you probably did you work like a ton of hours on your blog when you were in your RV. How has your workflow changed over the years?
Speaker 2:Workflow has definitely changed.
Speaker 2:In the beginning I was working a lot anywhere from like 40 to 100 hours a week on making sense of sense When I first became a full-time blogger and when I was first starting to live in an RV.
Speaker 2:Of course I wanted to make the whole full-time travel work as much as I could, and I knew like there was so much growth possible in the online world with making sense of sense, so I was working as much as I could to try to get all my ideas and all my plans out there, and so I was working a lot in the beginning And over time I have realized that I've needed a better work-life balance And I have been doing pretty much as many things as I can to try to lower the amount of time that I'm working. So now I work anywhere from like anywhere from maybe a couple hours a week to 10 to 20 hours a week. It really depends on the weeks. Sometimes I don't work at all. Sometimes I work a lot, but I do try to do different things to lower my hours, such as outsourcing. I have virtual assistants, i have an editor just little things that I can do where I can outsource tasks so that I can have a better work life balance and still enjoy the places that we're going to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, and it do still do all your own writing, so I know a lot of bloggers end up outsourcing that as well. what did you do with with that aspect?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I still do all my own writing. I love writing. I'm making sense, sense. That's one of the main things that I still do is writing and engaging with my readers myself, so I like replied all my own emails. I definitely read my own blog post. I do have an editor, though, where, as before, i would write my blog post and then I would read it like 80 times to make sure it was like how I wanted it to sound. Nowadays, i pretty much just write it and I send over a pretty rough draft over to my editor, and it saves me hours of time on each blog post, which is really, really nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's just amazing how, with blogging, you can work so few hours, but I feel like the income level stays similar at least it doesn't in my case. It's like You figure out ways to outsource, and that's what makes this such an amazing way to make money while traveling, that you ever expect that this would happen when you first started your blog that you be working like So few hours but you're still making a good income definitely not.
Speaker 2:I definitely did not think my hours could ever go down. I just working as much as I did before. I don't even know how that was possible, but it did allow me to get to where I am today. Sometimes you do have to sacrifice some things in order to get what you really want. But I mean Also I do want to do want to say that people should be careful with that to work life balance is really important. If you are traveling full time or part time or whatever you probably Do you want to set aside time each day to, like, go for a hike or just do something fun, maybe go to a new restaurant in the town that you're at. I'm just make sure you value your full time life as well, because there's life outside of blogging and that's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good reminder. I think it's hard when people go to being self employed to figure out how to manage time like it is helpful to have. I mean, in my life I have a partner, partner who at five he's ready to sit and have a happy hour and hang out. not helpful, i try work way more without him, but I do think that work life balance Did you have? did you have a trouble with figuring out your boundaries of when during the day you would work at first?
Speaker 2:Oh, definitely it's something that I'm always working on. It's definitely a work in progress. When it comes to me, sometimes I can just get really sucked into work. It's definitely something I'm dealing with right now. Actually It's so. It really just depends on the week I'm having. I think it's something when, like you said, when you're self employed, especially when you work online, it's so easy to get sucked back in. I mean your laptop's always with you. Internet is so easy to have these days, whereas when I first started blogging, internet wasn't always super reliable. So when I didn't have internet it was just like I'm done working, whereas these days there's always internet, so I mean you can pretty much always work. So there's like there's pros and cons to that.
Speaker 1:That's very true. And also I find I realize I love it so much that I love working. It's not like a tour, so then it's harder to pull yourself away from it. Yes, very interesting so yeah, so your first. how did you get get readers to your site in the beginning, because maybe Pinterest wasn't around and what ways did you promote your blog and get it out there?
Speaker 2:Yes, so in the beginning it was a lot of networking with other bloggers, such as guest posting on their blogs, commenting on their blogs, and it was just a little different. Back then. Blogs, i feel like, were much smaller, so there was more of like a community and lots of people just hopping from blog to blog. Lots of networking, lots of guest posting. So things were a little different back then. My blog was also much smaller back then, didn't make any money back then.
Speaker 2:These days I make money or I grow traffic to my blog of many different ways. Pinterest is pretty big still SEO I don't really guest post anymore, but I do do like lots of features on other publications such as like CNBC, readers digest and Forbes and stuff like that, and I have an email list. So there's lots of ways to grow a blog today, which is really nice because if you don't like one way, you can kind of like diversify with the many different methods instead of just like the one or two, the one or two ways back a decade ago Totally, and when did you get involved with the SEO or search engine optimization?
Speaker 1:if people don't know what that means getting ranked on Google, when did you implement that?
