Like previous blogiversaries, we’re gonna use this week as an excuse to take a look at the business side of blogging (at least as we know it). As you’ve probably gathered by now, we never intended to start a business when we wrote our first post back in Sept 2007, nor did we ever construct a formal business plan. So this whole adventure has been a learn as we go / roll with the punches / adjust along the way / insert more cliches here kind of deal. And just like we don’t claim to be DIY experts or trained interior designers (we’re just two people with a chihuahua and a baby), we’re not about to pretend that we’re the savviest business people out there either. But like everything else we do, we’re just gonna share our experiences in an effort to help someone out there who might be trying to grow their blog… or is just curious about what we do all day.
We’ve lightly touched on some of this info in past blogiversary posts, but this year we’ve added a lot more details along with some new visuals: PIE CHARTS. Oh yeah, you read that right. Sherry’s math-teacher dad is about to do the happy dance. So get your fork out and prepare to dig in.
Let’s start with a look at how we spend our time… a slice (har-har) of which was somewhat encapsulated in yesterday’s day in the life post. But this is a more global look at all the things we do as opposed to the somewhat random and always-changing things that we do in a day. Oh and to be clear, this is a look at when goes into running Young House Love (so it excludes things like parenting a sixteen month old and other general I’m-an-adult duties like cooking and cleaning). Behold, a very simplified / approximated breakdown (all the pie charts in this post are very general guesses, btw):
The main thing that might surprise you here is that we actually spend a very pretty small sliver of our time actually doing projects (aka “DIYing”). In fact, some weeks it feels like we barely have any more time to tackle our to-do list than we did back when we both had full-time jobs in advertising (that was pre-Clara too, so we might have had more energy, haha). Our weekends (along with weeknights after 7:30 when Clara’s in bed) are still our most productive days in terms of making house progress because the blog is “quieter” (as we say around here). So we can focus more on tasks and less on answering comments and proofing & posting posts. But that pie chart isn’t complicated enough, so…
Here’s a further breakdown of the breakdown above (yup, we broke down a breakdown) to give you a better sense of what we really do within those general categories:
INTERACTING:
- Comments: Our philosophy is that if you take the time to read what we write, the least we can do is return the favor. So we manually moderate all comments so that one of us – usually Sherry – can read it before it risks getting lost in the count and so that we can answer any questions that come up (the only exception to this is giveaway entries, which get approved in bulk since they routinely top 3K and actually topped 10K yesterday, and stopped loading, so we had to start a second giveaway post). Yes, it’s time consuming. And no, it’s probably not the most efficient system. But being part of the conversation on our blog is very important to us and we hate leaving any question unanswered. Farming that duty out to someone like an intern just feels too “answering service” to us, so we’re happy to stay grass roots and hands on.
- Twitter, Facebook & Email: Similarly, we try to be as responsive as possible on other social media. We don’t hover on our Facebook page as much as we used to, but we still try to poke in to respond where needed. And Hootsuite helps us track @mentions on Twitter so we can do our best not to let a tweet question or comment flutter by unnoticed.
WRITING:
- Posts: Well duh, a blog has to have posts right? We’re wordy and we know it (clap your hands!), so this is another major chunk of blogging. And we write around 35 a month, so it keeps us busy. But we’re not sure how you can be a good blogger without spending a good portion of time on your posts. Plus it’s our first love, along with DIY. Writing posts is what we used to do on nights and weekends after long days of working in advertising just for fun. And we still feel that way – it’s a good time.
- BabyCenter & Do It Yourself Magazine: We’ve been lucky enough that writing our blog has spawned other writing gigs, like our weekly post on BabyCenter’s Momformation blog and a regular column in BHG’s Do It Yourself Magazine. So between coordinating those with our bosses over there, coming up with ideas, writing them, taking photos (or briefing an illustrator or photographer in the case of DIY), and answering comments (on BabyCenter), they’re sort of a part time job on their own.
- Book: We’re writing a 260+ page book (due out in Fall of 2012) full of hundreds of projects and photos (more on that here). Some weeks this slice of pie should be muuuch bigger, and some a little smaller. Now that we have 90% of our manuscript turned in (whew!), this slice may actually get permanently larger since it’s time to actually do all of the projects that we talked about and have them photographed at our house by a pro before Christmas (yes, hundreds of them). Should be interesting…
DIY-ING:
- Projects: This is the actual doing of stuff to our house, which we then blog about. Most of these projects might have gotten done even if we didn’t have a blog (DIY is just something we love)… but we definitely take on projects sooner, faster, more thoroughly, and with more gusto than we may have if we didn’t have an audience. The fact that you guys are watching adds pressure, but it’s the good kind that keeps us going. Promise. You guys = momentum.
