Welcome back to another edition of How My Blog Changed My Life! Today, I’m super excited about featuring Michelle, who is pretty much a legend in the personal finance sphere. She’s amazingly successful, good at what she does, and makes good money doing it. Essentially, she is an inspiration to everyone.
More about Michelle: Michelle Schroeder left her day job in 2013 to pursue a career as a freelance writer and website manager. She writes about many topics such as personal finance, entrepreneurship and traveling on her websites Making Sense of Cents and Diversified Finances. She has a popular extra income series in which she details how she makes over $10,000 a month by freelancing online.
1. What was the inspiration for starting your blog?
I started my blog in August of 2011. I graduated from college a little over one year earlier and I had a lot of student loan debt. I started reading personal finance websites such as DailyWorth so that I could get a better grasp on my finances. I then decided to start my own personal finance blog so I could talk about what was going on in my life and to track my progress. I quickly got addicted to blogging and the whole community and everything just grew from there.
I’m glad I started because my blog eventually led to me side hustling, and then my side hustling eventually led to freelancing full-time.
2. What has been the most challenging part of having a blog?
I think the most challenging part of having a blog is continually coming up with new content. Sometimes I feel like I have many, many ideas for new content, but then there are other days where I try to write and just nothing will happen.
For the most part though, I love everything about blogging. Even though some areas may be challenging, I know it’s all worthwhile.
3. In what ways, direct or indirect, has your life changed because of your blog?
Oh my, where do I even start? My blog has greatly changed my life for the better. Before I started blogging, I was living paycheck to paycheck. Even though I had two college degrees and a good job as a financial analyst, I was not good with money. I had a poorly managed budget and I spent all of my free time spending money it seemed like.
After I started my blog, I found many other blogs out there who detailed their side hustles and the income they made from it. I decided that instead of spending my time doing nothing productive I would use it to make an extra income and start putting it towards my student loans.
With this side income, I was able to pay off my $40,000 worth of student loans (which included my loans from when I earned my third college degree one year after I started my blog) within months of turning 24.
I felt so free after I paid off my student loans that I started making a plan to pursue full-time self-employment. I left my day job in October of 2013 and haven’t looked back once. 🙂
4. What have you learned from blogging?
I’ve learned that blogging is a lot of fun, but it is still work. Too many people think blogging is an easy way to make money and a way to get rich quick. That is just not true at all. I spend many hours everyday working on my freelancing business, and I also know quite a few people who have left the blogging business because they found it wasn’t for them.
5. What advice would you give to new bloggers who are thinking of starting a blog?
I have plenty of advice to give 🙂
– You won’t know if you like blogging unless you start. I receive this question all the time from people thinking about starting a blog. You honestly will not know unless you try. You can even try for free if you need to.
– Start on WordPress if you can. Blogger has its positives, and I even made the mistake of starting on there. However, I quickly made the switch to WordPress and it has been one of my best blogging decisions ever. When I was on Blogger, Blogger actually deleted my website for a day just because they can. Most people never get their website back but I begged and begged and they gave me my website back. After that, I knew I had to switch. Now, I am on self-hosted WordPress and my website can never be taken away from me.
– Blog publicly or anonymously, it’s up to you. I started out anonymously and it was great while it lasted. However, I knew if I wanted my blog and my business to grow any further I would have to become public. It has helped my business grow significantly!
Thanks, Michelle for taking part in the series!
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24 comments
Obviously, I have missed this freelancing series! I need to go check it out.
I’ve struggled with the anonymity; I think if I shared with friends and family, they would help drive tons of traffic to my sites and I could probably start earning money from my efforts. However, I blog about our debt and about our income levels, so it’s pretty uncomfortable to out that out there to the world. Plus… I’m not sure how my employer would feel!
Yes, it was hard to blog publicly when I had my day job. I was always afraid of them finding it!
I love the part about the freedom you felt after paying off your student loans. It gives me extra encouragement and excitement for my future!
Yes, it gave me a crazy amount of freedom once my student loans were paid off. It’s a great feeling!
Michelle, you were one of the first bloggers to inspire me when I started, and I have taken so much of your advice and applied it to my blog. You are an inspiration and your work ethic is outstanding! I say this every time, Melanie, but I really love this series. Keep it up! 🙂
Thanks Shannon! 🙂
Thanks for the great interview! 🙂 See you at FinCon.
I’ve been reading your blog since I started but I didn’t recall this series either though am very familiar with the awesome Dear Debt letters!
Regarding anonymity, I’m glad to hear Michelle advocating either. If you are FT freelance blogger and you are sure you are going to stick with it, then I say why not? However if you are employed and are debt blogger or early retirement blogger, I would not recommend it. I’m beyond being concerned about sharing my debt problem with family or friends- they know. But I will be finished working before I go public – full stop.
I still to this day don’t really share my blog with those I know in the offline world unless they ask. I don’t know why, but I’m still scared, for example, to post my blog on my personal Facebook. Still haven’t done it!
Michelle’s blog was one of the first I started reading (along w/Frugal Portland). And she was a great supporter of mine when I first started out. If people aren’t reading Sense of Cents, they should be! 🙂
Aww thanks Mackenzie! 🙂
Glad to see Michelle was featured! I recently stumbled upon her website about a month ago after a year-long hiatus in blogging, and she was super motivational in starting from scratch again. It’s been 3 months and I think I’ve gotten further with everything I’d learned from my first blog of 3 years, 300x faster than I could’ve imagined. I hope Michelle enjoyed her cruise because that’s the last I’d read of her vacation.
Glad you are back to blogging and learned so much!
Love Sense of Cents! I think it’s interesting how much of a difference in growth you experienced in blogging anonymously vs. publicly. Gives me something to think about… 🙂 thanks for sharing!
I think people take you more seriously when you are not anonymous! Just my personal opinion….it also helped me be “more myself” if that makes sense.
Always good to learn more about the bloggers. Thanks for sharing!!
Glad you like it! 🙂
Thinking up new content has become a full-time activity for me. You NEVER know when you will think of an idea, so I now find myself jotting down ideas throughout the day in a note pad or in my smart phone. I think constantly being in the mindset of “what can I write about?” helps solve the problem of needing new article ideas. But then again, I only write approximately 4-5 posts a week. As that number rises I’m sure I will have a harder time.
I try to draw inspiration from everywhere! Having a notepad or your phone available is so important because you never know when that next idea will hit.
These are all great tips! Thanks for sharing.
You’re welcome! Glad you enjoyed it.
Yay! 🙂 Michelle was the inspiration for me to begin blogging. After reading her ‘Extra Income’ threads, and emailing back-and-forth with her a few times, I started Budgetopolis in August, 2014. I have never blogged before, so I keep MSoC bookmarked as a “how to” study resource.
I have a day job, and a side hustle already, but as the sole breadwinner, I’m trying to find income streams that don’t take more family time away. Michelle’s openness and willingness to share her online income was refreshing, and gave me hope that I could truly make a “real income” as a blogger.
It is so very cool to see her site listed on this site. Thank you Melanie for posting this interview, and thank you Michelle for all you do! 🙂
What a great story! Michelle is definitely an inspiration — good luck in your new venture!
Great Tips here, Nice Post, Really help to fix debt problem. And I may just add that its so useful to have any financial adviser to help with to process.