think about the next part of this publish as an update to this from two years back where we very first broke out a few pie-charts to typically show exactly how we spend our time as well as exactly how we make money as blog writers (because even our parents get confused about that sometimes). things have altered over the last couple of years – not considerably – however sufficient that we felt it was time for an update. So let’s kick this charty goodness off. Behold, a extremely simplified / approximated breakdown (all the pie charts in this publish are extremely general guesses, btw)…
First, we ought to point out that this is not a total representation of our waking hours – it’s just our “work” time. So you can see yesterday’s “Day In The Life” publish for a much better sense of exactly how things like parenting, cooking, as well as running tasks in shape into the mix. That being said, the fascinating thing to note right here is that the majority of our work time is spent running a site (blogging, interacting, as well as managing a business) not doing diy projects, as some may assume.
We always explain our task as a mostly-desk job. We may get to paint or develop something while Clara’s in bed for the night (which is when we utilized to do jobs when we both had day-jobs anyway), however between the hours of 8am as well as 6pm we’re many likely discovered on the computer sizing photos, composing posts, organizing giveaways, emailing about our book or the showhouse, answering comments, doing our expenses, or coding something. however let’s dive in a bit deeper to get a better look.
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When we look at exactly how a few of these areas break out, there are two modifications that are many notable to us:
We’ve handled to streamline the managerial elements of our business. easy modifications like utilizing Rafflecopter to run giveaways (which likewise saves us from approving countless comments as well as enables us to accept much more than 10,000 entrances without the site crashing) together with hiring out much more of our accounting have made little however considerable impacts. however possibly the most significant is a shift that we’re making in our marketing program. We’re currently transitioning our 4-year-old personal sponsor system out (private sponsors = people that we handle directly, so I was manually uploading 30+ ads as well as invoicing 30+ people). We’re upgrading to a much more auto-pilot system that is handled by a third celebration who can serve/place/bill automatically. The kinks of the new system aren’t all worked out, so I don’t have any type of other practical details to share yet, however it promises to save us great deals of time in ad renewal notices, invoices, as well as even composing sponsor shout out messages (which have been phased out as of this month). In addition to being much more effective for us, we’re aiming for a much more pleasant experience for you guys (less sidebar clutter, for one!) as well as a much more effective, versatile system for our advertisers (so they’re not one of 30 boxes blinking on our sidebar).
Which allows us to provide much more time to side gigs. freeing up some managerial time enables for things like book #2, the showhouse, as well as a trick job that has to stay trick for now (ARGH, SECRETS!) to take up much more of the pie. It might be argued that this is a poor thing (doesn’t it take away from costs much more time on jobs or posts?) particularly when side gigs don’t contribute to the majority of our earnings (more on that in a moment), however to us, they’re the chances that we can’t pass up: they keep us fresh, assist us grow professionally, as well as stretch us in new ways. as well as since they’re still only about 19% of our overall time, there’s still just as much space for jobs as well as other blog stuff as there always has been, which still comprise 80+ percent of the pie.
Obviously this isn’t a ideal design of time administration or exactly how to run a blog. We’re continuously trying to enhance our processes to ensure that we can put the most time into activities that invigorate us, assist as well as entertain you, as well as – let’s be truthful – put money in Clara’s college fund. One thing some people suggest is “why don’t you spend less time responding to comments?” or set them to car authorize for repeat commenters, however the reason we keep comments in moderation is so we don’t miss questions. If we car authorize some or all of them, concerns will slip with (they not only roll in on present posts, however old ones as well). as well as because we believe linking with you guys as well as providing extra information is a huge part of what got us here, we’d never want to phase that out.
Speaking of which, I believe it’s time for our next chart:
Unlike last time we did this chart, we’ve now collapsed all of our marketing – personal sponsors, ad networks, as well as Google – into one chunk. That’s partially since those slices of the pie are quickly shifting while we’re in this sponsor program shift (you may notice over 25 fewer ads on our sidebar by the time it’s done). however it’s likewise to make it crystal remove that the majority of our earnings comes directly from sidebar ads. much like exactly how magazines or newspapers keep their doors open thanks to advertisers, blogging seems to comply with that design as well, at least for us – particularly because we don’t do other things like sponsored messages to make extra income. Although that red affiliate slice of the pie is from sharing some things we like – typically on our sidebar or sometimes in a publish (both clearly marked as affiliate links whenever they occur).