- Gathering Supplies: This is the part that makes us best friends with the employees at our local thrift stores, home improvement stores, craft stores, fabric stores, lighting outlets, etc. Sometimes running errands (aka: gathering supplies) can take less than an hour. Sweet. And sometimes it can take more than a day to track down something we need. Hunting stuff is always kind of a wild card item on the to-do list. But you know what they say about the thrill of the chase…
PHOTOGRAPHING:
- Photo Taking: Sometimes this is just taking a few moments during each step of a project to snap a few shots. Sometimes it’s cleaning up and styling rooms for “after shots” or “house tour” pictures (Hurricane Clara can leave quite a mess before we swoop in and straighten up so you guys don’t have to stare at a giant stack of books in front of the new desk that we built). This also includes the technical aspects of photography that still take us more time than we’d like (using the tripod, adjusting the aperture, waiting for different times of day to see which light is better, etc), which is why we have…
- Photo Editing: These are things like adjusting the color, exposure, size, and the way that our photos are cropped (sometimes even after thinking we’ve mastered the camera things are too blue or too yellow or too wide or off-center, so we try to adjust them so they look as true to life as possible). This also includes uploading and sorting through the hundreds of pics that we take each week. Wish I were kidding about the “hundreds” part, but we usually average 50-200 photos per post (which can tip the scales at 1,200 photos snapped each week). We then boil them down to under 20 per post and size & upload ’em).
BUSINESS RUNNING:
- Sponsors: This is where most of our money comes from (more on that later) so it involves a lot of fielding advertising requests, notifying sponsors about renewals, sending invoices, and uploading ads to our sidebar. (FYI, we use Google AdManager to serve our sponsors’ ads to our site, which takes a bit of “supervision” but not too much beyond the whole client-relations thing that we do via email).
- Giveaways: We make no money doing this, but it’s our way of “giving back” to our readers (and a way to deflect the free products that we’re offered but no longer accept). Coordinating each week’s giveaway involves a bunch of emails to confirm the prize details, notify the winners, and facilitate the prize delivery. There’s also the task of being the bearer of bad news to folks since we just don’t have room for every prize that we’re emailed about (and sometimes they don’t feel like the right fit for you guys). Which leads me to our next point…
- Saying “No Thank You”: We’re people pleasers, so this is a hard one for us, but we get so many requests each week that we 1) just don’t have enough hours in the day for (i.e. attending a local – or not so local – event), 2) don’t really blog about (i.e. “could you pretty please write about my dog walking service?”) or 3) have a policy against doing (i.e. reviewing a product, adding paid text link ads to posts) that we find ourselves having to decline a lot. Sorry if you’ve been on the receiving end of this. We’ve learned that saying no is difficult, but sometimes it’s necessary for reasons of principle and/or sanity.
- Bookkeeping: Ugh, this bores me too much to talk about. Just pretend I said something interesting about paying bills, filing quarterly taxes, renewing our business license, paying for our own health insurance, managing our site-hosting fees, and organizing receipts. Wish it was less yawn inducing, but it’s a necessary evil when it comes to running your own business (more on that here).
- Technical Stuff: On a good week this slice could all but disappear, but on a busy week we may be installing updates, dealing with server glitches, craaaaaashing entirely (which gives us approximately 50 gray hairs each time), or even doing a whole blog redesign like the one we did a few weeks back (we probably spent 40 hours total on that over the course of about four weeks). Since we’re not technically trained I’m sure all of this takes longer than it should.
So now that we’ve taken a general look at the time aspect of running our blog, let’s talk money. Before you get your hopes up, we’re not gonna detail how much we earn. Call us old fashioned, but we feel like “how much do you make?” joins “who’d you vote for?” and “are those real???” in a our list of conversations not to be had with the entire planet (anything we don’t talk about with friends at dinner usually = off limits here in blog world). In a general sense, we like to say that we make a modest living (we’re not rolling in cheddar, especially after we pay our business-related expenses like hosting fees – which we outline at the end of this post). But we actually think is a good thing because we blog about living modestly, so it all goes hand in hand. But we’re happy to talk about where our money comes from and how that has changed over the last four years. Let’s do it.
