Welcome to our annual tradition of peeling back the curtain on the business of blogging. What began as a personal passion project in September 2007, with no grand business plan in sight, has evolved into a full-time endeavor built on learning, adapting, and embracing every curveball. We’ve always considered ourselves accidental entrepreneurs, navigating this journey one step at a time. Much like how we don’t claim to be master DIYers or trained interior designers, we’re not here to parade as seasoned business gurus. Instead, our aim is to transparently share our real-world experiences, offering genuine insights for anyone looking to grow their blog or simply curious about the daily realities of professional blogging. This candid look behind the scenes is designed to equip you with valuable information, helping you understand the dedication and diverse efforts involved in transforming a blog into a thriving venture.
While we’ve briefly touched on these topics in previous blogiversary reflections, this year, we’re diving much deeper. Prepare for a wealth of new details, complemented by fresh visuals, including the much-anticipated PIE CHARTS! Yes, you read that correctly. Sherry’s math-teacher dad will surely be doing a happy dance. So, grab your favorite beverage, get comfortable, and prepare to dig into the intricate layers of running a successful online platform.
Understanding Our Daily Grind: How We Allocate Our Time
Let’s kick things off with a comprehensive look at how we spend our time managing a professional blog. While yesterday’s “day in the life” post offered a glimpse into our constantly shifting daily routines, this section provides a more holistic view of the consistent efforts required to keep Young House Love thriving. It’s important to clarify that this breakdown focuses solely on our blog-related activities, consciously excluding personal responsibilities such as parenting our sixteen-month-old and essential adult duties like cooking and cleaning. What you’re about to see is a simplified, approximate breakdown of our professional time allocation. Please note that all pie charts presented in this post are general estimations, designed to illustrate broad trends rather than precise percentages:
One of the most surprising revelations for many, and often for us too, is the relatively small fraction of our time actually dedicated to hands-on projects, or “DIYing.” In fact, some weeks, it feels like we have barely more time for our project to-do list than we did when we both held full-time advertising jobs (and that was before Clara, so we probably had more energy back then!). Our weekends, along with weeknights after 7:30 PM once Clara is tucked into bed, remain our most productive periods for making genuine house progress. This is when the “blog is quieter,” as we say, allowing us to focus more on physical tasks and less on the constant flow of answering comments, proofreading content, and scheduling posts. However, that initial pie chart only scratches the surface, so let’s delve deeper.
A Detailed Look at Our Blogging Activities
To provide you with a clearer understanding of what goes into each general category, here’s a further breakdown of our time allocation. Yes, we’re breaking down a breakdown, but it’s essential for truly grasping the multifaceted nature of professional blogging:
INTERACTING: Building Community and Engagement
- Comments: Our philosophy is simple: if you invest your time in reading our content, the least we can do is reciprocate. We manually moderate every single comment, ensuring that one of us—typically Sherry—reads it before it risks getting buried. This allows us to answer any questions that arise and genuinely participate in the conversation. The only exception to this meticulous process is giveaway entries, which are approved in bulk due to their sheer volume, often exceeding 3,000 and even topping 10,000 on occasion. While this approach is undoubtedly time-consuming and perhaps not the most “efficient” system, fostering a vibrant, responsive community on our blog is paramount. We strongly dislike leaving any reader question unanswered. Outsourcing this duty to an intern or an “answering service” simply doesn’t align with our commitment to maintaining a grassroots, hands-on connection with our audience.
- Twitter, Facebook & Email: Extending our commitment to responsiveness, we strive to be as engaged as possible across our other social media channels. While our presence on our Facebook page might not be as constant as it once was, we still make a dedicated effort to check in and respond where necessary. For Twitter, tools like Hootsuite are invaluable, helping us track @mentions and ensuring that no tweet, question, or comment flutters by unnoticed. Maintaining these open lines of communication is key to nurturing our online community beyond the blog itself.
WRITING: The Heart of Our Content Creation
- Posts: This might seem obvious, but a blog, by definition, thrives on its posts. We admit, we’re wordy (and proud of it!), which means crafting engaging content consumes a significant portion of our blogging time. With approximately 35 posts published each month, this endeavor keeps us incredibly busy. We firmly believe that to be an effective blogger, one must dedicate substantial time and effort to writing high-quality posts. More than just a task, writing is, along with DIY, our first love. It’s what we used to do for sheer enjoyment on nights and weekends after long days in advertising, and that passion continues to drive us.
