How Blogging is a Tough Side Hustle

This guest post on the side hustle of blogging is written by Anne of Money Propeller. Read more about her at the end of this post. A book that she coauthored about blogging is an affiliate ad on the right side of Add Vodka, and is something we highly recommend to readers.

What does your to-do list look like?

Nice and long?

Mine too.

It’s got laundry and dishes and filing and getting rid of a bunch of old clothes on it.  There’s people to email and trips to plan (fun parts!), and on and on.  On top of those regular tasks, there are a myriad of side hustle to-dos.  My side hustle is blogging.

The problem I find with blogging is that the list grows at a faster rate than I can get through it.  There are side bar image buttons to create, posts to write, advertisements to tweak, people to email, new projects to start, virtual assistants to pay, pages to update, images to make, links to add, social media to schedule, and more and more.  As soon as one little project gets crossed off of the list, I have identified or thought of a dozen more!

Other Side Hustles

With many side hustles, AKA ways to bring in extra dough beyond your main job, there is a very clear “X for X dollars” relationship.

Deliver pizzas?  You will be paid an hourly rate plus tips.

Work as a brand ambassador?  There’s an hourly rate or an event rate. 

Sell Tupperware?  You get a set commission.

Mystery shop?  Your experience is reimbursed and sometimes you make more beyond that.

Write freelance articles?  The terms are established; you provide a piece of work and in return receive payment.

That’s where freelance writing differs substantially from blogging – you know what and when you’re going to get paid!  With blogging, you have no idea what any particular piece of writing will bring in.  Unless, of course, it is a review or sponsored post. 

Heartbreaking Side Hustling

It is frustratingly common to pour your heart into a piece only for it to receive minimal love, as measured in page views and comments.  There are also posts you write that provide awesome content, beautifully packaged with affiliate links to products you love, and no one bites.  Other times, the thing you threw together in half an hour takes off. 

It often feels like rolling the dice for this side hustle.  No matter your superstitions, the blowing on the dice, the prep work, it’s all a matter of luck.  That is a stretch, of course, but it certainly feels that way some days!

All of this is to say, that the idea of “pump out a blog and get rich from the Internet” is a big ‘ol mirage. So, why do I persist with blogging as a side hustle?  It’s a tough side hustle.

Why Persist with a Tough Side Hustle?

For the words! For the chance to put my story and my ideas out there and find out that others relate to me.  For the reader emails, rare as they may be, saying that something touched them or caused them to take action, or they are relieved to know that someone else has experienced the same thing.

There is also the ability to go to any computer and pull up your site and know that you made it. There is a pride in that, having a finished product to call your own.  Getting to that point is a challenge, even if it is for a side hustle.

Pushing Yourself

Therein lies another benefit to persisting with blogging, the skills.  If we were to rewind two and a half years, I knew nearly nothing about the online world. Sure, I understood that there was writing to do and that some people had sites that looked better than others. There were people who were obviously more successful at this whole blogging thing than others, that was apparent enough.

But good golly was there a lot to learn, and there is still a ton to learn!  Just like with the to-do list, the to-learn list grows at a rapid pace.  I should know more about Google Adsense, Google Analytics, CSS, Facebook marketing, eStores, and a host of other platforms, plugins and programs.

Back to the beginning, though, I had to learn about cPanels, installing wordpress, choosing a host, changing nameservers, setting up social profiles I had never had before, how to drive traffic, how to network with other bloggers, how to add a tracking code to the HTML header of my site, SEO, pick logos, and more and more and more. 

Unfortunately, with blogging as a side hustle, a large portion of the learning is right at the beginning, making the whole process rather intimidating. After the first site, you have a vague idea of how to get things up and going, but there are certain things that you never touch again. 

Blogging for a Second Time

That’s where I ran into difficulties with Money Propeller, my personal finance site.  Sure, I “knew what I was doing” but boy oh boy did I go about it in an inefficient manner!  I started off alright, sure, but I kept discovering that I was missing steps.  It got to a point that I was so frustrated, I thought to myself, “I really need a start up checklist, of all of the steps, in the right order.” 

That thought stuck with me, especially when I went to make more sites, for non-profit groups I am in, for my brother’s Christmas present, and for future projects that I have up my sleeve.  So, I started to write them down.

Then, I asked a blogging friend of mine, Kathleen, if she wanted to help me write a book around this checklist and side hustle.  Kathleen also has a penchant for buying new domain names and had faced the same challenges.  In fact, between the two of us, we have started up 20 different sites, and counting!  We knew there was a faster way to do it, than bumbling through and fixing things as we went.  With both of us, and some test sites, we wrote everything down, to share it with the world.  That’s how we came to write our first book, called On Your Mark, Get Set, Blog!

It’s a road map to staking your brand quickly and efficiently, whether it’s your first blog or your 101st.

Get your blog and your brand set up, in order, so that you have a solid foundation, with no scrambling around for accounts.  AKA, benefit from our bumbling, and get yourself off to the blogging races with a sprint start in your side hustle.

Why I Persist Even Though Blogging is a Tough Side Hustle

Why do I do this, even though it takes a ton of time and sometimes money?  Even though there are emotional upsets and stress I bring on myself?

For the words!  For the chance to put my story out there.  For all the skills I’ve developed and friends I have made along the way.

Anne dreams of financial independence and is working her way toward it, whilst still enjoying life. She also loves money (who doesn’t?) and needed an outlet to discuss it, so she started blogging at Money Propeller. Getting that site up and running was an adventure that caused her to coauthor On Your Mark, Get Set, Blog! so that others would be off to the races with a side hustle a lot more quickly than her.