Waaay back in 2009 we spoke on a local panel about making money blogging. At the time we sung the praises of a “multi-channel” approach to earning income from your blog. Because, at the time, we (though mainly Sherry, since she was the only full timer then) got money something like this (again, this is a very general guestimate):
We’ll breakdown some of those terms further under the next pie chart, but let’s talk generally for a second. A few years back, despite our best efforts, money from advertising just wasn’t cutting it. So Sherry branched out and started selling inexpensive art prints that she had printed locally and shipped herself (she’s got a fine arts degree). It was sort of like being an Etsy vendor (but she created a shop page on our site to vend them instead). At that time Sherry also began offering custom mood boards to help readers with their “Design Dilemmas” (and briefly even offered smaller services like paint color advice and even short phone consultations).
When it came to pricing those mood boards out, Sherry did some for free first, just to get interest up and a few under her belt. Then she slowly raised her rate using supply & demand as the guide. After being free for a while they were $30, then $60, then $100, and slowly built up to $250 when supply/demand increased over the years (Sherry refused to sell them for more than that, even when the two per week that she would offer up would sell out within two minutes). Oh, we were also writing for Do It Yourself Magazine and our local R Home design magazine, so that’s where we got the whole multi-channel method thing from. We were doing lots of stuff to make a small income. Which was necessary because ad income alone just wasn’t cutting it (I should mentioned here that Sherry took a huge pay cut to go from advertising to blogging, but she just wanted to see it through, and looking back it was a risk that we’re so glad we took).
But now let’s look at a new pie chart. Times have changed, and luckily for the better. As our traffic grew, so did our ad revenue, which meant that we were able to spend less time on services and selling prints (both of which we discontinued after Clara’s birth in May 2010 out of sheer no-time-at-all necessity). The elimination of these services allowed for more time that we could spend focusing on blogging. In fact, while baking making these pie charts I noticed that our currently weekly Google Ad income is larger than what we pulled in our entire first year via Google. This is not to indicate that we’re making an enormous amount now, but rather that what we started at was so laughably small. Hopefully this encourages anyone who is currently earning a few cents a day to stick with it for four years and 2,000+ posts (if you love it I guess, haha, don’t stick with it for the uncertain years-down-the-line dividends). So now our income sources look more like this (this chart might be completely inaccurate since we didn’t really calculate things so it’s not made up of actual percentages – it’s just representative of the general shift in our income sources):
It’s still “multi-channeled” in a way, but the majority of the channels are advertising-based. We still keep our income split across different sources so that if one falters, we aren’t sent into a panic. And in case you’re scratching your head at any of those labels, here’s a quick breakdown:
- Google Ads: These are labelled as such on our sidebar or at the bottom of a post (they’re by the geniuses at Google who take words from our page – or hints from your browsing history – to show you ads that they feel are most relevant to you). We have little say in what’s shown here, except for blocking inappropriate ads. But we love that they’re pretty self-sufficient, which means more time for projects and writing posts.
- Ad Networks: Lots of blogs substitute or supplement Google with ads from a network, which allow for more home improvement specific ads that can also pay more (since they don’t usually have enough “inventory” to fill all slots, we usually use a back-up method that shows Google-Ads when they’re not running). Our ad network is Haven Home Media for anyone wondering, now owned by Reader’s Digest. And they came to us, so we’re not sure how you sleuth an ad network out (in general we believe in focusing on keeping projects/posts great and sponsors/networks will hopefully come to you).
- Sponsors: These are the ads that you see on our sidebar marked as such (as well as folks who get shouted out in a thank you post once a month). These are people/companies that we work with directly, who come to us because they think we’d be a good fit. If we agree (and have room for them, since sometimes we’re “full”) they come on as YHL sponsors and we send them lots of virtual wet kisses. We have a lot of love for them because unlike the random ads that come through an ad network and Google, these folks choose to work with us directly, which is pretty cool of them.
- Amazon Affiliate: There are lots of affiliate programs out there where basically bloggers earn a very small cut (usually around 4-7%) when someone purchases a product that they recommend. The most common affiliate links you’ll find are in our “We’re Digging” sidebar column with a label under them that says “links contain affiliates”(we’re sticklers for labeling ads, sponsors, and affiliates to try to keep things 100% transparent). They’re all items on amazon.com that we love (some of which are things that we’ve actually bought ourselves – like a specific book, camera accessory, decor item, or toy for Clara). Occasionally they pop up in posts about things we’ve bought and loved, where they’re also always clearly marked.
- Writing Gigs: These are the aforementioned BabyCenter and Do It Yourself columns that we write, as well as random things that come our way once in a blue moon (like an opportunity to write an article for another publication).
- Book: Yup, they’re actually paying us to write a book. We can’t believe it either.
