Can you really make money blogging or creating online content? Absolutely! Yes! I make a living full-time doing exactly this.

According to Lifehacker.com, I am in the 4% of bloggers that make $10,000 and up a month. I’m also part of the 17% that make a living online and support the family doing so. In addition, there was a survey in 2012 by Blogging.com where they interviewed 1000 bloggers: only 2% spend less than 2 hours a day blogging and make $150,000 a year. I work more than that, but I don’t kill myself, and have brought in over six figures yearly, several years in a row now, and I’m about to do it again. This enables me to have a small team that helps me with social media, writing and dealing with clients. 

I suspect there are content creators that make a whole lot more than I do. But I KNOW there are also many, many more, who are hardly monetizing their digital presence or even not at all.

I must say I live a pretty balanced life, and I´m no longer hustling 24/7, by choice. A health scare led me to rethink my priorities over a year ago. I embarked on yoga teacher training, and am about to graduate from a 500-hour course, as a RYT-500. I work smarter than before, and make the same or perhaps more, proportionately to the number of hours I work a week which are significantly fewer than just two years ago.

But I’m not here to brag. I’m writing this because I honestly didn’t realize until recently that what I pull off (with my manager Johanna Voss´s help and enthusiasm) is a bit of an anomaly, and I know that not everyone has this crazy committed personality as I do. And not everyone has a lifetime of experience as a self-employed creative either. But if I was able to make a living with words before the Internet came around, imagine what I can do now! And if I can, so can you!

It´s not all rosy over here though. Small businesses have one big issue that messes with us often and that is cash flow. I´ve shared how I manage cash-flow in other blog posts. Cash flow issues are the reason I have to explain to my kids at times that we can’t buy this or that because there are, say, $25,000 due within the next month, but they’re just not in my pocket this second. In fact, I´ve shown them my income statements so they can better understand. The statements look like a freaking rollercoaster! The great thing is that by the end of the year the result is pretty damn good, especially for someone who works from home and makes her own schedule.

I’ve given workshops at conferences and in person on how I run my business and how you too could be making a living creating content online. Still, people message and email me wanting to “pick my brain” often and I feel bad that I can’t give each of them the energy and time they need. I can’t have coffee or lunch with every person who asks.

But I just may do an online workshop. I’m super passionate about making a living doing what I love, especially in the digital world. It seems like it would make sense to bring the conversation to this space. If you´d like to hear more when the time comes, please fill out this short survey. I promise I will only contact you when the workshop or course happens!

Also read: 8 Basic steps to get started as a content creator