- BabyCenter & Do It Yourself Magazine: We’ve been fortunate enough that the success of our blog has opened doors to other fulfilling writing opportunities. These include our weekly column on BabyCenter’s Momformation blog and a regular feature in BHG’s Do It Yourself Magazine. Managing these external commitments involves coordinating with editors, brainstorming fresh ideas, writing compelling articles, capturing necessary photographs (or briefing illustrators/photographers for DIY), and even engaging with comments on platforms like BabyCenter. Collectively, these gigs truly function as a part-time job in themselves, expanding our reach and reinforcing our expertise.
- Book: A monumental project currently consuming a substantial portion of our time is the writing of our 260+ page book, scheduled for release in the Fall of 2012. This ambitious undertaking will be packed with hundreds of inspiring projects and accompanying photos (you can read more about it here). The time dedicated to the book fluctuates weekly; some weeks, this “slice of pie” is significantly larger, while others it shrinks a bit. With 90% of our manuscript now submitted (a huge relief!), this segment is poised to expand as we transition into the crucial phase of executing and professionally photographing all the discussed projects at our home before Christmas – a monumental task involving hundreds of distinct projects. It’s an exciting, albeit challenging, period!
DIY-ING: Bringing Projects to Life
- Projects: This category encompasses the actual, hands-on work we undertake on our home, which subsequently forms the core content of our blog posts. Many of these projects are things we would likely tackle even without a blog, given our innate love for DIY. However, the presence of an engaged audience definitely motivates us to initiate projects sooner, complete them faster, execute them more thoroughly, and approach them with increased gusto than we might otherwise. The knowledge that you, our readers, are following along adds a beneficial pressure, a positive kind of momentum that continually propels us forward. You guys are our driving force!
- Gathering Supplies: This often-underestimated aspect of DIY makes us well-acquainted with the staff at our local thrift stores, home improvement centers, craft shops, fabric stores, and lighting outlets, among others. Sometimes, these “errands” for gathering supplies can be completed in under an hour – a welcome relief. Other times, however, tracking down a specific item can consume an entire day or even longer. Hunting for the perfect materials is always a wild card on our to-do list, adding an element of unpredictability. But, as the saying goes, there’s a certain thrill in the chase, especially when you finally find exactly what you need.
PHOTOGRAPHING: Visual Storytelling
- Photo Taking: The process of capturing visuals for our blog varies greatly. Sometimes, it’s as simple as pausing for a few moments at each step of a project to snap a handful of explanatory shots. At other times, it involves a significant effort in cleaning and styling entire rooms for impressive “after shots” or for comprehensive “house tour” pictures (Hurricane Clara, our daughter, can leave quite a creative mess, necessitating our swift intervention to tidy up so you’re not left staring at a mountain of books in front of our newly built desk!). This category also includes the technical aspects of photography that still demand more of our time than we’d prefer – tasks like setting up the tripod, meticulously adjusting the aperture, and waiting for optimal lighting conditions at different times of the day. This is precisely why we dedicate considerable time to…
- Photo Editing: This crucial stage involves refining our images to ensure they look their best. It includes adjusting color balance, exposure levels, resizing, and carefully cropping photos. Even after we believe we’ve mastered our camera settings, images can sometimes appear too blue, too yellow, too wide, or off-center, requiring careful adjustments to render them as true-to-life as possible. Additionally, this stage encompasses the often tedious but necessary tasks of uploading and sorting through the hundreds of pictures we capture each week. We wish we were exaggerating about “hundreds”—we typically take between 50 and 200 photos per post, occasionally totaling up to 1,200 photos snapped weekly. From this vast collection, we meticulously select and refine fewer than 20 images per post, then size and upload them for your viewing pleasure.
BUSINESS RUNNING: The Unseen Operations
- Sponsors: This is our primary source of income, a topic we’ll explore in more detail shortly. Managing sponsors involves a substantial amount of administrative work: fielding numerous advertising requests, diligently notifying existing sponsors about renewal opportunities, sending out invoices, and uploading ads to our sidebar. (For your information, we utilize Google AdManager to serve our sponsors’ ads on our site. While this system requires some “supervision,” it mostly involves client relations managed via email, keeping things relatively streamlined).