But of course, no business is without expenses. And it easy to assume that blogging is a free endeavor (after all, it was when we started in ’07, we even had one of those free urls with wordpress.com at the end of it). But as our traffic and business grew, so did our costs – such as:
- Hosting: Between paying for our site (on LiquidWeb <–affiliate link, fyi) and our images (on Amazon S3) we’re headed towards a five figure year when it comes to hosting expenses alone. Yes, that’s tens of thousands of dollars just to host our site so you guys can read posts and see pics. Totally worth it though. Blank blog page = no readers. And we like having you guys around.
- Taxes: Not that anyone is immune to these, but since no employer is taking out taxes for us upfront, it takes some extra planning on our part (i.e. remembering that about a third of every paycheck needs to be squirreled away because it’s going right back to the government in the form of quarterly tax payments).
- Insurance: When I left my advertising job last May we were suddenly on our own when it came to securing and paying for our own health insurance. And it’s not exactly cheap, but with a little one, good coverage is definitely worth the peace of mind.
- Retirement: Without an employer automatically socking away bits of a paycheck into a 401k (or doing any sort of matching for us), Sherry and I each opened a SEP on our own, which we’re responsible for contributing to regularly.
- Business License/ LLC Fees: Since we’re a legit LLC in Virginia, we pay annual license fees and taxes.
- Professional Help: I know that sounds like a therapist, but what we mainly mean is that we pay our accountant (who does our taxes) and the occasional programmer to help us navigate technical issues (ex: we crash four times in a week and feel like throwing our computers out the window). Though maybe we should consider the therapist sometimes…
- Equipment: If it weren’t for blogging, we probably wouldn’t own a second laptop, a DSLR camera, an HD Flip video camera, an external hard drive, or an iPhone (among other items that I’m probably forgetting right now). But it definitely helps to have some decent “tools” for blogging as efficiently as possible, so we’re glad to invest in them (and yes they’re write offs, which doesn’t make them free, but it takes away a bit of the sting).
- Project Costs: Arguably a lot of these costs would probably have been incurred eventually since we were DIY junkies even before we started our blog (so we would do most of this stuff anyway). But as I mentioned earlier – some of our projects happen (or at least happen at the pace and scale that they do) because of this blog. So we might have done all the things that we did to our current house in two years instead of in nine months if we weren’t home bloggers. Oh and since we get asked this a lot: none of our projects are write-offs since we’re doing them to our primary residence (our house isn’t zoned as an office building, which is a good thing because if it was – and we wrote projects off – we’d owe a big chunk of money to the government if we ever sold it).
If you want more info on the expense side of blogging, we actually wrote about it in more detail last year. But that’s enough out of me for now. Hopefully “peeling back the curtain” helped – whether it’s to use this info as you plan your own blogging business (or other somehow-related venture), or to just help you better understand what goes on behind the scenes around here. It’s certainly a lot more than just doing projects and writing about them, but there’s nothing else we’d rather be doing. Seriously, we’re completely amazed that we ended up “here” and our cup runneth over with gratitude. In fact a pie chart of our gratitude would be 101% full. And now as anything with charts should end – who else is hungry for pie?
Update – Some of the most frequent requests that we get are for info about professionally blogging (how we made our site, how we grew our following, how we make money, etc) so we shared all of the details about how we started a blog, grew our traffic, and turned it into a full time job.
Kelly says
What an informative post! Thanks for sharing all the info with us. So happy you pointed out DoubleClick from Google since I have been searching for something similar!
erin says
I’m curious to know, without getting to IRS on ya, if you guys get to write off most of your home improvement costs because they’re also business related?
Also, my husband and I both work from home. Hubby’s job is flexible so he tag-teams the baby watching. He says he gets a lot of funny looks when he takes our son on an outing at 12 noon and wondered if John ever gets the “aww, look at the stay at home dad” look. :)
YoungHouseLove says
Check out the last paragraph of our bulleted list of expenses at the bottom of this (admittedly insanely long) post. The short answer: nope.
xo,
s
elizabeth says
I was wondering where your google ad sense ads are located? Do you blend them with your sponsors ads?
YoungHouseLove says
All google ads have the words “ad by google” on the bottom of them, but we don’t combine them with the sponsor ads on the sidebar that we have all in a row. Usually they pop up at the end of a post, in a long skinny sky scraper at the bottom of our sidebar, and occasionally in the square on top of our faces on the sidebar button about us (if there’s not an ad network ad filling in up there).
xo,
s
elizabeth says
Oh, Also do you have any advice on choosing what google ad sense ads to block for more clicks and placement?