Speaker 2:So I've always like tried over like the past decade, but I haven't really been super successful up until maybe like in the last five years, and it's definitely still something I'm working on. I'm definitely not an SEO expert and there's definitely a lot of things to learn when it comes to it, but it's something I think is a great way for blogs to grow their page views and grow their income, and I think it'll just continue to grow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very true. Something good for people to learn close to the beginning. Probably excited learned in the beginning either. So I wish I had. Yeah, definitely Yeah. So and part of your growth strategy is to get into publications. How do you go about doing that?
Speaker 2:So that's kind of hard to explain, but one way, one easy way for a new blogger any blogger to get into that is to doubt is to sign up for hero, which is help a reporter out, and it's just a website where you can see when a journalist or another blogger needs maybe a quote or some kind of insight for an article that they're writing. So it's just a great way to get quoted or maybe see if anyone is looking to feature anyone. Another way is to connect with people who are writing for those publications. So maybe you start following the person who writes a story in your, in your niche on Twitter and you start interacting with them. So there's little ways, but I think the best way and the easiest way is probably hero, because anyone can sign up for that. So it's like super easy to get into.
Speaker 1:Cool. That's a really good tip for new bloggers, for other new people that that start. What other tips do you have like in choosing maybe? how does somebody possibly even get into it and choose a niche? Any suggestions about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So one way to get into like what next you should get into when it comes to blogging is to think about questions such as what are you passionate about? what blogs do you currently enjoy reading? What are you an expert in? And then, when you kind of think about that, those different questions also. I also recommend, like making a pros and cons list of the different niches that you're interested in getting into And then also, for each topic that you're thinking about, maybe think of five to ten different blog posts that you could write for each topic And that'll kind of narrow down whether you think it could work for you. I mean, if you're sitting there and you can't think of like a single blog post for a topic that you're interested in writing about, maybe that's not what you want to write about And maybe you realize, oh, like this is definitely what I want to write about because I'm like so interested in it and I can think of so many different blog posts for it. So I usually recommend that little kind of brainstorming session to think about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really good idea, and I think some people get hung up because they, if they're interested in the topic and they see like 10 blogs writing about it, they're like, oh, i can't do that. What would you say to people who are worried about that?
Speaker 2:So I hear that a lot as well, and, of course, the world is a massive place And I always like to tell people that everyone has a different point of view, a different story to shut air, a different way to share their story. So, even if there are a lot of different people talking about the topic that you want to write about, you might just have to find your own little spin, maybe find your own way to promote the topic that you're interested in. There's definitely a lot of room when it comes to blogs, so I wouldn't worry about that. I mean, there's people who are starting personal finance blogs today or travel blogs today, and it's not like personal finance or travel hasn't been talked about in the last forever. So I mean there's definitely still room. It's just about finding your own angle for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very true And you know, in thinking about how you started, what are some things you wish you could have told yourself back in the day when you were first starting out.
Speaker 2:So probably the biggest mistake I made was starting on a free platform instead of being self-hosted on WordPress. I also didn't own my own domain name. Again, i made a lot of mistakes in banning getting because I had no idea what I was doing and I didn't know that bots could make money. So if I had to go back, i would definitely start on self-hosted WordPress. I would own my domain name. Instead of being senseofsenseblogspotcom. I would be making senseofsensecom from the very beginning. I would also learn SEO as early as I could and I would start my email list from day one. Instead, i started it around like 2015 or 2016. So that was almost half of my blocking career, where I wasn't like collecting emails or really engaging with my readers as much as I should have been.
Speaker 1:That's a really good point. We haven't talked about an email list. Why does a blogger need one of those?
Speaker 2:Email lists are great for many reasons. One is that, just like with a self-hosted blog, with an email list, you own your email list. So, whereas with TikTok or Instagram even though I love those platforms, it is scary to say someone could hack your account or something could happen to it Algorithms could change You don't own those platforms, whereas with a blog and an email list, those are yours, so you know that your readers are always there And they're also that's where your most loyal readers are. They are on your email list. You just have to think about how easy it is to subscribe to someone on YouTube or Instagram and how much more work it is for them to subscribe to your email list instead.
Speaker 2:So usually that's where your most loyal subscribers are. That's where you can engage with your readers the most. Usually, email lists are a great way to make money as well, because those are where your most loyal subscribers are. So there's just many benefits of an email list. If you don't have one, i definitely recommend starting right away, something I wish I would have started back in 2011, when I first started making sense of sense.
Speaker 1:And another thing that helped boost your income was your course creation and creating your own products. When did that come into play for you?
Speaker 2:So I started making sense of affiliate marketing in 2016. It's crazy to think it's been that long.