- Giveaways: While we don’t generate any direct income from giveaways, they are an essential way for us to “give back” to our loyal readers and a strategic means of declining the numerous free products we are offered but no longer accept. Coordinating each week’s giveaway involves a flurry of emails to confirm prize details with brands, notify the lucky winners, and facilitate prize delivery. There’s also the challenging task of delivering unfavorable news to companies, as we simply don’t have the capacity or the right fit for every prize proposal we receive. This leads us to our next crucial point…
- Saying “No Thank You”: As self-proclaimed people-pleasers, this is consistently one of the hardest aspects of our job. However, the sheer volume of requests we receive each week compels us to decline many opportunities. These requests often fall into three main categories: 1) those for which we simply don’t have enough hours in the day (e.g., attending local or distant events), 2) those that don’t align with our blog’s core content (e.g., “could you please write about my dog walking service?”), or 3) those that go against our established policies (e.g., reviewing products for payment, adding paid text link ads directly within posts). We sincerely apologize if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of one of our polite refusals. We’ve learned that while saying no is difficult, it is often absolutely necessary for reasons of principle, sanity, and maintaining the integrity of our content.
- Bookkeeping: Ugh, this topic is almost as boring to discuss as it is to perform! Let’s just pretend I eloquently explained the intricacies of paying bills, filing quarterly taxes, renewing our business license, managing our own health insurance, handling site-hosting fees, and meticulously organizing receipts. While it’s far from exciting, it is an unavoidable and absolutely essential evil when it comes to running your own business effectively (you can find more details on this here).
- Technical Stuff: In an ideal week, this slice of the pie might all but disappear. However, during a busy period, we could find ourselves installing critical updates, troubleshooting frustrating server glitches, or experiencing a complete and utter site crash (an event that reliably adds approximately 50 gray hairs to our heads each time!). This also includes major undertakings like a full blog redesign, such as the one we completed a few weeks prior, which alone consumed roughly 40 hours of our time over a four-week span. Given that we aren’t formally technically trained, we’re certain that many of these tasks take us longer than they “should,” but they are indispensable for maintaining a functional and engaging platform.
Monetizing Your Blog: Our Financial Journey
Now that we’ve thoroughly explored the time investment required to run our blog, let’s shift our focus to the equally important aspect of money. Before expectations get too high, we want to be clear: we will not be disclosing our exact earnings. Call us old-fashioned, but we believe that inquiries about “how much do you make?” fall into the same category as “who did you vote for?” or “are those real???”—items firmly on our list of conversations not to be had with the entire planet. Essentially, anything we wouldn’t openly discuss with friends over dinner is off-limits here in the blog world. In a general sense, we are comfortable stating that we make a modest living. We’re certainly not “rolling in cheddar,” especially after accounting for all our business-related expenses like hosting fees, which we’ll outline at the end of this post. In fact, we view this as a positive, as it aligns perfectly with our blog’s focus on living modestly. However, we are more than happy to discuss the diverse sources from which our income is derived and how these streams have evolved over the past four years. So, let’s dive in.
Our Early Monetization Strategies: 2009 Income Breakdown
Cast your minds back to 2009, when we participated in a local panel discussion centered on the topic of making money through blogging. At that time, we were strong advocates for a “multi-channel” approach to generating income from a blog. Our financial landscape then, primarily driven by Sherry as the sole full-timer, looked something like this (again, this is a very general estimate, not precise figures):
We’ll break down some of these terms further under our next pie chart, but let’s consider the general picture for a moment. Just a few years ago, despite our earnest efforts, income solely from advertising simply wasn’t sufficient to support us. This prompted Sherry to creatively branch out. Leveraging her fine arts degree, she began selling inexpensive art prints that she had printed locally and handled all the shipping herself. It operated somewhat like an Etsy vendor model, but she established a dedicated shop page directly on our website. During this period, Sherry also started offering custom mood boards to assist readers with their “Design Dilemmas,” and for a brief time, even provided smaller services such as personalized paint color advice and short phone consultations.
When it came to pricing these mood boards, Sherry strategically offered some for free initially, aiming to generate interest and build a portfolio. Subsequently, she gradually increased her rates, using the principles of supply and demand as her guide. After being free for a period, they were priced at $30, then $60, then $100, and slowly climbed to $250 as demand steadily grew over the years. Sherry drew a line at $250, refusing to sell them for more, even when the two mood boards she offered each week consistently sold out within minutes. Additionally, we were contributing articles to Do It Yourself Magazine and our local R Home design magazine. This diverse portfolio of activities truly embodied our “multi-channel” income strategy. We were engaged in a multitude of tasks to generate what was, at the time, a modest income. This diversification was crucial because ad income alone was not cutting it. It’s worth mentioning here that Sherry took a significant pay cut transitioning from advertising to full-time blogging, but her determination to see it through paid off immensely. Looking back, it was a considerable risk, but one we are incredibly glad we took.