YoungHouseLove says
I think they have some videos about that. Not even sure what size ours are, we just try different things and about a year ago they actually called John to tell him what to change to get better ads and we made those changes and it was very helpful! I actually think our blog is in one of their instructional videos now (not by name or anything, but you see it). Haha.
xo,
s
Bboss says
“hints from your browsing history”
This creeped me out the first time I saw on ad on a web site that was 1)Not related to the web site and 2)Something I had just searched. I guess I’m a bit paranoid.
YoungHouseLove says
Isn’t that weird?!! Sometimes when the blog is crashing we’ll look up LiquidWeb (our hosting company) and call them and then on the phone with them we’ll be loading and reloading the site to look at it and their ad will keep showing up on the sidebar. It’s very Big Brother. Haha.
xo,
s
Nikki says
Do you guys ever consider hosting a live chat (the Washington Post does these with different topics most weekdays)? Your comments are almost like that anyway but I thought it would be cool to read a bunch of questions (without sorting through the other comments) and log on at a certain time to “chat” with you two! Sort of like G Chat with thousands of your closest friends all at once!
YoungHouseLove says
That would be crazy fun! We’ll have to look into how to make that work.
xo,
s
Elizabeth says
There are many things that I love about you and your blog, but your honesty and transparency about your hard work, problems, gliches, and other issues is my top. You do not gloss over the mistakes, or the DIY flops, or the amout of time that this blog takes! I also think it is relavent to mention that your blog started in 2007, and it has only been a year since you were bloth doing it full time. I have been following since 2008 and I loved the print projects!
Jadie says
Wow, I had no idea how much work goes into YHL! Makes me even more thankful for the site and all that you share with us. Thanks!
Alyssa says
First, thanks for all that info that many of us were dying to know! Second and even more importantly…Happy Blogiversary!!! you two amaze me each day with your always interesting topics and the way you write. You’re blog is great to read, I CANNOT wait until next Christmas when I better get your book from Santa!! lol Clara and burger are so sweet and I’m honored that my son and Clara have the same bday:) Dallas loves watching Clara videos and sends her a virtual kiss, which he blew at the screen yesterday when I showed him the pictures of her playing! Along with chanting “baby, baby”…I wonder if knows he’s a baby too!?! Keep up the great work!!
YoungHouseLove says
Haha, so cute! Clara sends her love right back!
xo,
s
Lauren says
Was just reading through all these comments and you guys are SO LOVED!! :) Thank you for all the hard work you put in and time you sacrifice. xoxo.
YoungHouseLove says
We have the best readers ever. Man we love you all to pieces.
xo,
s
Bethie says
Wow. Thanks for all the info! Fascinating.
(FYI, there is a small typo under “giveaways”: “products that we’re offered” was probably supposed to be “products that we’ve offered.”)
YoungHouseLove says
That one’s actually meant to say “products that we’re offered” because folks offer them to us and we deflect them as giveaways for our lovely readers!
xo,
s
Bethie says
One more small typo just under the first money chart: “butshe created a shop page on our site to vend them instead”
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks Bethie! Off to fix it!
xo
s
Bethie says
“but she just wanted to see it though”
Was that supposed to be “see it through”?
I swear I’m not looking for these! Feel free to read these comments and delete them without publishing them! :)
YoungHouseLove says
Haha- yes! Awesome catch. I never would have seen that. Thanks!
xo,
s
Aimee says
That was such an interesting and informative post! I really love your blog. I think it is fantastic that you are able to make a living doing something that you are passionate about while still being there for each other and Clara. My son is 4. I work nights so that I can be with him during the day. Most people think I’m crazy, but it works really well for my family. If the next 14 years go by as quickly as these last 4 then I will never regret missing out on a little (OK a lot!) of sleep.
You do wonderful work. Thank you for sharing.
Lauren says
I don’t normally comment other than to enter into your weekly giveaways (they are so fabulous and I keep holding out hope I’ll win one someday, but as your fan base grows I feel like that dream is drifting further and further away!), but I just wanted to say thank you. I stumbled upon your blog while doing research for a home decor client about the time you moved and I haven’t missed a single post since then. I would never attempt 1/2 of what you all do because I’m design-challenged, but I can give you all credit for helping me choose my gray paint color (Moonshine!) for my den area. Thanks so much and keep up the good work!
Bethie says
“But now lets look” there should be an apostrophe in “let’s.”
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks Bethie! Man, you’re amazing.
xo,
s
Nikki says
If you change your mind about needing editing help I nominate Bethie :) Man she’s good!
