Big progress & a looming setback for my writing business this month

I have not done an update on my blogging and writing business goal progress in a while. But I have been working very hard on my writing goals!

Let’s start with the looming setback in my writing business because that lit some fire under my rear end to motivate me to get to earning more money…

I got an email that said I will soon owe $400 in Bluehost web hosting fees. They have definitely gone up on their rates. Ouch. Then my Canva bill came due for over $100. Without Canva, I cannot make all of my pretty images for my websites.

These are both non-negotiable expenses for having your own self-hosted blog. You must have a host. They provide my platform and my tech support. Without Bluehost, there is no blog. Could I move to a cheaper host? Yes, but that is an awful lot of extra work. I think I would rather just make the $400 through work that I do anyway, writing.

Plus, the whole goal is to become profitable at something I enjoy doing.

It is hard to find a job that you can keep when you move every two-three years. Writing online can be perfect. I just have to stick with it. That is why this crazy writing business is so important to me.

Turning a blog into profit is a long game not a quick route to money. Your pay depends on lots of people visiting your website frequently, and let me tell you. It can be a heart-rending, disappointing path. With each post you hope upon hope for a breakthrough. And with each post, traffic stays about the same.

So yeah, setbacks currently are fourfold:

(probably way more but I’m trying to remain optimistic)

-In July, I owe $400.

-Crushingly slow growth on my two websites

-Inability to change my urls for gettingmyacttogether.com because of the way I set it up, not realizing what I was doing, but that is a long story.

-Time. Mom life is still busy.

Problems. Yes. “We got lots of problems.”

Now that is enough of sadness. Let us move on to the happy news–progress in my writing business.

#1. I decided to bite the bullet and apply to write for other publications.

This is definitely the quickest way to make money–to work for someone else again. (I did do this a few years ago, regularly, for Monterey Premier).

First, I went to YouTube and watched videos like this one about finding writing jobs.

From these videos, I learned about Contena and Medium.

Well, learning in itself is progress. I applied to Contena and got accepted right away. But then guess what I found out. Contena is like a head hunter for writers, so yes, they have all the best, premium, full time writing job listings. But here’s the catch no one told me. Contena charges $900 for that service.

Nine hundred big ones!

Pass.

Then I renewed my Medium account.

I submitted three articles and soon discovered that no one reads them without you heavily promoting them yourself.

Pass.

(Editor Update: Medium turned out to grow much quicker than I expected.)

#2. When I got sick, I sat around and caught up on my email. There was a two-week-old job invite from Newsbreak.com in my email.

Ohhhhh yeah! I meant to apply for that and never got around to it because I am the world’s worst email account holder.

Newsbreak pays you by how many views your articles get. Eh, why not give it a shot?

So I submitted this post which I had previously posted here on my personal blog:

How to Find a Home When No Houses are Available.

#3. Writing for Newsbreak feels like the breakthrough I have been looking for.

I submitted my article and did not look at it again until the next day. When I finally looked, I discovered that the article had over 10,000 views in just the first twelve hours. This was without me ever even promoting it at all.

I knew I had found the right place. Now I am four days out, and the article has over 22,000 views.

I have written only one or two articles that have ever gotten that many views, and it took those articles years to get that many views.

The original post about how to find a house, which is still on my blog, had less than a hundred views. That is because gettingmyacttogether.com is a small, new blog without much of an audience.

It feels awesome to have the opportunity to write for a larger audience and actually get paid for it.

Go here to follow me on Newsbreak. I am planning to submit an article a week over there. Hopefully, this will continue to go well.

#4. Last but not least, my writing business is currently in the black!

This is the very first year since 2016/17 that I have worked on the blog consistently.

$100 of what I have made I reinvested in courses and a domain name, but that still leaves me in the black for the year.

This is exciting. I have not been profitable since 2016 or 17 when I took on sponsored posts and wrote for MontereyPremier.

Oh!!! And I have finally hit upon a schedule that works!!

As in, my new schedule ACTUALLY makes sense. It is not just an experiment like the other schedules I blogged about. This one is simple and easy and not strict. I will post more about that next time.

In the meantime, thank you all so much for supporting this starving writer!! Haha! Kidding about the starving part. I may not make much money, but you know I eat plenty.