Our Evolved Financial Landscape: Current Income Streams
Now, let’s look at a new pie chart, reflecting how times have changed, thankfully for the better. As our blog traffic steadily grew, so did our advertising revenue. This positive shift meant we could gradually reduce the time spent on services and selling prints, both of which we ultimately discontinued after Clara’s birth in May 2010 out of sheer necessity due to lack of time. The elimination of these supplementary services allowed us to dedicate more focused time and energy to our core blogging activities. In fact, while creating these pie charts, we noticed a remarkable change: our current weekly Google Ad income now surpasses what we earned from Google in our entire first year of blogging. This isn’t to suggest that we’re earning an enormous amount now, but rather to highlight just how laughably small our initial earnings were. Hopefully, this comparison serves as encouragement for anyone currently earning just a few cents a day to persist for four years and through 2,000+ posts (assuming you genuinely love what you do, of course; don’t stick with it solely for uncertain future dividends!). Our current income sources now reflect a different distribution, looking more like this (please remember, this chart is completely illustrative and not based on exact calculated percentages; it merely represents the general shift in our income sources):
While our income model remains “multi-channeled” in a broad sense, the vast majority of these channels are now advertising-based. We intentionally maintain a split across various income streams as a strategic safeguard; if one source falters, we aren’t plunged into a panic. For those scratching their heads at any of the labels on the chart, here’s a quick, clear breakdown of each:
- Google Ads: These advertisements are clearly labeled as such on our sidebar or at the bottom of our posts. They are powered by the brilliant algorithms at Google, which analyze keywords from our page content (or draw hints from your browsing history) to display ads that they deem most relevant to you. We have minimal control over the specific ads shown, beyond blocking any inappropriate content. However, we greatly appreciate their self-sufficient nature, which frees up more of our time for projects and writing compelling posts.
- Ad Networks: Many blogs supplement or even substitute Google Ads with advertisements sourced from specialized ad networks. These networks often provide more niche, home improvement-specific ads that can generate higher revenue. Since these networks usually don’t have enough “inventory” to fill all available ad slots at all times, we typically implement a backup method that displays Google Ads when the primary network isn’t running. For those curious, our current ad network is Haven Home Media, which is now owned by Reader’s Digest. They approached us directly, so we aren’t entirely sure how one “sleuths out” an ad network. Generally, our belief is to focus on consistently creating excellent projects and posts, and the right sponsors and networks will eventually find you.
- Sponsors: These are the advertisements you see prominently displayed on our sidebar, clearly marked as sponsors. This category also includes businesses or brands that receive a grateful shout-out in our monthly thank-you posts. These are companies with whom we work directly, who reach out to us because they believe we are a good fit for their brand. If we agree (and have available space, as we are sometimes “full”), they become YHL sponsors, and we send them lots of virtual wet kisses! We hold a great deal of appreciation for these partners because, unlike the more random ads from networks and Google, these folks actively choose to collaborate with us directly, which we find incredibly cool.
- Amazon Affiliate: There is a wide array of affiliate programs available, through which bloggers earn a very small commission (typically around 4-7%) when a reader purchases a product they have recommended. The most common affiliate links you’ll find on our site are featured in our “We’re Digging” sidebar column, accompanied by a label explicitly stating “links contain affiliates.” We are strict about transparently labeling all ads, sponsors, and affiliates to maintain 100% honesty with our audience. All items linked are products we genuinely love and find on amazon.com, some of which are items we have personally purchased and use—such as a specific book, camera accessory, decor item, or a toy for Clara. Occasionally, these links also appear within posts about products we’ve bought and loved, where they are, again, always clearly marked.
- Writing Gigs: This category encompasses the aforementioned columns we write for BabyCenter and Do It Yourself Magazine. It also includes various random opportunities that come our way once in a blue moon, such as invitations to write articles for other esteemed publications. These external writing assignments not only diversify our income but also reinforce our authority and reach within the home and lifestyle niche.
- Book: Yes, it’s true – we are actually being paid to write a book! It’s an incredible opportunity that sometimes we still can’t quite believe is happening. This represents a significant, long-term income stream derived directly from our expertise and content.