YoungHouseLove says
Seriously, she’s amaaaazing! My little eagle eye.
xo,
s
Krystle @ ColorTransformedFamily says
Thank you and congrats on the four year anniverasary! This post was very helpful. My blog is only about a month old and while I don’t plan for it ever to grow as big as yours, I would like to make a little income to offset some of the costs. It’s also interesting to see how you manage everything and how important your readers are to you.
Steph says
I’m adding to the kudos on a great posting series of your blog-o-versary – I’m sure it might seem mundane to you guys to talk about your day-to-day activities and the breakdowns, but it is truly interesting to those of us who would love to be paid to stay home and GET THINGS DONE!! :)
BT Dubs, I’ve also started taking “before” pictures when I tackle things – all because I love your before/after pictures when you’re done!
I think you guys have really filled a niche that no one else has – look at your readership, your ads, everything – I think it’s because you come across (and are!!) so honest, humble and “normal” – all of us can relate to you in some way, shape or form. So happy to have been following you for the past year now. And yes, I’ve stalked the archives to read the OLD OLD stuff too. :)
Amanda E says
This might be too personal, but I’ll ask anyway and hope you’re not *too* offended… since it’s asked not to pry but because when you share how you do things, it helps all the rest of us! :)
Anyhow, I’m wondering… you shared the time breakdown, and you shared the income breakdown. Would you be willing to share a little bit about your budget breakdown? What percent of your budget is taken up by those mad DIY projects vs. mortgage & “roof over your heads” expenses vs. food and clothing vs. savings for retirement/benefits/other “business” expenses vs. fun stuff like toys for the bean & entertainment for you guys? (You deserve the occasional ‘date night’ — you know that, right??) Do you end up with room in your budget for charitable donations? Etc etc.?
I constantly struggle with my own budget so I’d love to hear how you guys handle things!
YoungHouseLove says
Hmm, that’s tough since it changes a lot month to month. We actually have some info about charitable donations on our sidebar and our FAQ page (we support a few different organizations having to do with homes, pets, and babies). As for DIY, some months we can spend over 1K (like on the patio supplies, which we saved up for first) or we can just spend a few hundred on little projects like painting and making a light fixture and recovering a chair, etc. It really all depends. We also pay taxes quarterly, and usually only send a retirement check to our SEP annually, so the chart would really differ depending which month you looked at. In general though, we try to do everything as cheaply as possible and do as many things as we can ourselves, just because we’re lovers of DIY and cheap-os. Haha. So from dinners to date night and haircuts we try to DIY stuff and find online coupons and go on off-times to save money, etc. There are lots of money-related posts on our Projects page for ya. Oh and this post in particular might help answer a lot of those questions: https://www.younghouselove.com/2010/03/email-answer-money-management/
xo,
s
xo,
s
Kim S says
I know you know this and I’m sure a ton of other people are commenting and saying the same thing, but THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for taking the time to read all of our comments and answer questions. Sometimes if it’s slow at work and I’ve already read your post, I’ll come back just to skim the comments and read your answers because a lot of times they’re so entertaining too! You guys are the best. :)
YoungHouseLove says
Aw you’re welcome Kim. You guys are awesome to read our posts and write us comments, how could we not write ya back?!
xo,
s
Jess says
Okay, so you mentioned buying your own health insurance and I thought I’d chime in with a heads-up.
We bought ours a few years back and thought we had maternity coverage. Apparently what we had was a Maternity Rider. They gave us $4k to go towards the birth, which we thought was awesome (at the time). But we didn’t know until after baby boy that all my midwife appointments for the entire 9 months were considered in this $4,000 figure (I had just assumed they were office visits and covered under my standard policy. Nuh-uh) 9 months worth of visits (at this practice) = $3800. So we were left with, essentially, the entire delivery (which was natural, thank goodness! I have no idea what an epidural costs, but I’m sure it’s not cheap) + hospitalization afterward and all of his newbie tests. In summary: Ouch. I know you guys mentioned you weren’t planning a pregnancy any time soon, but I felt like I should say something because some policies require you to carry the maternity coverage for X number of months before you can actually get the full benefits from it.
On a blog-related note: You guys are the best!! Keep being awesome! =)
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks so much for the heads up! We’re crazy people about planning insurance related things like babies (with Clara we probably called them ten times and asked ten questions) so we definitely plan to keep an eye out. Thanks for the valuable reminder!!
xo,
s
Melissa S. says
I had a similar-ish experience. In our case we knew pregnancy was not well covered, but since we were not planning to have any more children it wasn’t a concern. Then a surprise pregnancy happened. ;-)
Several complications during the pregnancy requiring monthly ultrasounds, and a c-section delivery. Talk about a big ouch. Good gosh. Really was envious of other countries with social healthcare, let me tell you!!!