Another fascinating distinction is that as much as things like composing a book as well as having a illumination line may noise like cash-cows, they’re not things that we have experienced as high earners, as demonstrated by our chart above. however they’re a truly huge offer for us personally as well as professionally, so they’re well worth the effort as well as the experience. For those wondering, we still haven’t reached our nobility point on the book (more on that here) however we did hear from a publisher in China who bought the book rights from our American publisher for a nominal charge as well as is re-publishing it there in Chinese (which is truly interesting to see – the cover’s going to be different as well as everything). So because we get a little percent of that charge for being the authors, that’s what that sliver represents. Admittedly the proportions represented above are a bit rough, because the goal was just to typically show the point. So as long as we’re speaking non-specifics, let’s relocation on to our third graphic.
After a couple of attempts to make a helpful pie-chart, I provided up (these fluctuate so much that trying to quantify them just wasn’t working). however the point we wished to show was that some people believe that blogging is a “zero overhead” profession, however if your readership grows, your company costs certainly increase with them. right here are a few of the notable locations that our profits go:
Taxes & Accountant: As interesting as those auto-pilot ad network checks are sometimes, a huge chunk of that goes best back to Uncle Sam (around 33% of our overall earnings bounces best out of our inspecting account across four quarterly payments). We utilize an accountant to assist keep everything straight, however it has certainly been the most significant modification for us (going from banking/spending all of our paychecks in our previous occupations to having to hoard a huge pillow to send back four times a year).
Retirement: because we don’t have a manager taking 401k money out of our paychecks anymore (or anybody doing any type of business matching), we have to stay on top of our own retirement planning. We each have a SEP IRA as well as after year-end taxes our accountant calculates what our maximum contribution might be for that tax year as well as we try to invest as much of that as possible (as well as contributing to Clara’s college fund then too).
Web Hosting: The most significant unforeseen expense for us in blogging was web holding as well as other charges – whatever from holding our site as well as pictures (which are kept individually on amazon.cloud to keep the site from crashing) to paying a monthly charge for Rafflecopter as well as Vanilla Forums. These costs really add as much as practically double our home loan repayment each month!
Health Insurance: one more “perk” of being a little company owner is that you get to pay for your own health and wellness insurance. It’s not fun, however it’s certainly one of those “now I can sleep at night” investments in your company as well as family.
Business Insurance: While we’re on the topic, we likewise pay for company insurance. This assists to safeguard our company (and us personally) if we were ever to be impacted by things like a suit or the death/injury of one of us (knocking on so much wood over right here best now).
Legal: This is a new cost for us just recently since over the past year we’ve engaged a trademark as well as licensing attorney. because our book was going to be titled young home like as well, we needed to completely insurance claim the name – as well as she likewise assists us navigate a few of the contracts that we’ve got for a few of our side gigs (like our illumination collection). Plus, now we’re officially young home Love™. Holla!
Projects: Last however not least… everybody understands house enhancement isn’t totally free – as well as while many of the things that we blog about would be costs that we’d incur anyway, we definitely work at a quicker speed (and for that reason spend faster) than we did before we were blogging full time. We get asked all the time if these house purchases can be compose offs because we’re blogging about them for a living, however the response is no. because we’re fixing up our main home (and not an office or investment property) we might never compose a cent of it off (and if we attempted to, we’d owe a huge ol’ chunk of money to the government if we ever offered our home because it would be partially theirs instead of all ours).
And now let’s lighten up this numberfest a bit, shall we? like previous years we believed we’d throw some random stats as well as facts your way, however this year I’ve spiced things up a bit visually. You understand I like a great infographic…
P.S. – You can inspect out our original pie charts from 2011 here, as well as look back at our past by-the-numbers messages for our last five blogiversaries here: 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008.
Update – a few of the most regular requests that we get are for information about professionally blogging (how we made our site, exactly how we grew our following, exactly how we make money, etc) so we shared all of the details about exactly how we started a blog, grew our traffic, as well as turned it into a full time job.
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