The Cost of Doing Business: Understanding Blogging Expenses
Of course, no business, regardless of its industry, operates without incurring expenses. It’s easy to mistakenly assume that blogging is a free endeavor; after all, it certainly felt that way when we first started in ’07, even utilizing one of those free URLs ending in wordpress.com. However, as our traffic grew and our blog evolved into a legitimate business, so too did our operational costs. Here’s a detailed look at where our money goes:
- Hosting: The foundational cost of keeping our site accessible to you, our readers, is hosting. This includes paying for our website hosting (managed by LiquidWeb <– full disclosure: this is an affiliate link) and securely storing our vast library of images (on Amazon S3). Between these two services alone, we are projecting a five-figure annual expense for hosting. Yes, that’s tens of thousands of dollars simply to host our site so you can effortlessly read posts and view pictures. It is, without a doubt, totally worth every penny. A blank blog page means no readers, and we absolutely cherish having you all around.
- Taxes: While no one is immune to taxes, managing them as self-employed individuals requires extra planning on our part. Unlike traditional employment where taxes are withheld automatically, we must consciously set aside approximately one-third of every paycheck. This sum is then remitted directly to the government in the form of quarterly tax payments. It’s a constant reminder of our business responsibilities.
- Insurance: When I transitioned from my advertising job last May, we suddenly found ourselves solely responsible for securing and funding our own health insurance. It’s certainly not an inexpensive line item in our budget, but with a young child, comprehensive coverage is an invaluable investment that provides immense peace of mind.
- Retirement: Without an employer automatically contributing to a 401k or offering any form of matching contributions, Sherry and I each proactively opened our own Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) IRAs. We are now individually responsible for consistently contributing to these accounts to ensure our future financial security.
- Business License/LLC Fees: As a legally recognized Limited Liability Company (LLC) operating in Virginia, we are obligated to pay annual license fees and associated taxes, ensuring our business remains compliant and in good standing.
- Professional Help: While the term “professional help” might conjure images of therapy, what we primarily mean here is the essential support we receive from our accountant, who meticulously handles our taxes. We also occasionally engage professional programmers to assist us in navigating complex technical issues. For instance, when our site crashes four times in a single week, making us feel like throwing our computers out the window, a programmer becomes our saving grace! Though, perhaps we should consider a therapist sometimes too…
- Equipment: Had it not been for our blogging venture, we likely wouldn’t own a second laptop, a high-quality DSLR camera, an HD Flip video camera, an external hard drive, or an iPhone, among other essential items I’m probably forgetting at this moment. However, having reliable and decent “tools” is undeniably crucial for blogging as efficiently and effectively as possible. We are happy to invest in these assets, and yes, they are legitimate business write-offs. While a write-off doesn’t make an item “free,” it certainly alleviates some of the financial sting.
- Project Costs: Arguably, many of these costs would eventually have been incurred regardless, given that we were passionate DIY junkies long before we ever started our blog. Therefore, we would likely have undertaken most of these projects anyway. However, as mentioned earlier, some of our projects happen—or at least happen at the accelerated pace and expansive scale they do—specifically because of this blog. For example, all the renovations and projects we’ve completed on our current house might have stretched over two years instead of nine months if we weren’t home bloggers constantly creating content. Oh, and since we get asked this frequently: none of our personal home projects are considered business write-offs because we are performing them on our primary residence. Our house is not zoned as an office building, which is actually a good thing; if it were, and we wrote off these projects, we would owe a significant sum of money to the government if we ever decided to sell it.
For those seeking even more comprehensive information on the expense side of professional blogging, we actually delved into it with greater detail last year. But for now, that’s enough from us. We sincerely hope that this act of “peeling back the curtain” has been insightful and helpful. Whether you plan to use this information to strategize your own burgeoning blogging business, inform another related entrepreneurial venture, or simply to gain a better understanding of what genuinely transpires behind the scenes here at Young House Love, our goal is to empower you with knowledge. It’s undoubtedly a far more intricate and demanding endeavor than merely completing projects and writing about them. Yet, there is absolutely nothing else we would rather be doing. Seriously, we are constantly amazed that we’ve ended up “here,” and our cup truly runneth over with gratitude. In fact, if we were to create a pie chart of our gratitude, it would be 101% full. And now, as anything involving charts should conclude—who else is hungry for pie?
Further Resources for Aspiring Bloggers
Update: Among the most frequent inquiries we receive are requests for detailed information about professional blogging—how we built our website, strategies for growing an engaged following, and, of course, how we successfully monetized our platform. In response to this demand, we’ve compiled and shared comprehensive insights on how we started a blog, significantly grew our traffic, and ultimately transformed it into a full-time career. We encourage anyone serious about professional blogging to explore this invaluable resource.