LMG says
Hello,
I was wondering…based on your pie charts and day-in-the-life…when do you ever go grocery-shopping or clean? (Besides after a hurricane ha ha ha). Because your house always looks so clean! And I’m not talking cluttered (I watched the video), I mean like eat-off-the-floors clean. Do you have a service? Those two things seem to eat up so much of my life….
thanks!
YoungHouseLove says
Haha. Sorry I’m laughing about a cleaning service because we’re such DIY diehards (and cheap-os) that we definitely do that stuff ourselves. Here’s a post about the usual method (I find cleaning as we go a lot easier than doing it all at once). So if the blog is quiet on a weekend or evening I’ll just do 30 minutes here or there usually. And John pitches in too. And the house is far from spotless. You just can’t see dust in pictures. Haha.
As for grocery shopping, we usually all go (well, not Burger, but Clara comes) and grab stuff as fast as we can since there are four arms instead of two.
xo,
s
Margie M says
West Me
Ro says
Sherry and John, just wanted to add to all the love coming your way through the interwebs! I only discovered YHL this year and my productivity at work has seriously declined as a result (shhh) but my love for your site, your can-do attitude, and your hilarious writing style knows no bounds. You guys rock!
Michelle says
This was really interesting! My blog about all of my projects is just starting out. We bought a house this spring, so I feel like we’re in the same boat as you guys. Our latest undertaking is painting the exterior!
You might have said this before, but will your book be all new projects? Or will it contain some info you’ve posted about before?
YoungHouseLove says
Virtually all of them are going to be new projects that we’re doing and shooting! So much fun!!
xo,
s
Emily says
Congrats on the book!! Love the pies. Now I want some real pie.
Steph @ Steph's Stuff says
Love all of this breakdown and the charts. Tell John he rocked the pies. :)
holly says
this week has been REALLY informative for me, and it’s only Tuesday! I like seeing all the back room stuff, because i think it’s easy to think that all you see is all there is- like I would have never thought that your hosting costs would be so high.
LMG says
oh wow thank you for the fast answer and I apologize for making you write it again–I had searched for a cleaning post but missed that one!
p.s. I have dining chair slipcovers like yours and I got tired of them slipping around…I bought those elastic sheet corner holders, made a cross of them under the chair, and now they are perfect!
thanks again!!!
Melody says
I really respect that you are so transparent about how you make money from your site. I think it’s fantastic that this has turned from a hobby into a business for your family! Congratulations on four years!
Alexis Smith says
Did you guys watch Design Star? I was looking through pics of Meg’s, the winner, new show. This made me think of your kitchen banquette project. Just thought I would share.
http://www.hgtv.com/on-tv/amazing-before-and-after-makeovers-from-hgtvs-great-rooms/pictures/index.html
YoungHouseLove says
Wahoo! I love Meg. Thanks for the link!
xo,
s
Sayard says
Not sure if someone already mentioned this but a friend told me the other day about a new camera memory card (mine’s SD for my DSLR, yours might be different..) that is somehow set up wirelessly through your internet to automatically download the photos to your computer when you turn your camera on in your house — I haven’t actually looked into it yet but it sounds neat and like it would save a lot of time!
YoungHouseLove says
Oh yeah John actually got me one of those for our point and shoot camera a while back. Loved it!
xo,
s
Lindsey says
Congratulations on 4 years! I’ve been an avid YHL reader since I found your blog in 2008. Actually, your blog is what got me into reading blogs in the first place. (Now I spend hours a week reading them… they’re like my “stories”) Keep up the good work!
Stephanie says
Very interesting post! I do not blog but I do wonder what you do differently….when I open your posts in my reader, they are always fully loaded immediately. Others take a few minutes before you can scroll through and read them. Does this have to do with your hosting service?
YoungHouseLove says
I think so. It probably helps that we store our pics in a separate place and try to keep loading time as low as possible.
xo,
s
Jennifer W says
Did anyone else see How I Met Your Mother last night? Ted announces that he’s making pie charts and everyone cheers and high-fives. That’s the image I had in my head while reading this post: John & Sherry cheering and high-fiving over the awesomeness of charts and graphs.
YoungHouseLove says
Haha, not gonna lie. There were some high fives.
xo,
s
Cathy says
I’m a relatively new reader (just found you guys this year) and just wanted to add to the chorus of praise. Your content is fun, interesting, informative and funny, but I really think that it’s your interaction with your readers that sets you apart. I’ve also noticed that you are unfailingly polite even when responding to the occasional quasi-mean comment (and it’s got to be weird when a stranger gets all worked up about the wall art you’ve chosen for your bedroom!). Success could not have come to nicer people — wishing you lots more of it!
