So glad they’ve been helpful for you! I stopped writing income posts years ago, and I wish I had more specific information and data to share from my more recent years. But I can tell you, in the interest of full transparency, that I’m currently making a profit of around $200K/year. It might be more than that. My expenses are not very high comparatively- I probably spend between $1K-$2K per month. I’m on the low end- other bloggers at my level spend a lot more. I’m pretty conservative when it comes to spending, though. When I first started, my expenses were much less, and you can definitely run websites as a business and spend much less money than you would on a more traditional business model (such as a brick and mortar store). Hope that helps!

I was just wandering wether you also have been tracking expenses over these periods. Have you made a reasonable profit from your website? I would love to get an idea of the expenses that I will incur.

Blogher is an ad network that you apply to. Recently it’s become exclusive (meaning you can’t run other ad networks with it, such as Adsense, but you can still use affiliate links from Amazon). I actually am no longer with them and switched to MediaVine, whom I highly recommend. With BlogHer, they help promote content created by women and/OR content that is designed for women. Both BlogHer and MediaVine have an application process that you have to go through- I know with MV, you have to have at least 30,000 views per month to be accepted. If you get that amount of traffic, or close to it, I recommend looking into MV! If not, I recommend applying to BlogHer (as long as you fit the content criteria)- when I first applied I didn’t get in, but they added me to a waitlist and emailed me when space was available. If you are really JUST beginning and don’t have much traffic yet, I recommend using Sovrn in addition to Adsense (use Adsense tags as a passback on Sovrn ads- their customer service is really great and they can help you figure it out). Hope this all helps, and let me know if you have any other questions!

I can’t imagine how exciting it would be to move into a new house.

Just a little FYI – we are victims of California’s Valley Fire from Sept 2015, we found out the hard way that detached garages count as “outbuildings” on homeowners policies. We lost a barn, 3 car detached garage, tractor barn, the tool shed and chicken coop. They all fall under “outbuildings” which is percent of the home’s coverage. We were underinsured but luckily we had additional insurance on the barn and garage so we should be able to rebuild. Be safe and double check your homeowners policy!

Thank you Shelly and thank you for your question! Made a great addition to this post :-) And yes, it IS a detached garage! I’m so excited to move in I can’t even stand it!

I’m glad you didn’t take my comment on your Third Income Report as being rude! Lol I’d been wanting to ask Adsense that question for a long time.

What a cute house! Is that a detached garage to the left?

What an interesting idea for a blog! There are a lot of travel blogs out there as well that you may want to check out. Also sounds like you may want to make a business part of your site (for your specialized tours) in addition to the blog. Very cool- let me know when/if you get it up and running, I’d love to check it out!

i just returned to Tokyo, Japan, after a ten year absence. I”m currently working with one other guy in the tour industry. We’re both foreigners who have lived in Japan for a long time. I thought I could use the website currenty being built and perhaps some of the tools from Word Press to blog about touring in Japan.

We are doing custom tours for small groups, concentrating on what they want to do. So, for example, if you came to Tokyo and wanted to know more about cooking, we’d make sure you went to the Tsukiji Fish Market, Kappaashi — “Kitchen Town” where many of the chefs go to purchase equipment and supplies, to quality restaurants that represent native cuisines, debriefed you on many of the weird things about Japanese food, like natto, and then wrapped it all around how the Japanese style of cooking came to be. I’ll give you a hint: no cows until after WWII.

Hi again! Not including cooking (but including photographing food, editing photos, writing posts, and social media) I probably spend about 10 hours a week. It’s hard for me to pinpoint exactly how many hours I put in because I often get sucked into the vortex of facebook and pinterest when I am supposed to be “working” on social media posts for my blog :-) Lately I’ve only been posting once a week- when I post twice it’s more like 15 hours. It was a bit more in the beginning as I was getting used to everything and learning so much. And income posts like this take significantly longer than recipe posts. Some bloggers work 40 hours a week like a full time job, and others only a few hours (especially if they don’t post once a week). Generally, once a week is a good amount to post in order to keep your content fresh. Hope that helps! :-) Do you know what topic you’d write about?

YES to IKEA lunch. It’s half the reason to go shopping there! I need to find a Swedish meatball recipe. Blogging IS a lot of effort, which is why I started to monetize it in the first place, but it’s also SO fun. Thank you so much for reading my blog and for the lovely comment :-)

Thank you, Barbara! I’m really glad you find the information useful. Best of luck to you and your blog! If you haven’t already- make sure you check out http://www.pinchofyum.com as well- they’re the ones that inspired me to make money from my blog (and they are extremely successful and have a wealth of information).