Today, I finished my taxes. My profit for 2014 from blogging was over $31,000. Looking back on the last three years, I cannot imagine what would have happened if I had all the information I needed to be a successful blogger from the start.
I have strong opinions about why you should invest in your blogging business by attending conferences and joining membership-based blogging sites:
- You should always be learning. If you are not learning, your business will grow stale.
- Technology is always changing. You should always be changing too.
- Investing means you are serious about what you do and willing to pay a little to learn a lot.
- Learning more means earning more. Want to make money at this blogging gig? Take an e-course.
But, there are other bloggers out there. Do they think investing time and money into your blog is a good idea? Let’s see…
Toni Anderson, The Happy Housewife
As someone who has made close to seven figures in my 7 years of blogging, you have to be willing to invest time and money if you want to make this a profitable business. You have to invest in the tools/ training/ time/ foundation in order to make it work. I’ve spent thousands of dollars in events, online training, and books to help grow my business. There were times when that was a very hard choice for me to make because it meant not getting something else. However, had I not invested in those things I would not be where I am today.
I say all this not to make anyone feel condemned about their choices, but rather because I’ve been there before. I’ve missed opportunities because I was afraid to invest in my business. Don’t be afraid to invest- if you are spending more than 20 hours a week building your business and are not seeing measurable growth/ success, you need to change something and my suggestion would be to sign up for Inspired Bloggers University. You can’t continue to lose time/money because while you can make up the money you can’t get back the time.
Erin Chase, $5 Dinners
You have to be willing to get past your fear and your excuses if you really want to make change in your business and your life.
Alicia Myers, The Sensible Family
I make a larger income with my blog than I did as a CPA and more money than our farm earns. At this rate, for 2015, I’ll hit the 6 figure club before the end of the 2nd quarter, working 10 hours a week. After 10+ years, I should have hit that goal sooner, but I didn’t want to spend the money.
Once I learned that if I’d turn loose of a few bucks, I’d learn things much quicker than doing all of my own compiling of research, I started making the big bucks. I’m a bit of a wanderer.. I’d research one thing, print it, forget about it, repeat. I’d start reading one thing and look up hours later in something completely unrelated.
The other thing I learned was that I’d put MUCH more work into implementing something I paid for. If it were free- so what? I’d do it whenever. If I paid for it, I wanted my money back PRONTO. Sure, I learned a lot by trial and error, along with careful and documented testing, but by paying for and completing resources created by others, I was introduced to things that I never would have even thought to look for on my own.
Those theories should apply to anything you try to increase your earnings. Not every class, seminar, book, etc. will work for you, but when you find the one that does, things will take a quick turn for the better.
Sarah Eckert, Scissor Savings Sarah
I can tell those who lack the funds for the classes that setting aside the money to participate in Inspired Bloggers University is WELL worth it. I was in the same boat last August. Free blog platform, bills coming from every which way, looking high and low for free content with no funds to pay for more. I discussed my future business intentions with my family and expressed the value in what the courses had to offer.
I am not going to lie… it was an expense that we had to budget around, but now it is something that I wake up every day and am thankful for because I can do what I love! I gained the basic and advanced skills necessary to kick my blog up to the next level and monetized as SOON as I got the blogs up. I made the money back for my classes and continue to grow.
It is an investment, yes. Is it worth it if you are serious about your business and the future of your blog? Yes! I took the leap, rearranged funds and have only looked back on the month or two that it took to rearrange my budget as a blessing because I am ten times the blogger I once was before gaining the knowledge!
Katie Hornor, Paradise Praises
Anything worth doing is worth doing well, and I daresay none of us start off a pro at anything. We all have to learn. Making the sacrifice of time and money to learn blogging and business is well worth it. It may seem like it doesn’t make sense to pay for a class when you’re not yet making money, but when you plug in what you’ve learned, you can make that cost back and much, much more. I’ve been where I didn’t have $12 extra in a month, but we got creative, moved stuff around in our budget, and figured out how to make it work b/c it was important to us that we keep learning in order to improve ourselves and our business, and it does pay off in the long run.