Elizabeth says
Thank you for linking Sherry’s radio interview!
suki says
i really enjoyed this post and seeing the breakdown in time and money. that is also a great podcast that i’m listening to right now. :) great info.
Carly says
I love this breakdown. Thank you for being so refreshingly honest and open about how your blog is sustainable.
Laura L. says
Happy Blogiversary! It’s been fun reading all these behind the scenes posts. It seems like you guys already have some great things going on from an income-generating standpoint, but I thought I’d share a resource. My husband and I have a niche site or two (not blogs) that we’ve developed using methods from the Smart Passive Income blog: http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/ Many of his posts and podcasts are blog-related and there is probably some back-end stuff you all could glean from his site to further boost YHL’s placement in Google rankings and from an income perspective. It’s all totally legit and not “make money quick” scheme-esque. Promise!
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks! We’ll have to check it out.
xo,
s
Lindsey says
Happy Blogiversary! I am SUCH a fan of your blog and can’t wait for yalls book!
Maybe you have addressed this in the past, but I am curious if there was there a ‘magic number’ of followers or page views per day that you obtained before you started to treat the blog as a business?
YoungHouseLove says
It’s really hard to say. We definitely were blogging daily and maybe we got 20 comments? It’s hard to remember. We just noticed that more folks were dropping in and we were getting amazing and unbelievable mentions in places like The Washington Post (they had a little “blog watch” column that we made about 9 months into blogging and we couldn’t believe it). We also won a blogging contest around 5 months in and it really made us think “maybe we’re on to something here, maybe we should put in more time and see what happens…”
xo,
s
Kristin H. says
Are you “allowed” to share how much you guys charge for your sponsor ads? If not no biggie.. I have a business and we don’t advertise at all so I’m just curious!!
YoungHouseLove says
We actually were just recently asked not to share that info publicly (since some of our sponsors don’t like people knowing how much they spend on advertising I guess?) so out of respect to them now we keep it hush hush. There are some pretty basic “formulas” that you can find online though (you enter the amount of traffic you get and it spits out a fair rate – we always undercut it because you know we love deals, haha). We actually didn’t raise ours at all since last year (when our traffic was about half of what it is now) but I think we’ll recalculate it in January.
xo,
s
Kimberly W says
Whew! I am exhausted just reading this post. Generally speaking I would have never made it through reading something so detailed and technical. But the light hearted jokes and beautiful pie charts got me through it. I admire your writing talents… Such an excellent post.
EM says
Happy Blog-i-versary!!
In the post, it says that Sherri used to do inexpensive art prints; did she create the homemade, beige&white, leaf prints sitting on the new desk in the office? If so, I love them and want them for my dining room :) Are they something easy to re-create in Photoshop? Thanks! And cheers to another 4 years to blogging!
YoungHouseLove says
Yes, those were some of the prints we used to sell. I made them in photoshop by scanning in a piece of burlap (for the background texture) and then just drew leaf outlines and filled them with white. I had them printed at a local printing place since they were 12 x 12″ – hope it helps!
xo,
s
Ashley Bird says
Thank you guys so much for everything! Your such an inspiration to me! Thanks for all the inspiration and words of wisdom! I can’t wait to read the rest of the blogiversary posts. You guys rock!
Sandi says
I really love that you guys don’t accept freebies or perks. When I read a fashion blogger who keeps getting sent free Coach shoes it’s never something I could replicate. Your projects are done on a legit business that the real world can actually use for inspiration. Thanks for being you :)
Erin says
Do you have an archive of the prints you used to sell. I came late to this party and I never got to see what you sold back then and I would love to see them sometime :-)
YoungHouseLove says
Hmm, just searched for a post about them but couldn’t find a link. It used to be a page up on our header, but we have since taken it down when we closed the shop, so it’s hard to come by any visuals.
xo,
s
Danielle says
Wow! Thanks so much for sharing! Such great info and like always, seriously inspirational. Happy 4th Blogiversary!
Jill B. @BlogworthyBride says
Thanks so much for this post! I definitely need to save this one for future reference. I’m only in the ‘blog about what you love’ stage, but down the road it would be nice to snag an advertiser or two. Bonus points for the pie charts! Gotta love ’em!
Thanks!
Jill B.
http://theblogworthybride.com
OwningSingle says
WEST ME! And congrats on 4 years. Wow since 2007 I have changed jobs, become guardian to my 4 year old neice, seen 5 years of homeownership, started a blog, and started a business and I’m sure there’ more too!