Speaker 2:So I was receiving a lot of questions about affiliate marketing for bloggers and if I could coach people on affiliate marketing for their blog. And at that time I was coaching a few different bloggers and I realized that it wasn't like super sustainable, especially with traveling full time and the fact that I can only help just a few people a year, really. So I realized that I should create a course and I had a lot of interest in a course. I started like a wait list for are you interested in and fill them in for us like a quick thing in my email list, and I think I had like 6,000 people or something sign up within the first year, within the first few days or something like that, and I realized, okay, of course I definitely need to make a course and I need to like launch it as quick as I could, and I've had I think it's like 9,000 or 10,000 students so far in the course. So it's definitely earned me a great income.
Speaker 2:But I've also helped a lot of different people earn money blogging. I've helped tons of people who make way more money than I do with affiliate marketing as well. So there's definitely a lot of room and it comes to affiliate marketing and it's all about the using the correct strategies and stuff like that. So having a course has completely changed my income and changed my life also, because it's another form of kind of semi passive income. So there's a lot of positives with creating your own course and I definitely recommend that as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really good point too is that it just diversifies the income even more. If one income stream fails, at least you have your own thing, yeah, and you have another course too.
Speaker 2:Tell us about that one, yeah, so I have a course called Making Sense of Sponsored Posts, and that is very similar to Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing, except it's focused on forming sponsored partnerships with companies. So it's just that's one of the other top ways that I earn money blogging. So, seeing like a review or a tutorial and making sense of sense, i will partner with the brand directly and they will pay me upfront for the work that I do. People do sponsored partnerships on Instagram, on TikTok, pretty much anywhere that you can think of. It's just another great way to monetize your platform.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, and I've taken both the courses and they're both great, so I recommend them to anyone watching this. And I also love that you have the Facebook group so people can really go and interact with you and with other people. Tell us about that aspect of your course, how it's more personal than some courses.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I have a Facebook group for each of my courses and I think it's just a great way to interact with other bloggers who are interested in affiliate marketing or sponsored posts and kind of get your questions answered Maybe just scroll back and see past questions that people have asked And also connect with other bloggers So you might find someone to guest post on their blog through a Facebook group. It's just a great way to connect with other people and make it more of a community instead of just a course that you just kind of read and you're done with, instead of it's like more ongoing and more community based as well.
Speaker 1:Totally. And yeah, the first course I took of yours, i think, was your free course, so that's yet another option. Tell people about your free course and what that's about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I have a how to start a blog free course. It's just an introduction to starting a blog. It's seven days. It's an email course, super easy to sign up for. It just goes over how to start a blog, why you might want to start one, a tutorial for starting on WordPress, different ways to monetize your blog. It's just a very beginner blogging course and it's just a great way to get started And it's free. When I first started my blog, i didn't have a ton of money to spend on learning how to blog, so three resources were definitely a lifesaver for me And I think it's just a great way to kind of get your foot in the door and see if blogging is for you or not.
Speaker 1:Very true, and we'll put links, of course, to all of your products and courses below so people can find you. So yeah, do you have any other advice for newbie bloggers who are excited about this and want to give it a try?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I want to say my top tip is just to get started. So many people email me and they're like, oh, i'm like super afraid to start a blog. I don't want people to read what I have to say. I'm like very nervous to get out there. My top tip is just to get out there. The start your blog.
Speaker 2:You won't know if you like it or not unless you start, and the amount of times I hear that question is at least a few times a day. So I want to say that pretty much every new blogger probably feels that way. It's completely normal to be afraid to publish something for the public. It's completely normal to put yourself out there and feel a little afraid And that whenever I tell people that everyone pretty much feels that way, they feel better And I think that's because you think you're all alone. But no, everyone is a little afraid. It's completely normal when you're trying something new, you're going to be a little nervous. I mean, it's also kind of fun to try something new. So you won't know if you start blogging unless you try. And it's a great way to make money Blogging while traveling, while living in a pan or living on a boat or whatever you want to do. It's just a great way to make a living Totally Well, great Well.
Speaker 1:Thanks for coming on to the summit and telling us all about your experience of blogging. Hopefully it'll inspire people to get started, because it is a great way to make money while traveling full time. So definitely, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Wayward Home Podcast. As a reminder, i'm adding a link below in the show notes to Michelle's free blogging course, the exact same one I took many years ago. I'm also adding a link to my course called Nitsites Made Easy. Hopefully both or one of those will help you out a great deal. If you like listening to the Wayward Home Podcast, it would help me out a ton if you would forward an episode to a friend or a family member. Word of mouth is the best way to grow a podcast these days And I really appreciate it. Once again, thanks so much for listening to this episode and I'll see you next time.